Peter Strempel, 9 September 2023
The Henriad of Richard II, Henry IV parts one and two, and Henry V
Neal Street Productions/NBC Universal/WNET for the BBC. Produced by Sam Mendes & Rupert Ryle-Hodges, developed by Rupert Goold, Ben Power, Richard Eyre & Dominic Cooke. Written by Rupert Goold & Ben Power (Richard II), Richard Eyre (Henry IV parts 1 & 2), Ben Power & Thea Sharrock (Henry V). Directed by Rupert Goold (Richard II), Richard Eyre (Henry IV part 1 and part 2), Thea Sharrock (Henry V). Photography by Ben Smithard, Danny Cohen & Michael McDonough. Music by Stephen Warbeck, Adam Cork & Adrian Johnston. With Anton Lesser as Exeter, Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff, Tom Georgeson as Bardolph, Tom Hiddleston as Prince Hal/Henry V, James Laurenson as Westmoreland, Julie Walters as Mistress Quickly, Alun Armstrong as Northumberland, Will Attenborough as Gloucester, David Dawson as Poins, Henry Faber as Lancaster, Jeremy Irons Henry IV, Maxine Peake as Doll Tearsheet, Edward Akrout as Dauphin Louis, Joe Armstrong as Hotspur, Richard Bremmer as Abbot of Westminster, Rory Kinnear as Bolingbroke, David Morrissey as Earl of Northumberland, Paterson Joseph as Duke of York, Lucian Msamati as Bishop of Carlisle, Iain Glen as Warwick, James Purefoy as Thomas Mowbray, Patrick Stewart as John of Gaunt, David Suchet as Duke of York, Ben Whishaw as King Richard II, Robert Pugh as Glendower, Billy Matthews as Falstaff's Page, Geoffrey Palmer as Lord Chief Justice.
The producers achieved a handsome tribute to Shakespeare, and to Britain in its Olympic year, no doubt introducing an entirely new generation to Shakespeare, whether they liked it or not. One of the Blu-ray special features has one of the directors or actors remarking that Shakespeare was probably spoiled for countless generations in the classroom. Because it lacked the context of performance and speech.
I was one of those students, alienated by the forced worship of Hamlet and Midsummer Night’s Dream in a pokey classroom smelling of stale jam sandwiches, moldy leather satchels, and sweaty boys. A setting not at all evocative of the intricate conspiracies in the royal houses of England’s past.
It wasn’t until I saw a performance of Henry V by an amateur repertory company whose name I don’t now recall, that I changed my mind, and developed an ambition, for some years, to play Henry V myself. An ambition I abandoned only after I saw Brannagh’s version, raw and credible the way a self-conscious thespian’s was not (Laurence Olivier was magnificent, but far too much the 20th century toff).
What I didn’t consider until much later is the grand historical continuity in dramatic rendition, as it was presented in this production of the Henriad (a term coined by Shakespeare scholar Alvin Kernan in 1969 to describe all the plays relating to Henry V’s accession to legend as England’s most revered king).
Can I call the Henriad the first episodic soap opera? Possibly only at the risk of being lynched by scholars all over the world. Nevertheless, it is the imagined behind-the-scenes drama of the nobles of England squabbling about their fortunes and ambitions.
There’s debate about where Shakespeare gained his inspiration for the incidents that make up his historical plays. It is likely that Shakespeare was influenced heavily by a history of Britain published by Raphael Holinshed as two volumes in 1577, and after his death as an expanded three volume edition in 1587 by Abraham Fleming. Many writers were employed to produce this history, and their sources are opaque.
The Henriad plays were written in the 1590s. The second ‘tetralogy’, known as the Wars of the Roses (Henry VI parts one to three and Richard III) was actually written earlier than the historically preceding plays, quite possibly because their machinations and bloodletting were commercially more attractive, and offered a solid vindication of the Tudor succession that gave legitimacy to Queen Elizabeth I, who reigned in Shakespeare’s times.
Neither the Holinshead history, nor Shakespeare should be mistaken as historically accurate. The American fashion of deadening literalism, no doubt derived from the imbecile Puritan impulse to read literal truth into the fantasies of biblical books, is entirely misplaced in interpreting Shakespeare (or any work of fiction, with the meaning of the word ‘fiction’ apparently escaping the intellects of the literalists).
