Michael:

Rumor establishes the link with 1 Henry IV, with confusing accounts of the battle at Shrewsbury. The stage direction says he’s covered with tongues, but maybe also with ears as well, as other such figures were. He tells us what really happened, but indicates his desire to tell the opposite. And he confirms our suspicion that Northumberland was “crafty-sick.” Then immediately we get the cross currents of false and true reports, until Travers comes in with the first actual report, then Morton spells it out for Northumberland rather starkly and seems to implicate Scroope, the Archbishop, in saying he turns insurrection into religion and Richard’s blood “scraped from Pomfret stones” into a relic. Neither Hotspur’s death nor the archbishop’s status seems to do much to dignify the rebellion. The “aptest way for safety and revenge” is what Northumberland hopes to counsel his followers.

And again Falstaff’s health seems to mirror the political world. The page says his urine carried to the doctor might have more diseases than he knew. But Falstaff’s monologue goes off in its usual comic direction. And he’s the focus of humor, he says, as well as the generator of it, a line that I think recurs in Verdi’s Falstaff. These scenes of Falstaff holding forth remind me of comedian monologues that simply unroll into joking for its own sake. The Lord Chief Justice comes in and is forced to play straight man for Sir John. One of Falstaff’s jokes is that he is young and the justice is old, which is a joke that I think Falstaff pursues at other moments. Much of what Falstaff’s jokes consist of is simply denying or turning around the obvious reality: “God send the prince a better companion,” the LCJ says, and Falstaff immediately replies, “God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.” Perhaps the relevance of the scene is Falstaff’s current poverty, like the rebels’ low fortunes. The final joke is Falstaff hitting up the LCJ for a loan, with a mild joke from the latter about Falstaff’s being unable to bear crosses. But Falstaff is sending out letters, presumably to beg for loans from everyone he can think of, including an old mistress. This scene isn’t the equal of the best from 1 Henry IV, but its virtue is that a director can trim and shape it as he likes with no harm to the narrative.

In the following scene with the Archbishop, the dominant note begins as caution, and a recognition that Hotspur had not been cautious. Nevertheless they seem to talk themselves into further confrontation with the king, particularly the Archbishop, who marvels at the idea that the public is changeable, first enamored with Bolingbroke and sick of Richard, now back in love with Richard. But he draws no practical lesson from this, just that people are fickle, and the past and the future always seem better than the present. So what should Mowbray and Hastings advise: gather the army and set on.

Dusty:

I wonder whether “Rumour” introduces the play not only to remind the audience of what happened earlier in the story of Henry and his son, and to make clear the role of good intelligence and misinformation, but to invite the audience to reconsider what it has been told about Henry 4 and the “famous victories” and “glorious reign” of Henry 5.

As you say, 2 Henry IV picks up the story after the Battle of Shrewsbury, but the world of the play, as established in the first act, seems much darker: the rebels now openly refer to their project as “rebellion” and even “insurrection.” The passionate and embittered Northumberland says that “the times are wild” and wants to overturn everything: “let order die.” Without reference to the rightful heir, they will “pluck a kingdom” down and “set another up.”The rebels are contemptuous of the “commonwealth,” and clearly have no genuine concern for the welfare of the common people. What the rebel leaders want now is “revenge.”

We now hear confirmation from the rebels that Hotspur was impatient and hasty. But we also hear that he was not just a freelancer: when he was killed, the morale of the other rebels collapsed, so Hotspur was in fact a leader and an inspiration.

The play develops some crucial details from the end of 1 Henry 4. Scroope, who had held back, is now ready to fight, and lend his allies the support of “religion.” But he will act more cautiously than Hotspur. And the rebels know that Henry has divided his forces, thinking that this indeed provides them an opportunity. I took that not as overconfidence, but as a sign that Henry may have made a tactical mistake.

