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“The two parts of Henry IV do not belong to Hal, but to Falstaff, and even Hotspur, in the first part, is dimmed by Falstaff’s splendor.” In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (, Amazon UK), Harold Bloom focuses almost entirely on Falstaff. And he’s the star element in this play: he’s the actor who gets chosen as a draw, and he gets on the poster. He has the fourth longest part in the play, with 341 lines, after Falstaff (616 lines), Henry Percy, or Hotspur (562 lines), and Henry Prince of Wales, or Hal (551 lines).įalstaff is clearly at the center of this play, not only in the tavern in Eastcheap, where he is in his element, but also on the battlefield, where he shows his true colors.
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In fact, King Henry IV is almost a minor character in part 1. They are the only history plays that contain so much comedy, and the most important character in them is not the named character. Henry IV Part 1, the first of two Henry IV plays, has recently started running at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon, with Antony Sher as Falstaff. Last night, however, another history play blew me away. I was somewhat disappointed in that production: Shakespeare’s history plays aren’t always the most interesting, and the cast, to me, seemed overshadowed by Tennant. It’s been a while since I saw a Shakespeare play the last one was Richard II at the RSC, with David Tennant. Update: the two Henry IV plays are now available on DVD and Blu-Ray, as part of the Live from Stratford-Upon-Avon series.