Oh I'm glad you said that! I'm new to these plays, we did Julius Caesar at school and I know Hamlet, Macbeth and a few others. I thought we were supposed to love Falstaff!

As with many Shakespeare characters nothing is ever straightforward. Falstaff is popular with audiences because he's the funny man and has some great lines. We also have some sympathy for him when we see him lose his friendship with Hal - both in the foreshadowing scene in the pub and in reality when Hal becomes king.

However, he is also a symbol of everything which Hal must reject in order to become king. Falstaff claims to be the prince's friend but he is a liar and is self-serving. He is a drunkard whose circle of friends are braggarts and rogues and prostitutes. He is also a coward. He has led Hal astray - or that 's certainly how it's perceived by the king and his confidantes such as the Lord Chief Justice.

I enjoyed Part II but it's the weakest so far in terms of story. The only point of interest is the fulfilment of Falstaff's banishment. This was the first Shakespeare play I studied at school and I remember at the time feeling quite bored with it, thinking that it didn't have much going for it in terms of plot.

Thanks Eraserhead, that was very interesting

I've enjoyed all three shows so far, but the standout performance was that of Ben Wishaw. The scene that sticks in the memory was when there was all manner of fancy speech directed at him and you could see him thinking, "I'm bored - I wonder if my monkey's hungry?"- a brilliant moment! The second and third "episodes" haven't reached those heights (and I've only just realised that there was less verse in them, so perhaps that's why?) but they've still been head and shoulders above most other stuff we get fed on telly these days...

K

I agree, can't wait for Henry V! I'm really old and can remember our school being taken to the cinema to see Laurence Olivier in the film. Marvellous. omg it was 1944 then.....

I'm not that old, but we were doing Macbeth and got taken to the cinema to see the Polanski version (I'm convinced our teacher hadn't seen it first!!! - mmmm, Lady M )

K

Professor Dowden thought Falstaff was a loveable rogue and a man of genius.b

He also pops up in The Merry Wives of Windsor, which is a comedy.

Yes you could say Shakey was the first to make a Franchise series of his plays
Rich II the prequel HenryV the sequel and Merry Wives the spin-off .I believe it was written at the request of Queen Elizabeth

The problem with adapting these three plays in conjunction is that Henry IV Parts I and II are the least visually stimulating (outside of the battle scenes) in comparison to both Richard II and Henry V and don't have the same level of emotion rousing prose in them.

Richard II is a dream to adapt because of it all being in verse and having some of Shakespeare's most beautiful lyrical speeches, plus our "hero" is fatally flawed and so, while he was an incredibly poor King, he is easy to portray as a character for whom the audience should feel sympathy. Ben Whishaw's performance was a tour de force and it was helped along with the stunning visual metaphors with which they emphasised the "Christlike" nature of his belief in the Divine Right of Kings.

I thought they did a great job in making both parts of Henry IV stirring although I wasn't a fan of Simon Russel Beale's Falstaff. I've seen him played in a far more jolly way so that his eventual "abandonment" comes across with more sympathy. They chose to follow the letter of the play and have him as a somewhat dodgy character who Prince Hal is hanging round with so that, when he becomes King, he can demonstrate that he's actually not a feckless wastrel

Personally I'm just happy there's any Shakespeare on TV, specially a traditional setting adaptation rather than all the modern interpretations we've had over the past few decades.

I always thought that Falstaff was a rogue, with not many redeeming features, but such a larger than life character that you couldn't help liking him, and he was genuinely fond of Hal.

So when Hal renounced him it was a real blow to him and you were meant to feel sympathy for him.

I don't think that quite came off in these productions of the play. Falstaff just came over as quite unpleasant.

I too struggled a bit with Part 2, however I think that might have been because I haven't read it (when I had both R II and Part 1). But what a performance by Irons, for the whole "heavy is the head that wears the crown" speech and the lead up to his death with Prince Hal, I was in floods of tears. And it was nice to David Bamber as his normal annoying self and also Geoffrey Palmer. I really hope they do some more Shakespeare stuff, however is there any British actors left to star in them?

Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I've always found Falstaff thoroughly unpleasant and cheered (not literally) when he was disowned. in both parts of Henry IV he basically rounds people up to be literal cannon fodder without a hint of a qualm. The great Charles Laughton, in many ways an obvious candidate to play Falstaff, always refused because he disliked the character so much. 'I had to throw too meny men like him out of my father's hotel', he said once.

