William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Stanley Wells

Author:Stanley Wells [Wells, Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780198718628
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V

After his sequence of history plays about Henry VI and Richard III, often referred to as the first tetralogy, Shakespeare mined English history again to reshape events of the past into dramatic form in another sequence of four interrelated plays that display a far broader spectrum of dramatic styles.

Richard II tells the beginning of the story whose end had been staged in Richard III: Bolingbroke’s usurpation of the throne from Richard II had set in train the entire series of events that are finally expiated only in the union of the houses of York and Lancaster celebrated in the last speech of Richard III. Again the focus is firmly on a single character, but Richard II is far more introverted and morally ambiguous than Richard III.

Though this play’s narrative flows directly into the next in the sequence, Henry IV, Part One, both its dramatic mode and its linguistic style are so different from the later plays that it seems clear that Shakespeare did not conceive them as a sequence. Every character in Richard II—even the gardeners who compare the state of England under Richard to a neglected garden ‘swarming with caterpillars’ (3.4.48)—speaks entirely in patterned verse; Shakespeare forgoes stylistic variety in favour of an intense, plangent lyricism that is especially well suited to the introverted, self-pitying King. Initially he is unsympathetic, frivolous, and irresponsible: having banished Mowbray and Bolingbroke in the scene of the lists, he behaves callously to Bolingbroke’s father, John of Gaunt, whose warnings against his unkingly conduct in the eloquent ‘This royal throne of kings’ speech (2.1.31–68) he ignores, and after his death confiscates his property with no regard for Bolingbroke’s rights. During Richard’s Irish campaign Bolingbroke returns from exile and gains support in his efforts to claim his due rights.

As the balance of power shifts Richard becomes more sympathetic, eloquent in his laments. When he abdicates, the slow transference of power is brought about in a scene of lyrical expansiveness, and he becomes pitiable as he is led to prison while his Queen is banished to France. The self-exploration that helps to draw us to him climaxes in his poignant prison soliloquy shortly before he is murdered. Finally Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV, plans a penitential pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Some three years later, Shakespeare turned the events of the reign of King Henry IV into what turned out to be two plays—Henry IV, Parts One and Two—followed by their natural sequel, Henry V.

At the opening of Henry IV, Part One Henry, haunted by guilt and anguished by both national and filial rebellion, laments the fact that state affairs have aborted his planned pilgrimage. We had heard in Richard II of his dissatisfaction with Hal; this play is to show how Hal gradually, and with setbacks, redeems himself in his father’s eyes. Shakespeare structures the play on the rivalry between Hal and Hotspur, the honour-hungry offspring of the King’s opponent the Earl of Northumberland, making them both roughly the same age even though, historically, Hal was twenty-three years younger.

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