Performing the Conflated Text of Henry IV: The Fortunes of Part Two

Summary

In 1995, BBC television broadcast what it called Shakespeare's Henry IV in a radical abridgement and conflation of Part One and Part Two. Directed by RSC associate John Caird, this was the BBC's most lavish and ambitious Shakespeare production since the conclusion of its marathon filming of all the plays ten years earlier (1978–85), and for a new generation of television viewers it set a standard for performing Shakespeare's history plays. Caird focused his production on what he imagined to be prince Henry's long-standing relationship with Hotspur: the two are glimpsed together as children witnessing the deposition of Richard II, and their growing rivalry climaxes at the Battle of Shrewsbury, when the prince defeats his former friend, winning his ‘proud titles’ from him and with them, the king's paternal approval.

Caird thus uses Part One to provide a structure for the whole, and most of the material in Part Two is jettisoned, both the historical (the flight of Northumberland to Scotland, the thwarting of the Archbishop's rebellion at Gaultree) and the non-historical (most of the scenes at Justice Shallow's farm, and much of Falstaff's comic banter with his tavern cronies). Instead, Caird ingeniously grafts speeches and snippets of scenes from Part Two onto Part One to reinforce themes or to create ironic counterpoints. example, Hotspur’s farewell to Lady Percy is preceded by Falstaff ’s farewell to Doll Tearsheet (an exchange that now occurs prior to Falstaff ’s march to Shrewsbury), the king’s chastising his son in Part One is intercut with the Lord Chief Justice’s interrogation of Falstaff in Part Two, and the king’s soliloquy on the unease of kingship from Part Two is spoken immediately prior to the Gadshill robbery, as a kind of meditation on political theft, while other lines spoken by the king later in that scene (‘O God, that one might read the book of fate, / And see the revolution of the times’) are interpolated as ominous glosses on the play-extempore in which Hal and Falstaff each assume the role of king.