Part of Henry the Fourth—The sequel
The Henriad part 3
In Henry the Fourth Part One we found Prince Hal, King Henry IV's heir, consorting with Falstaff and other brigands. All the while, Henry Percy (Hotspur) is leading a rebellion. Prince Hal rises to the occasion, redeems himself on the battlefield, and kills Hotspur, but he lets his friend Falstaff take the credit. But the rebellion isn't put down...
This is a sequel, plain and simple. The plot is virtually the same as that of Henry IV Part One: the errant son isn't living up to his father's expectations or to his responsibilities as heir to the throne. He consorts with friends of dubious character, but then in time he fights to put down the rebellion against his father. This time, Shakespeare takes us to King Henry IV's death and shows us Prince Hal become King Henry V, thus concluding the story. But the sequel seems unnecessary. After all, if Prince Hal redeemed himself in Part One, where is the dramatic motive to have him do so again in Part Two?
But this is a Shakespeare sequel! The end in Part One is good natured and Falstaff remains friends with the prince. In Part One, the prince and the king have reconciled, but at the beginning of Part Two the king's advisers still suspect the prince. The Lord High Justice in particular, being fond of law and order, is not too happy at the thought of serving a king with a possibly criminal past.
In Part Two all ends well though. The Lord High Justice is of course worried upon Henry V's accession, but the new king wisely keeps him in his position. Having served his father so well to the point of courting his own displeasure and risking his life in order to uphold the law, Henry V predicts the Lord High Justice will serve his new king with the same integrity.
Then for good measure, Henry V finally and fully repudiates Falstaff and his band. "I know thee not old man" answers Henry V to a stunned Falstaff, who had expected Hal's rise to make his fortune. But no, Falstaff is cast aside along with Prince Hal's youth.
Henry the Fifth—Honor is for victors
The Henriad part 4
What a rich world Shakespeare creates in his wooden "O", in his cockpit, on his stage. This man of the people wrote plays that simultaneously pleased the commoners standing in front of the stage and the aristocrats sitting above them. Shakespeare aimed to fill the cheap seats as well as the expensive ones.
The now-dead Falstaff spoke for the common man and his worries when he said honor was but a word, and that word was but air. But even the meanest Englishman felt fierce pride for his land and his sovereign. War might hurt or kill him, but war made England great too.
To Elizabethan Englishmen, no king better exemplified valor and honor than did King Henry V. He stood up to France and reclaimed his birthright. As a male descendant of the French King Philip IV, he disputed the newfound Salic law that barred women from the French throne. Perhaps a woman may not reign, but she could pass on the crown without herself donning it. And so to France goes King Hal!
On a hopeless enterprise, outnumbered and badly supplied, Henry nevertheless conquers Harfleur and then most surprising of all, decisively beats the better part of French chivalry at Agincourt. Henry rallies his lords and soldiers to him, inspires them to great deeds, calls the meanest among them his brother and wishes for not one man more, so as not to diminish anyone's share of honor! (That word again…)
He reclaims his title to the French crown, marries the French king's daughter Catherine, and graciously lets the French king reign, satisfied to be heir to his kingdom.
From such a height, where could the English go but down? The stage is now set for Shakespeare earlier cycle of four plays on the War of the Roses.
Interlude: A Very Underrated Play
Troilus and Cressida—Dirty jokes and battle action
This is perhaps Shakespeare's most underrated play. It isn't about Troy, it’s about treachery winning and fair play losing.
It also regales us with very funny lessons on vanity. A salacious Trojan aristocrat (Pandarus), a Greek oaf (Ajax), and an angry, irreverent Greek servant (Thersites) provide the humor.
Troilus and Cressida starts with some very dirty jokes about wooing a woman, having sex with her, and getting herpes. Then we are shown the military glory of Troy as the commanders parade before the citizens. A later scene illustrates the determination of the Greeks besieging Troy. They've lived on the shore in tents for seven years while the Trojans lived in their palaces. The play ends with a broken heart and a large-scale battle scene.