It’s striking that Henry and the Prince make no appearance in the first act. It’s all rebels and Falstaff. That de-centers Hal. The long exchange between Falstaff and the Chief Justice picks up one important event from Part 1, the robbery at Gad’s Hill. The metaphorical noose around Falstaff’s neck seems to be tightening, even though, as the Chief Justice says, as if recalling Hal’s own words, Falstaff’s reported service at Shrewsbury has “a little gilded” his actions at Gad’s Hill. But the exchange also surprisingly mentions  another important event that I think was not mentioned in Part 1: that Hall has “struck” the Chief Justice. This apparently took place during an inquiry into the robbery, and was part of Hal’s wild and irresponsible conduct. Was it not mentioned in Part 1 so that it could be brought up now, in Part 2, as a sign that, despite what you  might conclude from Hal’s battlefield service, he is not fully reformed?

Falstaff is still irrepressible and more than holds his own with the embodiment of English justice, but I wonder whether we already begin to agree with the Chief Justice that “the better part” of Falstaff is “burnt out,” old, diseased, and infamous. He must know that the Chief Justice will not lend him a penny, but still asks for a loan, as if out of habit. His fate seems  linked with that of the rebels. Just as Northumberland will turn the “poison” of bad news to “physic,” Falstaff, so he thinks, will “turn diseases to commodity.”

Dusty:

Act 2 is long, nearly 850 lines, including 600 lines in the tavern. In the first scene we find that Falstaff has been exploiting and abusing his friends. He has just tried to hit up the Chief Justice for a loan, and now we find he has has been borrowing money from Hostess Quickly and refusing to pay it back. She also sues him for oath-breaking: promising marriage presumably in exchange for sexual favors) but failing to perform the oath– and maybe failing to perform sexually too. But he is somehow able to charm her into withdrawing the suit. Meanwhile, the Chief Justice gets news of the war. Falstaff is interested, asking three times for “news,” but the Chief Justice ignores him, a clear sign that literally and figuratively Falstaff is being marginalized

2.2 suggests that Hal, who had presumably reformed, as he had promised his father, has now backslid: he’s back with his pal Poins, who at first thinks that Hal has attached himself to  the “great” world but seems relieved to have his old friend back. I can’t quite work out Hal’s riff about stockings, shirts, and linen, but it may just be, as Poins suggests, idle talk. When the talk turns to Henry’s sickness and whether or not Hal should be sad, and should weep, Poins’ reply — “I would think thee a most princely  hypocrite” — indicates that he assumes the Prince is still  his playfellow. And when they plan to play a trick on Falstaff, by  dressing in “leathern jerkins” (recalling the buff jerkins of Gad’s Hill), it seems to confirm that Hal is back in the “tavern world.”

The main business of 2.3 is to show that Northumberland will not join the rebellion, despite his furious words in 1.1, so the rebels’ chances are weakened. It’s odd that he is dissuaded by Hotspur’s widow, who urges him to “go not to these wars” but also blames him for not supporting his son (and her husband) at Shrewsbury. You might think she would urge him to fight this time, to make up for his previous failure to fight. Maybe her point is that since he failed his own son, he should not redouble the offense by “holding his honor more precise and nice/ With others than with him.” She reinforces the point, made in Act 1, that Hotspur was the mirror of chivalry, and that all his men sought to imitate him. Her praise of Hotspur, which makes him look even better than before, draws an implicit contrast with the Prince, who dallies in the tavern.

2.4 is one of the longest scenes in the play, some 400 lines, and appears to be a reprise of the tavern scene in the First Part, combined with another trick by Hal and Poins (in disguise) at the expense of Falstaff. It’s as if the military/political world has moved on but the Tavern is stuck in a time warp. I don’t know why the scene needs to go on so long. On the other hand, the scene in some respects is different from the tavern scenes in the First Part. The Hostess has acquired a strong tendency to malapropism that she did not show before. We have some new characters, including the fierce Capt. Pistol, one of Falstaff’s   disreputable military colleagues, and Doll Tearsheet, a local prostitute and a bit of a termagant who meets her clients in rooms above the tavern. It’s not clear to me why the Hostess, Mrs. Quickly, who just three scenes ago was complaining that Falstaff had reneged on his promise to marry her, has now set him up with Doll. We also get more emphasis on Falstaff’s age. “I am old,” he says, and he seems to be thinking about “the end.” There are more suggestions that Falstaff is over the hill sexually: Poins notices that Falstaff’s desire outlives his performance, and Doll notices his “old body.” But once again, as in the First Part, a loud knocking at the door summons the Prince to court.

