Henry IV Part 2 (Series 2 Episode 2)

First transmitted 16th December 1979

David Gwillim and Jon Finch pass the burden of kingship between them

Cast: Anthony Quayle (Sir John Falstaff), David Gwillim (Prince Henry), Jon Finch (Henry IV), Robert Eddison (Justice Robert Shallow), Brenda Bruce (Mistress Quickly), Bryan Pringle (Pistol), Jack Galloway (Poins), Gordon Gostelow (Bardolph), Ralph Michael (Lord Chief Justice), Frances Cuka (Doll Tearsheet), Rod Beacham (Earl of Warwick), David Buck (Earl of Westmoreland), Bruce Purchase (Northumberland), Leslie French (Justice Silence), Rob Edwards (Prince John of Lancaster), David Neal (Archbishop of York), Michele Dotrice (Lady Percy), Michael Miller (Lord Mowbray), Richard Bebb (Lord Hastings), John Humphry (Lord Bardolph)

Director: David Giles

 

It’s been the case in the series, so far, that the lesser-known plays have excelled over the more well known ones, as if the production team felt slightly freer with the pressure off as less of the audience would be coming to the plays with expectations. It’s the case again here. Henry IV Part 2 is often one of the flatter plays in the history cycle, but this time emerges as a deeply heartfelt, melancholic and profound work.

 

Production-wise we are on very similar territory as Part 1 – the same crew, the same cast and the same design aesthetic. The merits and demerits of this design approach I think I went into in depth in my review of Part 1. The key new touch here is a garish, oversize crown that at one point dominates half the frame, its size cleverly suggesting the pressure it brings. Giles as a director seems to have engaged with this work far more. He identifies a key theme in the play and designs the entire production around it, playing each scene with a subdued, quiet tone that slowly but surely engages the audience’s emotions. As such, this is his most impressive work in the series so far.

 

Heavily cut – the most heavily so far, as pages and pages of ‘recap’ dialogue are removed – this moves with pace and purpose while still allowing itself to breathe. It’s a production about ageing and the death of innocence. All the characters go through some sort of awakening or disillusionment, and this air of impending disaster seems to hang over every frame. This makes Giles’ restrained directing style here highly effective – flash and bangs would only detract from this atmosphere. The camera lingers on faces, zeroing in on what are often intense emotions, never wavering or looking away.

 

 

Giles allows careful pauses in dialogue, most strikingly during the rejection of Falstaff, where the camera fixes on a stunned, emotional Falstaff as a crowd moves past him. This allows Quayle to play an array of emotions from shock to disbelief, acceptance and then faint hope while also allowing the audience to share these emotions with him. This is just one of several moments – from Northumberland’s heart-rendering reaction to Hotspur’s death through to Hal and Henry’s reconciliation – where the economy of the direction make the events more moving and affecting than they could otherwise be.

 

What’s particularly impressive is this is a strange play, a slightly clumsy sequel to Part 1. As the first play has a clear arc of Hal growing up and coming to an understanding with his father, it becomes necessary to ‘hit the reset button’: Hal is back in the pub, Henry IV is back to fearing the worst, Falstaff still seems sure of his position, the rebellion is still a threat. Essentially, perhaps in order to see some more Falstaff, Shakespeare went ‘back to basics’ and decided to largely forget the satisfying thematic ending he had already crafted for Part 1.

 

Shakespeare acknowledged that the characters of the two Henries had been comprehensively covered by pushing them to the margins of the play (Henry IV doesn’t appear until A3 and Hal appears only in A2 before disappearing until A4). The focus is very much on Falstaff, the character who learned the least from Part 1. His antics are motivated more and more by avarice and pride. But all his actions seem somehow small, sad and pointless – as a character he seems older, more tired, trying not to dwell on his own mortality. And it serves really well to point up the doomed nature of Falstaff’s position – we know his dream of a life as the Prince’s companion can never last.

 

It helps that the acting is sublime, some of the best so far in the series. Anthony Quayle seems the logical place to start. I’ve already mentioned his final moments which are extremely moving in their simplicity, low key pain and how he seems to age twenty years before our eyes. It works even better because Quayle’s performance carefully signposts this reaction throughout. Falstaff at several points seems to sit on the edges of scenes looking aged and less energetic. The famous “chimes at midnight” line is just one of many where Falstaff seems to quietly acknowledge that his time is coming to an end.  Falstaff seems like a geriatric Flashman – aware he is smarter than those around him, but arrogant, cowardly and entirely self-occupied – in a quiet way he’s raging against the dying of the light. With Doll Tearsheet he may growl with sexual excitement, but seems too depressed to act upon it.

