Book Review: Henry IV, Part 2

For those of you just joining us, I decided to spend the fourth quarter of 2008 reading books without robots - the "sci-fi free fourth quarter." Figuring I'd jump in the deep end, I started with The Histories. Now, I'm writing reviews.

So, it turns out that on top of all of his other contributions to world literature, Shakespeare also invented crappy sequels. Because make no mistake, Henry IV part 2 is bad. Really bad.

It starts of promisingly, just moments after the end of part 1, with the Percy family receiving word of the rebels defeat and Hotspur's death. And then - nothing happens. For five acts.

The rebels get ready for one last battle - which never takes place. Henry IV's health continues to wane along with his faith in Prince Hal - whereupon the king dies off stage in an oddly perfunctory manner. Worst of all, though, is the Falstaff - Hal dynamic. The relationship between those two is what keeps Part 1 running (even though I didn't think Falstaff was funny,) and so, in the sequel, they spend the entire play apart, doing nothing of consequence.

The only part of the play worth talking about, really, is the final scene where Hal becomes king and rejects Falstaff and his other companions. It's epic and fantastic and everything a Shakespeare play should be. Tack that scene on to the end of Part 1, and you really have something. As it stands in Part 2, it still carries some weight, but due to the fact that it's the character's only scene together, even that doesn't have the punch it should.

It's hard, really, to come up with something to say. The play is dull - amazingly so. It feels like 4 and a half acts of padding, before we get to the final scene that should have ended the previous play. There's numerous theories about why there are two Henry IVs - one is that Part 2 was written to cash in on the success of Part 1, particularly the Falstaff character, and the other is that they were both one play originally, and then expanded to two for the same reason. I'm not sure which theory (if either) has the backing of the historical record, but having read them, it sure feels like that second theory is correct.

The closest we'll ever get to Shakespeare DVD deleted scenes.