More broadly, 2.4 raises the once-oft-discussed question of whether 2 Henry 4 is a continuation of 1 Henry 4, or whether each is designed as a free-standing play. So far as I can tell, the main argument that the two plays should be thought of as one is that the “action” of the plays, Hal’s reform, his defeat of Hotspur, and his repudiation of Falstaff, is not “completed” by the end of 1 Henry 4, and is only completed by the end of 2 Henry 4. The unspoken assumption of that argument is that Shakespeare’s plays have an Aristotelian “action” and that there must be resolution at the end of the action. But nowadays we are readier to accept that the end of a play need  not resolve everything, that it can leave the audience not with doubts about the outcome — it already know how things turned out in history– but with questions about what we should think about Henry and the Prince. If you think of the two plays as one, by 2.4 Hal’s reform is clearly not yet complete. If you think of them as independent, Shakespeare wants us to think of Hal who begins the second play as a unreformed roisterer, and wants us to be eager to see how in the world he will end up as Henry 5.

Michael:

I tend to think of 2 Henry 4 as continuing the first play, but its weight falls at its end, and the early scenes give us somewhat ambiguous strains about the rebellion and what Prince Harry will do, will be. It’s not clear to me why the tavern scenes go on as long as they do; it’s as if Falstaff has somehow taken over and we see more and more of his what he has become. And it’s not pretty. But the scenes seem to take over and overpower the direction of the play. The more we see of Falstaff, the more we sense his falling toward a lack of influence and power with Hal. Yes, Mistress Quickly makes a strong case against him, insisting on his failure to pay his debts; of course we expect that, but it doesn’t help our sense that Falstaff’s humor had been a source of unconstrained vitality, as it had in Part 1. Instead of Hal we get the Lord Chief Justice jousting with and playing straight man for Falstaff. And we have a multiplication of tavern characters, Peto, Poins, Snare, Fang, the page, Pistol, Bardolph, Doll Tearsheet, in addition to Mistress Quickly. Falstaff jousts with all of them, rather than with Prince Hal, as he had done in Part 1. But he is losing energy; “I am old, I am old,” he complains to Doll in the middle of too-long 2.4.  And there may be too many of them. With Pistol we get recollections and parodies of old plays from earlier in the decade, but it’s hard to see why. The joke of Hal and Poins dressing up like drawers doesn’t appear to go anywhere. Does Falstaff recognize him? Probably not this time either, but the quarrel with Hal seems significant and unresolved. And the repetition of the knock at the tavern door almost ends the scene. Doll and Mistress Quickly seem to end with a sympathetic pity for Falstaff, somehow forgiving him at the end. But it seems to signal that a darkening has come over Falstaff and the tavern.

The sense of darkness and sickness continues into the beginning of Act 3, and he image of the king in his nightgown, unable to sleep and complaining of a continuing insomnia, may set up a comparison with the dwindling of Falstaff. His final line of the soliloquy, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” seem to point to the irony of all the contest for rule. What has the crown done for Henry, what did it do for Richard? And he laments the overturning of friendships, the loss of Northumberland to him. Interestingly, he denies that he had an intent to seize the throne, but that “necessity” required it. He admits Richard’s prophetic foretelling of the current state of things. Warwick tries to reassure him that Richard made a reasonable guess, and Henry agrees they have to accept necessity now and oppose the archbishop and Northumberland. The whole sense of power and the desirability of rule is thrown into doubt at the end of the scene when we hear more of Henry’s sickness and Glendower’s death. Henry reminds the “dear lords” of his long-deferred intention of a crusade to Jerusalem. We don’t yet see the irony of that, of course.