The BBC’s Henriad began with Richard II, who is played marvelously by Ben Wishaw as a vainglorious narcissist whose undoing is petulance and carelessly disposing of people who should have been his allies, instead of the feared enemies he made of them. Needlessly. Did he really think Bolingbroke would let even a king disinherit him quite so arbitrarily? And wasn’t Shakespeare’s point that a family needs to stick together, not play each other for inevitably temporary advantage? Was that not on the minds of Elizabethans, confronted by the machinations of nobles as it became certain there would be no clear heir to the throne?
There is an impression of airy lightness about the sets and locations that goes well with the fantasies Richard II pursues as justification for his foolishness. The real Richard II was the son of Edward the Black Prince, and spent most of his life constrained by the ‘counsel’ and then enmity of powerful nobles who did not take kindly to his conception of his divine right to be a dictator. He gained fame as a child king in resolving a peasants’ revolt, but navigated the perilous waters of French intrigue and squabbling, greedy nobles badly.
Shakespeare made it difficult to warm to Richard II. He gave him some of the best narcissistically self-pitying lines ever written.
If there’s a fault in the Henriad, it is Tom Hiddleston’s Hal, who just doesn’t explain to me why he is such a knave in Henry IV; why he takes such pleasure in being a drunken lout, in the company of louts. It’s not that Shakespeare himself explained this to me with his words, but Hiddleston should have tried to give me that insight with his performance.
I can believe Jeremy Irons’ expected and majestically delivered magisterial performance as Henry IV. But even here I don’t see the meaning of his son’s rebellion. Just his reproach that Hal is too much like Richard II, and not enough like Sir Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy, who fights vigorously and successfully for the king, before he becomes a traitor by the circumstance of disagreeing with his king. Does Henry wish his son would at least know his own mind about who to fight for?
As it is, I am left to wonder whether Shakespeare was trying to communicate, with the character of Hal, some message about the necessity of embracing all that was rude and uncouth about England to make it nevertheless noble in spirit? To train its most revered monarch to become that. A cautionary tale about the privileged underestimating whose shoulders they stand on?
It seems odd that the much more liberal interpretation, The King (2019), has a much clearer explanation, with a truly great performance by the usually foppish and detestable Timothée Chalamet, under the influence of Joel Edgerton and David Michôd. It reveals Hal as possessed of ethics that make him contemptuous of the politics that sees his father play his subjects as no more than pawns in a game. That politics perpetuates a kind of civil war in England that began at Norman conquest and did not end until the 18th century. But none of this is in Shakespeare or the Hollow Crown. As an aside, Michôd coaxed a truly astonishing performance from the usually wooden, indifferent Robert Pattinson, playing the manically evil dauphin in The King.
The script of The King also rehabilitates Falstaff magnificently as a somewhat dull but earthy man of integrity and insight, as played by Joel Edgerton himself.
The Hollow Crown’s Henry V’s centerpiece battle is probably not worth making extra words about, though Hiddleston offers a youthful, earnest thing. Not the arrogant and exalted performance of Laurence Olivier, nor the earthy and passionate brawl of Brannagh. And yet it lacks punch. I am not convinced by this king. Though I acknowledge I might have been 40 years ago.
Nor does it do justice to the real Henry V, who was almost fatally wounded as a 16 year old boy, with an arrow through his face, fighting in his father’s battles. Not the actions of a wastrel at all. Again, The King is clearer about the realities that might have applied. And most particularly about the brutality of the fights that were picked and pursued endlessly.
I don’t think this is Hiddleston’s finest hour. I suspect Hiddleston doesn’t yet know who he is in this part. Or some others, at the same time (Thor, The Avengers). He was to emerge only afterwards as a formidable actor (Only Lovers Left Alive, High-Rise, The Night Manager). Perhaps he was cast as a lapse in judgement. Because he was a rising star. The producers did a better job four years later with Benedict Cumberbatch.
The actor who really shines in the Henriad, and stuns with his performance, is Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff. This is a performance of the ages. It is a stellar piece of acting. The best in all four films. Perhaps the best of that decade … and then some.
It seems obvious to me, but perhaps I ought to make it plain. The reason Shakespeare is still relevant, and worthy of respect, is that few writers have ever been more skillful with words, and even fewer have invested so much observable reality about human ‘nature’ in their stories.
What Shakespeare said about and through his characters is still the basis of popular fictions, and the everyday behaviours of people all around us on any given day. Their base venality, cowardice, deceitfulness, virtue, greatness, and grandeur. All of it in little things, and grand ones. Given the choice between Hollywood blockbusters and a well-done Shakespeare play, there really isn’t any choice.