 

His desperation seems to make him more grasping than before. Falstaff constantly adjusts his personality depending on who he is with. With the Chief Justice he’s proud but ingratiating. With Shallow and the characters from the Boar’s Head he’s like a visiting dignitary. With Prince John he’s an earnest rogue, cheeky but honest. With Henry he’s a jester and a willing fool. But always he’s got his eye on the main chance. Every version of himself is designed to get the most he can out of the person he is speaking to. His tragedy is that we know he can get nothing he wants, no matter what he tries – and Quayle’s quiet moments of pain suggest that, deep down, even he knows it.

 

The desperation in Falstaff is echoed in Henry IV. Finch is much better here. Henry is a broken shell, a million miles from the man of action in Richard II: wracked by illness (which unfortunately plasters his face in some cornflake-style make-up), dwelling constantly on his sins and terrified his son will destroy himself. Just as with Quayle, the camera lingers on his face, capturing every moment of his disappointment, rage and finally hope. Finch is more successful here because he is able to ally his verse speaking with emotion. Just as with Falstaff, his every moment on screen carries a constant air of sadness and regret, more overt, but informing every action the character undertakes.

 

The reconciliation scene of A4 is key. Both actors are terrific. Gwillim’s Hal seems more at peace with his father when he believes him dead than at any other point. When he takes the crown, he seems unable to remove his hands from it, as if weighted down with its power – there is real fear in his eyes at its burden. When confronted with Finch’s rage, genuine tears run down his face before a vicious verbal assault provokes a passionate defence, impressing his father despite himself. It’s a scene with the actors playing their long speeches off each other very effectively – and the camera chooses to stick with the actors’ faces with only small cut aways, which also works to pull the audience into the emotional story in a very subtle way. The oversize crown also comes into its own here – the responsibility and burden it carries really hit home when seeing this ungainly, over-decorated object move from son to father and back again.

 

Gwillim’s Hal is from the start a colder character. With Poins it’s clear the balance of power has shifted, with Hal almost cruel to Poins in his scorn. The scene plays as a foreshadowing of the later Falstaff rejection. Gwillim’s body language is now all command and confidence. Jack Galloway shows Poins knows his influence is lost. In the Falstaff rejection, Gwillim allows Henry to visibly sadden but shows no regret. He may be a colder man than before, but he is finally ready to become a leader. It’s the end of youth and innocence and from the moment he puts the crown on his head, he knows it.

 

This end of innocence is not restricted to the leading characters, but runs throughout the play. David Neal’s steely Archbishop of York is a man who lives his whole life on principle and honour and can’t begin to believe that others don’t do the same – even his enemies. Speaking to people like public meetings, he all too easily falls for Prince John’s lies. Prince John, established in Part 1 as a chivalric youth, is here a scheming liar. In his brief appearance, Bruce Purchase’s bearlike Northumberland is wracked with pain and self loathing at the death of Hotspur. Robert Eddison’s Shallow is as much a grasping, tired old man as Falstaff, obsessed with a happy past that never actually happened. Even Doll Tearsheet (a fabulous, scene-stealing performance by Frances Cuka, like something out of Coronation Street) and Mistress Quickly are preoccupied, sad figures not sure what they want. It takes real skill to run a theme so well through so many disparate plot themes and characters.

 

It’s all about the emotion here, and an atmosphere is created here more effectively than almost any other production so far. Giles may have delivered solid productions of the previous history plays, but here he elevates what is often an overwhelming play into a tragic litany of loss and death. It’s the best production so far of the cycle and I would go so far as saying the production I think I’ve enjoyed most out of the lot. Certainly I feel there is a lot here that is going to stick with me for days to come – and you can’t ask much more than that of any production of a Shakespeare play.
 

Conclusion
David Giles pulls it out of the bag on the third attempt with a heartfelt and melancholic interpretation of this play, one of the strongest productions of it I've seen and far more successful than Part 1. With some terrific performances and some nice very affecting scenes, it might be straight forward in its production but it nails the atmosphere. One of the best of the series so far.

NEXT TIME: David Gwillim takes on the whole of France in Henry V.