The scene of Justice Shallow and Justice Silence rather effectively underscores the theme of impotence and death just before we get more of Falstaff’s recruiting methods.  Time has taken away most of what they remember, and doubts arise even about those memories. Falstaff cannot even remember Silence’s name. Disease and frailty seem to predominate in the roll call of recruits. The role of money in the recruits’ buying out of the press is made explicit. Orson Wells’ appropriation of Falstaff’s response to Shallow and Silence’s memories of Jane Nightwork, “We have heard the chimes at midnight,” wonderfully sums up the debility of the old men, including Falstaff. But is also seems to wash back over the political world. At the end of the scene, Falstaff’s soliloquy laughs at the memories and what the two old justices really were in their youth, and all this leaves in doubt the reality not only their memories, but of what the nobles are and what they hope to accomplish. The melancholy comedy leans forward into the scene that follows.

I sense some strain in Part 2 in the thematics of showing the move toward Hal’s reformation. The unfinished business of Part 1 remains so through much of Part 2, and up to end of Act 4 we’ve seen little of him. So much weight falls on 4.3 and continues into 5.

Michael:

The sense of darkness and sickness continues into the beginning of Act 3, and he image of the king in his nightgown, unable to sleep and complaining of a continuing insomnia, may set up a comparison with the dwindling of Falstaff. His final line of the soliloquy, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” seem to point to the irony of all the contest for rule. What has the crown done for Henry, what did it do for Richard? And he laments the overturning of friendships, the loss of Northumberland to him. Interestingly, he denies that he had an intent to seize the throne, but that “necessity” required it. He admits Richard’s prophetic foretelling of the current state of things. Warwick tries to reassure him that Richard made a reasonable guess, and Henry agrees they have to accept necessity now and oppose the archbishop and Northumberland. The whole sense of power and the desirability of rule is thrown into doubt at the end of the scene when we hear more of Henry’s sickness and Glendower’s death. Henry reminds the “dear lords” of his long-deferred intention of a crusade to Jerusalem. We don’t yet see the irony of that, of course.

The scene of Justice Shallow and Justice Silence rather effectively underscores the theme of impotence and death just before we get more of Falstaff’s recruiting methods.  Time has taken away most of what they remember, and doubts arise even about those memories. Falstaff cannot even remember Silence’s name. Disease and frailty seem to predominate in the roll call of recruits. The role of money in the recruits’ buying out of the press is made explicit. Orson Wells’ appropriation of Falstaff’s response to Shallow and Silence’s memories of Jane Nightwork, “We have heard the chimes at midnight,” wonderfully sums up the debility of the old men, including Falstaff. But is also seems to wash back over the political world. At the end of the scene, Falstaff’s soliloquy laughs at the memories and what the two old justices really were in their youth, and all this leaves in doubt the reality not only their memories, but of what the nobles are and what they hope to accomplish. The melancholy comedy leans forward into the scene that follows.

I sense some strain in Part 2 in the thematics of showing the move toward Hal’s reformation. The unfinished business of Part 1 remains so through much of Part 2, and up to end of Act 4 we’ve seen little of him. So much weight falls on 4.3 and continues into 5.

Dusty:

Act 3 is much shorter than both Act 2 and Act 4. Is Shakespeare running out of material?

In 3.1 it’s not only the king who is ill, but the nation itself. Henry speaks of “diseases” in the kingdom, which echoes Falstaff’s diseases, both obvious and hidden. The sleepless king’s head is “uneasy,” but it does not lead him to show any care for the meanest of his “vile” subjects in their “smoking cribs.” In this respect he in unlike Lear, and may not have learned much. His claim that it was “necessity” that led him to overthrow Richard seems to be another instance of unwillingness to admit the truth. Once again he gets more bad intel. And his plan, once the rebellion is crushed, to go on a crusade suggests that he feels the need of penance.