Yep, that's what I mean. They seem to have actually played him to the text, rather than how he's usually interpreted as a "jolly rogue" with a heart of gold whose a bit of a replacement father figure for Prince Hal - ie he offers him the affection he hasn't had from the King.
Have to say though, I loved the way they did the Boar's Head scene where both Falstaff and Prince Hal play the King. Tom Hiddleston got Jeremy Irons down to a tea!

I remember when the BBC TV Shakespeare (the marathon performance of the entire canon the BBC did in the 70s and 80s) did Henry IV, Anthony Quayle played Falstaff, I think he came over more likeable in that. In this production, I think they emphasised the self-serving nature of his friendship with the Prince; how he hoped to benefit from it, rather than the genuine fondness that is also there.

The one I really felt for was poor Doll Tearsheet, getting dragged off at the end. Maxine Peake made her really likeable, and for all her flaws, she genuinely loved Falstaff.

My problem is that I did not believe that Falstaff genuinely liked him


Mainly because he thought he had hit the jackpot


David Bamber was excellent in Rome, especially in his death scene

I remember that version with Anthony Quayle, his Falstaff was very much more portrayed as a genial soul with a self-centred core but who did truly love Hal and his banishment scene was beautifully done. You can see Hal as he becomes King Henry V turn his back on all his foolish youthfulness and also, I think, there's an element of shame there that he allowed himself to be misled while knowing it was his own doing.
You can see in Quayle's Falstaff that realisation that what the Prince did, the King cannot, which is to acknowledge that a friendship once existed with someone who is a so clearly a fool.

On Youtube - the honour speech

banishment scene


I think the play's text does give a far better impression that Falstaff is genuinely fond of Hal, not just because he's the Prince of Wales but for his own sake. But he is most definitely aware, because of his own downtrodden status, of the benefits of being friends with Hal.

I have to say I've found him a more humorous character reading the plays than watching them. I think it's because in reading you have the luxury of being able to take time to read the puns and wordplay he uses, whereas that's sometimes a bit lost on delivery by actors. I certainly thought Beale rather rushed through some of Falstaff's best lines.

He is still quite unpleasant in many respects and I think that makes him one of Shakespeare's greatest characters. How do we, as the audience, square our affection we have for this jolly, rotund scoundrel with the fact that he is a liar and a coward, a man who makes a mockery of the word honour, a man who has none and so chooses to ridicule it, to ask what honour there is in death and dismemberment on the battlefield.

This is an absolutely pivotal moment, though, because it's the first occasion that Hal has to act the part, to be a man of bravery and honour on the battlefield instead of playing the fool in Falstaff's court.

The whole dramatic thrust of the Henry IV plays is the responsibility of being King. Henry says about how heavy the crown lies upon his head. Like other troubled Shakespeare characters he finds sleep eluding him (often a sign of guilt, as with Macbeth, and with Henry IV as usurper of the crown). He despairs at his wayward son, who will soon (as Henry is ill) inherit the kingdom. He would not want the next king of England to be weak and fickle like the very man Henry stole the crown from in the first place.

And Shakespeare, of course, wrote and performed the plays at a time when there had been great uncertainty about who would rule England, with Elizabeth having no direct heir and battles raging between whether the inheritors of the throne should be protestant or catholic and questions about legitimacy of inheritance.

Falstaff, then, represents all that Hal must reject in order to be a strong and fit king for his country - a man of honour, of truth, one who takes his role seriously and does not make jokes, who is not idle or feckless or profligate, who is brave and not cowardly.

It is only by setting up Falstaff as the (ahem) fall guy that in witnessing his rejection that we understand that Hal is a fit and rightful king.

Exactly, and a very well written dissection of Falstaff

Did Tom Hiddleston slip the costume designer a few groats to make sure he always got the nattiest outfits? Or to make sure Jeremy Irons got the woolly muggers hat?

bump bump Henry V on now.

What is everyone thinking?

I've always been a bit blase towards Shakespeare, though I appreciate and admire the contribution to the English language. I studied Hamlet at school, and wanted to kill him myself by the end of the play!

I don't know The Hollow Crown at all and have just about followed this adaptation. I admit I have been mainly admiring Tom Hiddleston. I really need to educate myself a bit more...

Absa-f@@king brilliant!

K

That was absolutely AMAZING!