Henry IV Part 1 (Series 2 Episode 1)

First transmitted 9th December 1979

David Gwillim chooses between two fathers in Anthony Quayle and Jon Finch

Cast: David Gwillim (Prince Henry), Jon Finch (Henry IV), Anthony Quayle (Sir John Falstaff), Tim Pigott-Smith (Hotspur), Michele Dotrice (Lady Percy), Clive Swift (Worcester), Bruce Purchase (Northumberland), Brenda Bruce (Mistress Quickly), Jack Galloway (Poins), Gordon Gostelow (Bardolph), Robert Brown (Sir Walter Blunt), David Buck (Earl of Westmoreland), Robert Morris (Edmund Mortimer), Richard Owens (Owen Glendower), John Cairney (Earl of Douglas), Rob Edwards (Prince John of Lancaster), Terence Wilton (Sir Richard Vernon), David Neal (Archbishop of York)

Director: David Giles

 

The second series of BBC Shakespeare kicked off with the main leg of a big commitment – the completion of the first half of the history cycle with the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V. I’ll be following the progress of these plays over the next few weeks. The cycle starts with Part 1 of Henry IV, which in my opinion is probably the best and most complete play among the history cycle. It has the clearest story arc, the best explored themes, clearest character development, contrasting personalities and not to mention some of the best jokes and speeches. It’s a top play and not performed enough.

 

The downside here is that these history productions – as we saw with Richard II – are the easiest to potentially lock into a traditional interpretation. With the focus on realism, and the plays set in precise periods (and even days) of history, the default BBC feeling at this time to go as safe as possible in interpretation and setting are most obvious here. David Giles’ work on Richard II showed he is good with actors, but very straight forward (even basic) in terms of interpretation.  So it shouldn’t be a surprise that design and artistic choices here don’t often look at the play from a fresh angle.

 

 Filmed entirely in a studio (and there are some very well done, convincing lighting effects to suggest different times of day for the battles, as well as some convincing battlefield sets) Giles’ focus is on telling the story, simply and clearly with the language being the prime focus. At some points this works very well – and in some key moments which I’ll look at later on, this allows him to shed some new light very effectively on one or two of the characters.

 

The downside of clarity being more prized over invention is most clear in A3 S2, the first scene Henry and Hal share together. The text is beautifully spoken (particularly by Finch) and it’s clear what the characters are thinking – but it’s not clear what they are feeling. The reactions in these scenes aren’t there – the physicality, the development of character in the delivery, the physicality of this as a confrontation just doesn’t exist. It’s strangely lifeless. Compare it with the dynamism and tension in the same confrontation in the more recent Hollow Crown version of this story. Or even the reacting and acting in Julius Caesar or Henry VIII earlier in the series. This scene is the most glaring example of a slight sterile quality in this production, so determined to stress to the viewer the importance of the words that the drama of Shakespeare is occasionally lost.

 

To watch these scenes in comparison check out this productions version here (at 8:30ish):

 

and The Hollow Crown version here

 

I defy you not to see the difference – it’s in the acting ‘off the ball’ – the reacting. The second is just so much more interesting to watch.

 

Filmic touches are kept to a minimum. Giles hasn’t got much to bring to the battle scenes, which are alternately unconvincing or aggressively overdone (the blood that chokes Hotspur during his death caused a huge amount of controversy at the time). A filmic tracking shot around the Boar’s Head pub in A1 S2 seems a wasted effort once the film starts, as everything is then set in the pub basement with one simple camera set-up. This is epidemic in a very stagy production, with the four or five sets increasingly seeming like a theatre location. There are moments where filmic touches work nicely (in particular Hotspur entering shot as a blur of motion mid letter in A2 S3: an effect which could never be created on stage) and allowing Quayle to break the fourth wall in A4 and A5 works very well – but these are exceptions rather than the rule.

 

Most of the interpretative ideas don’t add a huge amount. A motif of Henry IV as a twitchy, anxious man – forever scratching some mysterious ailment under his gloved hands – is a rather heavy handed way of stressing the guilt behind the gilt. The “anon, anon sir” sequence teasing Francis is cut from A2 S4, which can be a good opportunity to subtly explore Hal’s crueller side. The Hotspur and Lady Percy sequences do little to show other sides of Hotspur, or act as a contrast to, say, Mortimer or Henry’s relationships with women.

 

But that is enough of the negatives! It might be straight forward and lacking in ideas, but the ones it has it executes very well – and a strong story like the one of this play can carry itself forward very well by itself.