On a smaller scale, the war between Troy and Greece is reflected in the lives of two lovers. Troilus loves Cressida, secret meetings are arranged by Pandarus, and when circumstances change, Cressida's heart turns away, thus breaking Troilus's.
Despite the sad ending, this play isn't a tragedy in the normal sense. Tragedies are usually about the tragic hero making a tragic mistake by presuming to something that is beyond him. For instance, Richard II stops a trial by combat where God would have given victory to the righteous. Hamlet, having the chance to kill his uncle during confession, instead decides to wait so that his uncle's now contrite soul is NOT given the chance to go straight to heaven by dying right after confession absolves him. Both Richard and Hamlet usurp God's prerogative to judge men.
In Troilus and Cressida, the Trojans are shown to be noble and strong while the Greeks are portrayed as crafty and sly. When the Trojan commander Hector dies, it isn't through a tragic flaw. Even though Hector doesn’t believe Helen is worth fighting for, he fights because it is his duty- he is being noble and virtuous. Hector is not tragically flawed, in fact he dies due to his virtue, and also due to Achilles's treachery. Hector is not the victim of hubris; he loses because the Greeks win and the Greeks win because they cheat.
There was no way that Shakespeare could write something like that happening in England, or even Italy or Rome. Who would be the winners and who would be the losers? Therefore, he sets the play in Troy. Anything set in Rome or London ought to be about valor and honor, not about our baser instincts. And where is the moral lesson if the base win over the noble? The only safe course for Shakespeare was to set it somewhere familiar enough to engage the audience but alien enough to keep the audience from identifying themselves with either party.
The War of the Roses
Jane Howell’s BBC production is a must-see. She directs all four plays in the cycle, Henry VI Parts One through Three and Richard III, and directs them as a whole. She uses the same basic set for all four plays but has this set gradually fall apart with each play. It goes from a clean colorful solid decor to an assemblage of dingy dark broken walls, illustrating the collapse of order brought on by Henry's weakness and Richard’s ambition.
The First Part of Henry the Sixth—Showing rather than explaining
The War of the Roses part 1
With this early play, Shakespeare comes into his own and begins to display the full mastery of his talents.
Staged action, used to show dramatic tension, characterizes and defines Shakespeare's style. We read Shakespeare with difficulty because he wrote plays meant to be seen and heard. Christopher Marlowe and others wrote plays that are easier to read because their lines are recited explanations, or at least that was my impression when I read Marlowe's Faust or Tamburlaine. A Marlowe play has the main characters walk onto the stage and explain what is going on in their lives, while Shakespeare's plays present people doing things as they would in the world, albeit in eloquently condensed and dramatized form. “All the world's a stage and people merely players,” says Touchstone in As You Like It.
Henry VI Part One holds the earliest scene we can identify as typical Shakespearean drama. In Act II scene iv, Richard Plantagenet, Edmund Beaufort Duke of Somerset and others walk into a garden away from eavesdroppers to debate Richard's claim to the Dukedom of York. His father had held this title but was executed as a traitor and had his titles stripped from him. Richard protests his father was falsely accused and wrongfull
y condemned. Somerset holds the courts were just and Richard has no claim in law. No one else dares speak; plots and machinations could get someone killed. Since no one speaks, Richard plucks a white rose from the garden and urges those who support him to do the same. Somerset plucks a red rose.
Shakespeare is not explaining to us why the civil war that will tear England apart for four plays is called the War of the Roses. Through the physical actions of the players, he is showing us the reason why. Never mind that this is pure invention, it is dramatic.
This play opens Shakespeare’s cycle on the English civil war. The cycle continues with Henry the Sixth Parts Two and Three, and finally closes with Richard III. Anything as momentous as a war lasting four whole plays must have a cause. This play begins with the funeral procession of Henry V and then shows his son losing all of his father’s French conquests. England is sinking and Henry VI's courtiers are all busy fighting each other for power in England rather than for England’s good. Henry VI is presented as a pious, generous human being but we have all heard the saying that nice guys finish last.
The hero of this play is Talbot. Only he among all the King's knights is fighting for England. He needs help. While this duke bickers with that earl