In 3.2 I’m not sure why we need more of Falstaff’s recruiting. Didn’t we get enough of that in the early play, with the same kind of gruesome jokes? It’s support for the idea that  2 Henry 4 is meant to be a free-standing play. When Feeble says “A man can die but once.” do we think of Hotspur? There is presumably some relation between the appearance of Justices Shallow and Silence and the earlier appearance of the Lord Chief Justice, but I can’t work it out. Shallow is a sort of pale imitation of Falstaff, with his self-aggrandizing lies. But he perhaps also makes us remember what Rumor said about what’s true and what’s not. Silence is true to his name after line 37, when he stops speaking. But how are we to understand his speech in the first part of the scene. I think this is another scene that goes on too long.

Act 4 likewise really has only two long scenes, though they are broken up in modern editions into five scenes. The first three scenes are set in the same place, the rebel camp. Northumberland’s letter (the one he sent in 2.3) arrives with bad news. The king’s army is sighted, and this leads to a formal “parley,” in which this group of rebels (who had not been involved in the earlier fighting) present their petition for redress of grievances, which Westmoreland promises he will deliver to Prince John. Only Mowbray is dubious.Oddly 4.2 goes through the same grievances, apparently for the benefit of Prince John, though he has presumably read them already. Whereas the gathering of opposing armies in 1 Henry 4 leads to the Battle of Shrewsbury, this time it quickly leads to a promise to redress grievances and a joint agreement to stand down. And instead of Hal as the key leader of the royal forces, it’s Prince John. But as soon as the rebel army disbands, John “breaks his faith.” In agreeing to peace, his mouth is full of “honor” — “the honor of my blood” (55), I will maintain my word” (67) —  and he cynically appeals to “mine honor” (114) when he says he will redress grievances but  execute those who present them. So much for “honor” in this new world — in contrast to 1 Henry 4. I think this scene is deeply troubling. Shakespeare arranges things to keep Hal off stage, and uncontaminated. In sneering at the rebels, John calls them “shallow” — “You are too shallow . . .” (49) and “Most shallowly did you these arms commence” (118). Why Shakespeare invites us to remember Justice Shallow I don’t know.

Dusty:

In 4.3 Falstaff in his small world does what John has done in a larger one: he arrests a “traitor.” I don’t know why Falstaff gets a long soliloquy in praise of sherry. He promises to revisit Shallow and play a trick on the old fool.

4.4 and 4.5 are really one scene, shifting now from the battlefield to the court. In 4.4 the king gets good news, but still feels sick. I’m not sure why Shakespeare introduces two more of the king’s sons, Clarence and Gloucester, unless it’s to emphasize the one brother who is not there. In 4.5 Hal finally appears there, having been summoned as far back as 2.4. The king, sleepless in 3.1,  is at last sleeping deeply. So deep that Hal thinks he is dead. Why does he not rouse the king’s attendants? As if he has overheard the king speak of the uneasy head that wears the crown, Hal, noticing the crown on the pillow, continues the thought that the crown only “pinches” the bearer. At least he doesn’t actually  remove the crown from the king’s head, but he puts it on. A weighty and symbolic moment: Hal sees kingship as his responsibility, but also as his “due.” It’s an odd mix — I don’t think we had previously suspected that Hal wanted to be king, though I had my doubts in 2.4 when Hal as much as admits that he cannot sincerely weep that his father is seriously  ill. Hal also reflects that the crown is now his to leave to his own first son. And then he exits! Is he dazed and grieving? Does he know what he is doing?

This leads to a big scene (though it’s a continuation of 4.5) in which  the king rebukes Hal, Hal submits, and the two are reconciled. This seems a reprise of what happened in 1 Henry 4. Now the king concedes his “crooked ways” in gaining the crown, assures Hal that it will more securely pass to Hal’s son, and advises Hal to engage in “foreign quarrels” so as to distract his subjects from internal dissension. Seems like we are back in 1.1 of the earlier play. But the ending of the scene undercuts Henry’s idea that he will  go on a crusade and die in Jerusalem.