 

The main area where Giles does do something interesting – and it will be fascinating to see how this plays out in the next two films – is the interpretation of Prince Hal.  Gwillim has neither the air of a charismatic playboy or the subtle cunning of a manipulator. Watching the start of this play it’s impossible to imagine this guy scaling the walls of Harfleur. Gwillim instead plays him like some minor prankster in one of the comedies. He doesn’t even seem to be a leader among his friends and defers to Poins at key points. It’s almost as if he is being taken advantage of by his friends.

 

Just like with Derek Jacobi in Richard II, this gives Gwillim the scope to change and develop during the production. We can see the beginnings of his growth as a leader and how – in the confrontations with Falstaff, his father and Hotspur – he begins to find in himself the qualities of adulthood he will need to succeed as King. It’s the only thing in this production I don’t feel I’ve seen before and the only thing which seems like a unique look at the text.

 

A lot of work has also gone into exploring the character of Hotspur who – if anything – takes on the charisma, playboy nature and wild-child qualities that Prince Henry is often given. Pigott-Smith is terrific in this. He’s a whirling dervish of energy, constantly in motion with the attention span of a child. His charisma changes plain stupidity and lack of thought into honest bluntness and manly courage. He has the macho physicality of a school rugby star and his reaction to praise for Prince Henry seems more like the envy of a competitive jock than the reasoning of a military leader. It’s in the text, but the contrast between Hotspur and Henry has rarely been so well drawn out, without it being whacked over our heads. This is the most Hotspur-centric production of the play I’ve seen. And you wouldn’t believe the same actor played Angelo in Measure for Measure two films ago.

 

The main figure I haven’t mentioned yet is, of course, Falstaff. What I liked a lot about Anthony Quayle’s terrific performance here is that he is not easily pigeon holed as a particular character. At times Falstaff is warm and delightful, gleefully enjoying being the centre of the attention, having a Prince to hang out with – a blustering NCO-type full of wit and confidence, enjoying his intellectual superiority to those around him. At others he becomes a weak figure – a court jester, debasing himself to abuse Henry, eager to entertain when playing Henry IV but eventually having to defend himself for real against Hal’s increasingly vicious accusations. And sometimes he is almost cruel, uncaring about the fate of his men. During the battle sequences his speeches on honour and fate are beautifully done – dry, witty, a touch of humanity, a large portion of humour. It might take a while to get going (A2 S4 is the first scene that really works) but it’s worth it. I’m interested to see where it goes in Part 2, the more Falsaff-centric play. And it should be noted this was probably one of the first times Falstaff would have been seen as a slightly dishevelled, possibly creepy, morally compromised liar – a trope that is far more popular today (again compare and contrast with Simon Russell Beale in The Hollow Crown).

 

For the rest of the cast, Clive Swift does an excellent job with a bitter, ever-watchful Worcester, frustrated by his limited influence and exasperated by Hotspur. Robert Brown is excellent as Blunt and Jack Galloway is a wide-boy Poins. Only Jon Finch’s Henry IV doesn’t really work for me – it’s too exact and mannered a performance, there doesn’t seem to be much character there behind the lines.

 

I’ve been hard on this Henry IV as I feel it exhibits both the good and the bad of this series. I wish a more inventive director – Herbert Wise or Alvin Rakoff – had been allowed to have a go at these productions rather than David Giles. This is a step up from Richard II in terms of character development and textual analysis, but it is still an overwhelmingly safe production of the text. I keep waiting for it to really spring to life and surprise the viewer but it never quite does – with any foreknowledge of the play you can anticipate how certain scenes will be performed.

 

But don’t misunderstand me – this is still very good stuff. Much better than you might expect (and I expected). And it captures – in Quayle and Pigott-Smith in particular – some excellent performances while also setting the ground work for what could be a fascinating reinterpretation of a famous part by David Gwillim. The reverence for its source material is the constant issue here – it affects cuts, ideas and filming styles. It’s an issue for the whole series, treating the plays as monuments to be crafted on screen rather than as drama or film, like a televisual Mount Rushmore. Which means, in a way, this film shows both the best and the worst of the project.

 

Conclusion

Some interesting ideas creep through what is overall a very safe interpretation of the play. Solid, unimaginative direction showpieces a trio of interesting and radical performances in an entertaining production of a really great play. It’s not the most inventive production you’ll ever see, but there is more than enough of merit here to make you want to see it.

NEXT TIME: Onto Part 2 as Anthony Quayle hears the chimes of midnight and David Gwillim regenerates into Henry V.