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.

Book Review: Henry IV, Part 1

Consistent and alert readers of this space will recall that back in September I declared a “sci-fi free fourth quarter,” intending to use the last three months of 2008 to catch up on some books without robots in them that I had meant to read but never actually had. While this ended up as a total success, I never actually got around to writing reviews for the blog, like I intended. But, under the basic aegis of "better late than never,", here we are.

Never one to start slow, I opened up with Shakespeare’s Henry IV, part 1. (I’ll leave the plot summary to wikipedia.)

Look, am I going to loose my English Minor street cred if I say I didn’t think Falstaff was funny? Great character, well written, interesting actions – but not funny. I could see how a talented comic actor could really milk the character for some humor, but the lines as written – not funny. Whoever played Falstaff on the stage for the first time must have really made an impression because I can’t believe anyone could read the script and say “comic genius!”

Other than a vague sense of disappointment at the comic stylings of Sir John Falstaff, the play is excellent. The plot rocks along towards the Battle of Shewsbury, the characters are all interesting and well written – in short, everything one would expect from one of The Bard’s most popular and successful plays. It’s hard to come up with something intelligent to say about a play that’s been chewed over for 400 years, so I’ll more or less leave it at that.

One other thing did surprise me, however; how sympathetic the play was towards the rebels in general, and Hotspur in specific. While Prince Hal is certainly “the good guy,” and the main protagonist, his father Henry IV is in many ways the closest the play has to an antagonist. Hotspur and the rest of the rebels have a point, which the play goes to some length to support – they have been treated abominably by the King – the king whom they placed on the throne as part of a coup, and when he fails to live up to the bargain they decide to remove him. The play presents the rebels as being in the moral right – they just loose, and Prince Hal grows up. The amount of gray in the delineation of which characters are good guys versus bad guys surprised me – in a good way.