Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2
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Hardly the sort of nobility you’d expect from the future Henry V, who eventually delivers the ringing “band of brothers” speech before the battle of Agincourt. But it’s exactly what you’d expect from the callow, self-serving youth who attains power but not compassion or wisdom in the Henry IV plays. Overall Gaines’s Chicago Shakespeare Theater production (which travels to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon after this run) isn’t revolutionary. But it does maintain an appealing balance between its two main attractions: young Henry, an operator waiting for destiny to give him his largely unearned due, and Falstaff, the merrily self-aware knave of natural instinct.
Falstaff’s real flaw isn’t his excessive appetite for sack, capons, and wenches, however. It’s his excessive love for Hal, which is unrequited–the prince’s feelings toward the old knight are summed up early in Part 1: “Were’t not for laughing, I should pity him.” Early in Part 2 Falstaff says, “I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.” Delighted to be the butt of Hal’s pranks and wisecracks, he knows that as long as he can make people laugh, he’s on firm ground. It’s no wonder he dismisses Hal’s younger brother, John of Lancaster, with “this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me, nor a man cannot make him laugh.”
