'Can honour set-to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No.'

Henry IV Part 1

It’s 10am on a Friday morning, and a crowd of people are heading down Waterside. It’s quite a sight in an otherwise pretty deserted Stratford. We’re one play down, but have a full day ahead of us, with no more than an hour an a half between each play. I’m already thinking about when I’ll find time to eat!

‘So shaken as we are, so wan with care…’ We rejoin the story with Henry still planning his trip to the Holy Land in expiation of his guilt for Richard’s death, and it’s soon very clear that the crown is not sitting easily on his head, with rebellious nobles, and a dissolute son. This Henry would clearly very much like to have the headstrong and volatile Hotspur as his son.

Clive Wood comes more into his own in this play, as the troubled king – though for me he saves his best performance for the Henry VI’s, but that’s possibly because I like his character in that more. Lex Shrapnel (a name to watch for) impresses even more as Hotspur, and I begin to warm to Geoffrey Streatfeild as Hal.

Falstaff has never been one of my favourite characters, but David Warner plays him
as a man perhaps more in tune with the new world than with the previous age. His speech on honour contrasts sharply with Hotspur, but I think we’re more inclined to agree with him, particularly when we know what is to come, and the price of ‘honour’. He’s beautifully spoken – every line, every intonation crystal clear in meaning.

Once again there are some stunning visual images. The battle between Hal and Hotspur makes me hold my breath, and I cry. I don’t cry again until the end of Richard III, even through all the murder, maiming and torture of the Henry VIs, and I think it’s because you become used to the horror of it all.

Henry IV Part 2

A quick lunch break (when I end up having lunch in the same restaurant as Hotspur), and we’re back.

Forbes Masson starts the play as Rumour, dragging Richard II’s coffin behind him, (everyone in these plays is haunted by ghosts) bringing false reports of Hotspur’s ‘victory’.

I think this one is my least favourite of the plays. It’s beautifully played, and the characterisation allows many members of the company their ‘moment’, but it’s very much Falstaff’s play, and feels like a re-run of part 1 without the dramatic tension, as the rebels are defeated by trickery rather than in battle. That said, Falstaff’s recruiting trip to Gloucestershire is very funny, and his shabby band of recruits gives us some great performances, from Katy Stephens as Feeble the ‘women’s tailor’ to Anthony Schuster’s Shadow who faints at the drop of a hat.

The scene between Henry IV and Hal is very intense, with Clive Wood’s Henry desperate for his crime of usurpation to die with him. This has been a tremendous portrait of a man weighed down with guilt. Once again, we get the continuity of the story carrying through as he advises Hal to ‘busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels’.

At the end, there seems barely time to draw breath before we have to prepare for Agincourt.