A To Z Challenge 2022: Shakespeare- H Is For Henry

 Shakespeare wrote several Henry plays, about the Kings of that name between Henry IV and Henry VI - two Henry IV plays and three Henry VI plays. And one Henry V play, of course. And he co wrote Henry VIII with another author, John Fletcher. (I believe that was the play being performed when the Globe Theatre burned down, so I bet Shakespeare never forgot it!)

One of the Henry VI plays may have been his very first play, so they were not done in chronological order. 

I do remember the TV series The Life Of Shakespeare with Tim Curry, where the play is being performed to wild acclaim and Shakespeare, feeling very smug, is sitting in the pub with Christopher Marlowe, who lets him know he isn’t impressed with it. It needs characters you can care about, says Marlowe. He suggests that, as Shakespeare has a son he loves he could start from there. (A reference to the civil war in those plays and “a father who has killed his son” meeting “a son who has killed his father”).  

I won’t be going into detail about all of them here. You can watch them all on The Hollow Crown, currently on Prime. 

Prince Hal. Public Domain

My favourite of them was Henry IV Part I, which introduces the comical Falstaff and the cheeky Prince Hal, later to become the heroic Henry V and get his own play.

Henry IV was the son in Richard II. His father, John of Gaunt, did that amazing speech about “this England”. Henry usurps the throne at the end and vows a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to make up for it. Which he never does get around to. By Henry IV Part I, he is a father, worrying about his son Prince Hal, who is hanging around with the riffraff at a London inn, including the awful Falstaff, boozing and wenching, instead of preparing for his future role. Hell, there is a war going on with Scotland! And who is showing Hal up? A young man called Henry Percy, nicknamed Hotspur, son of the Duke of Northumberland. 

By the way, Hotspur in real life was a lot older than Prince Hal, but Shakespeare wanted to be able to compare them, so made him younger. 

But Hotspur rebels when Henry IV shows ingratitude, as he sees it. After all, the Percy family did help him get the throne.

If you see this in The Hollow Crown, Hotspur is played by Jonas Armstrong, who was a gorgeous Robin Hood in the BBC TV series, and Tom Hiddleston as a beautiful, mischievous Prince Hal. 

Thing about Prince Hal, he is only pretending to be a disgrace to his family, so that when he reforms everyone will like him better. Not sure I liked that much, which is why I have always preferred Hotspur. 

Anyway, Hal turns up to help his Dad when needed. 

Henry V shows Hal all grown up and King. He is planning to attack France because there is some argument over who it belongs to. He thinks it should belong to the English.

When the French send him a box of tennis balls and tell him to stick to this sort of stuff suited to his age, he has his excuse and off he goes to France, winning the battle of Agincourt and marrying the French princess, Katherine, who doesn’t speak English, but asks her English-speaking lady, Alice, for words. 

In the meantime, we find out what is happening to his old mates at the inn. Falstaff, who never comes on stage, is dying of a broken heart after Hal rejected him when coming to the throne. Mistress Quickly, the owner of the inn, describes his death in a long speech.  The bunch decide to join in the war. Unfortunately, one of them, Bardolph, is hanged for looting. In the Kenneth Branagh film, there is a flashback to the days of the inn, when someone holds his hands around Bardolph’s neck, suggestive of a noose.

Reading this play, I found out that Staines, a town mentioned in it, was much older than I realised when I stayed there on a visit to England! 

It is definitely a patriotic play, and was used as wartime propaganda when Laurence Olivier filmed it during WWII. The music was by William Walton, but also figured the Agincourt Carol. The film started in Shakespeare’s time, with a busy London street, then in the theatre. It moves on to the real world, including an amazing Battle of Agincourt and finally returns to the theatre, with a boy actor as Princess Katherine.

It’s up on YouTube if you want to see it. 

Remarkably, so is the Kenneth Branagh film, which I haven’t been able to find elsewhere, though I would be happy to buy it.

In The Hollow Crown, the role of Henry is played by Tom Hiddleston and begins with seeing him in his coffin while his family come to pay their respects. Of course, Henry V died young, leaving his baby son as king, and he inherited his mental illness from his mother’s family(his French grandfather thought he was made of glass). 

There is a recent film with Timothee Chalamet, The King, which has some Shakespeare elements, but not all. For one thing, Falstaff is not the silly old man shown in Shakespeare’s play. He is a strong character who goes to war with his King and actually has some brains. Well, he was a fictional character anyway, though he was thought to be inspired by a real person, whose family were annoyed by his presentation by Shakespeare. So why not? 

It’s worth taking a look on YouTube for different versions of the famous Crispian’s Day speech. It includes a scene from an American film in which an American soldier is challenged to say what he thinks of what they are doing, and smiles as he recites that speech.

Time for me to get back to bed and see if I can throw off this COVID thing!