By the end of Act 4 we have been given reasons to be troubled by the actions of Henry, Hal, and Prince John. Henry is about to die, and Hal has all but crowned himself. But the play isn’t over yet.

Michael:

Sickness and disease become a running theme in the play, culminating in Henry’s death, but certainly relevant to Prince John’s betrayal of the rebels after they have dismissed their army. The Archbishop of York says at 4.1.54 “We are all diseased.” And it’s a disease that goes back to Richard, who died of some version of the disease that now infects them all.

Prince John’s treachery is the most disturbing thing in the play. We don’t get any elaboration of the condemnation of the Archbishop to death — the play seems to speed over it — but historically I think much was made of it, and there was a sense of profanation in executing a prelate, even a prelate who had appeared in arms. The whole matter seems deeply disturbing, and the play allows a judgment on its hypocrisy in Prince John’s summation, “God, and not we, hath safely fought today.” Falstaff’s later condemnation in John’s not drinking wine might be amusing, but hardly an adequate judgment. The scene of Falstaff with Coleville, interrupted by Prince John, is puzzling; Falstaff seems foolish, and the jokes about his girth are now tedious. The praise of sack would have been effective perhaps in one of the tavern scenes, but here is just odd and out of place. Was it a Falstaff piece Sh. had in his desk drawer?

4.3 strikes me as the thematic center of the play, and there the ambiguous character of Henry’s reign is clearly laid out. But the best of it seems the idea of usurpation, which it introduces. Henry has been comforted by the idea that his usurpation of the crown will be somehow redeemed by his leaving the crown to his own first-born son. So when that son “seizes” the crown the irony of usurpation arises once again. Hal of course had not meant a usurpation, and in fact had blamed the crown for his father’s unhappiness. But the whirlygig of time has brought the two of them to something like a recapitulation of the seizing of the crown in Richard’s abdication. I remember that there Richard had seemed to offer the crown to Bolingbroke, but then drew it back and insisted that he “seize the crown.” The taking of the crown gives us similar moment, even though Hal’s intention was seemingly innocent in intention. When the two of them are reconciled, Henry can admit the troubled nature of his whole reign. And he can admit that his project of the crusade was simply an attempt to distract potential opposition — and at the same time give Hal his famous advice about troubling giddy minds with foreign quarrels. Then we learn, and Henry does too, that the chamber where he will die is called “the Jerusalem,” for an added irony.

Michael:

Act 5 begins with another seemingly superfluous scene with Falstaff again visiting Shallow. Its point seems only to mock Shallow. Is this meant as a contrast to the Lord Chief Justice, who will be reconciled to the new king? But its point escapes me. The next scene leads up to the confrontation of the LCJ and Hal’s acceptance of his having imprisoned him in his wild days, which clearly portrays his reformation and intent soberly to follow law.

Then more Falstaff, but this time with more effect and leading to the final scene. Shallow and Silence celebrate the merry and rather vacuous life that has characterized Falstaff and his crew throughout, until Pistol comes in with the news of the new regime. Pistol appears to have wandered in from a Marlowe play, full of bluster and fustian, and rather baffles Shallow and Silence. The news of course is that Hal has succeeded to the throne, which gives Falstaff the idea that “the laws of England are at my commandment,” that he will replace the LCJ.

The next scene, the arrest of Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet by the beadles of course suggests otherwise, but they are confident that Falstaff will save them. It’s the thinness of the first beadle, as opposed to the corpulence of Falstaff? that gives them this assurance. In fact the play grows to a distinction between thin and fat.

The last scene is the painful one for Falstaff as he, Pistol, Shallow and Silence line up to accost “King Harry” on his return from the coronation. Falstaff’s term is “King Hal, my royal Hal” and Hal responds not to Falstaff but to the LCJ, who admonishes Falstaff. Then Hal’s speech to Falstaff, “I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers” fulfills the vow back in Part 1, “I know you all . . .” Falstaff is entirely out in the cold, and this might be seen, I think, as a quasi, or mini- tragedy. But of course it’s also a triumph on Hal’s part. Initially Falstaff thinks it’s a ruse, a p.r. move on Hal’s part, that he will be sent for in private, at night. But the the LCJ comes in with a detail to carry Falstaff to the Fleet, along with “all his company.” Prince John says that the tavern characters “Shall all be very well provided for,” but banished. And in its final lines the play turns entirely to the political world and the rumor of war in France.

