This Virtual Reading Group Extra with Dr. Sarah Skwire and Christy Horpedahl takes a brief look at William Shakespeare’s King Henry IV Part One and Two. They are the second and third plays in the Henry Tetralogy. They include Henry IV's reign and death, battles, treachery, and lust. It also includes our introduction to the roguish Prince Hal (the heir to the throne) and his "companions of ill repute."
Skwire and Horpedahl talk about who the audience might be rooting for (but just so you know it's slim pickings if you prefer your heros unambiguously virtuous), the multi-faceted education of Prince Hal, and Falstaff. Oh, Falstaff.
Parts discussed include:
Prince Hal's MASSIVE foreshadowing speech, King Henry IV Part One, Act I, Scene 2
"My reformation, glittering o’er my fault,/Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes/Than that which hath no foil to set it off./I’ll so offend to make offence a skill;/Redeeming time when men think least I will."
(Do Not) Banish Plump Jack speech, King Henry IV Part One, Act II, Scene 4
"But to say I know more harm in him than in myself were to say more than I know. That he is old, the more the pity, his white hairs do witness it; but that he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned: if to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh’s lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord; banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins; but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company: banish not him thy Harry’s company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world."
Hal (now Henry V) Raising up the Lord Chief Justice, King Henry IV Part Two, Act V, Scene 2
"You shall be as a father to my youth;/My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear,/And I will stoop and humble my intents/To your well-practis’d wise directions."
Falstaff's MASSIVE misunderstanding of Henry V, King Henry IV Part Two, Act V, Scene 3
"I know the young king is sick for me. Let us take any man’s horses; the laws of England are at my commandment. Happy are they which have been my friends, and woe unto my lord chief justice!"
Henry V's Dropping of Falstaff, King Henry IV Part Two, Act V, Scene 4
"I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;/How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!"
If you want to weigh in on whether you think Falstaff is the heart or the butt of the play, or about any other ideas we discussed, drop your thoughts below.
Sarah Skwire is a Senior Fellow at Liberty Fund as well as a Shakespeare Scholar and this conversation is, in part, inspired by a virtual reading group hosted by Liberty Fund on Richard II, Henry the IV, Part 1 & 2, and Henry V (oll.libertyfund.org/page/oll-...)
For more from Liberty Fund on William Shakespeare: oll.libertyfund.org/person/wi...
Henry IV, Part 1: oll.libertyfund.org/title/cra...
Henry IV, Part 2: oll.libertyfund.org/title/cra...
25 окт 2022