How the banishment of Falstaff is seen depends, I’m supposing, on the way it’s played. Falstaff’s last words are “My lord, my lord!” to the LCJ, but nothing more. Maybe the banishment is less a loss here than it would have been at the end of Part 1, as the Falstaff scenes in this part have got a bit tedious. Was that an intended effect? They didn’t seem to comment as cogently on the political world, and that world itself became more dubious in the betrayal of Prince John and Henry’s admission of the way he came to the throne. Hal’s glory also seems somewhat thin.

The epilogue is odd. First, just a seemingly routine request for favor and, presumably, applause. But then it promises more of Falstaff in the play that will include Harry’s marriage to the French princess. But perhaps Falstaff’s death as well. Of course this will change with Henry V, and maybe because we’ve already had too much of Falstaff. But the death of Falstaff recounted there will be a fairly tender sendoff.

Falstaff’s role in 2 Henry IV seems somewhat disruptive and not as well integrated into the overall play as it had been in the first part. In general this second part doesn’t seem to me as well structured, and it may be that the popularity of Falstaff was the cause; his presence had become necessary, but was in danger of taking too much space. And it may be the reason that we hear of his death in the final play. Of course he’s also sent off into Merry Wives. Did Falstaff get away from Shakespeare? I’ve always felt the best part of his afterlife was when he learned to sing in Italian.

But what do you think of the banishment of Falstaff? Have you too had enough of him?

Dusty:

I think we are in pretty close agreement about the latter part of 2 Henry 4. I found it both disconcerting and dis-spiriting, and thought some of it uninteresting. The first two scenes of Act 5 are presumably designed to contrast two justices. But do we care about Justice Shallow? Since I think we don’t, then the first scene is tedious. 5.2 shows that the Lord Chief Justice is upright and candid, not a yes-man or a flatterer. Hal concedes that LCJ had acted properly in committing Hal to prison. Perhaps it makes sense that we don’t get the details of Hal’s striking the LCJ  until now, but why did Shakespeare not give us more hints about it before?

5.3 gives us more Falstaff, with Shallow drunk and Silence weirdly singing. In 5.1 Falstaff had said he would make a fool of Shallow, so as to make Hal laugh. But he does not follow through. Yes, Pistol is a strange one: where did he pick up his smattering of learning? You’re probably right that 5.4 shows that Falstaff’s world will be punished under the new regime, but do we really care what happens to Quickly and Doll Tearsheet?

The only thing in Act 5 that a director could not cut is the final scene, with the banishment of Falstaff. Yes, “I know thee not . . .” recalls “I know you all,” but somehow I don’t recognize Hal: has he completed his reformation, or has he disappeared into his new role as king? Falstaff tries to display his old resilience. An actor might play him as convinced (but self-deluded) in his declaration that Hal doesn’t really mean what he says, or might play him as pitifully aware that this time the game is up.

I had not noticed before that the banishment is less than total: Falstaff and his crew get some sort of allowance to maintain them until they fully reform, when they are permitted to return.

The Epilogue (or epilogues, as my Signet editor suggests) suggest how far we are from the Elizabethan theatre, where this appeal for applause was conventional. None of it seems especially witty or apt. The advertisement for coming attractions suggests that when this epilogue was written — perhaps some time after he finished 2 Henry 4 — Shakespeare was planning to carry the story of Henry 5 forward, and to carry the story of Falstaff to his death, but had not worked out the details yet. Maybe Shakespeare also felt a need to satisfy the  heirs of Sir John Oldcastle, by assuring the audience that “this is not the man.”