Henry IV, Part 1 (Annotated by Henry N. Hudson with an Introduction by Charles Harold Herford)

By William Shakespeare

The second play in William Shakespeare’s tetralogy of plays which also includes “Richard II”, “Henry IV, Part 2”, and “Henry V”, “Henry IV, Part 1” is believed to have been written no later than 1597. A history play, the drama concerns the unquiet reign of Henry Bolingbroke. Following the usurpation of the throne, Henry IV is plagued with guilt over his role in the imprisonment and death of King Richard II. In order to resolve himself of this internal conflict Henry IV leads a crusade to the Holy Land. Meanwhile the King is troubled by his son’s behavior. The future King Henry V, the Prince of Wales, nicknamed Prince Hal, has forsaken the Royal Court in favor of spending his time in taverns with lowlifes, which brings into question his royal worthiness by the fellow nobleman of the royal court. Prince Hal is particularly captivated by Sir John Falstaff, a charismatic old drunk. The action of the play revolves around three groups. First there is the King and his council. Secondly there is a group of rebels comprised principally of the Percys and the Mortimers. Thirdly there is the Prince and his companions, who provide a comic relief from the serious action of the play. Ultimately the Prince abandons his carousing ways and assumes his royal duty as the conflict between the King and the rebels comes to a head at the Battle of Shrewsbury. This edition includes a preface and annotations by Henry N. Hudson, an introduction by Charles Harold Herford, and a biographical afterword.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781420955545

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is arguably the most famous playwright to ever live. Born in England, he attended grammar school but did not study at a university. In the 1590s, Shakespeare worked as partner and performer at the London-based acting company, the King’s Men. His earliest plays were Henry VI and Richard III, both based on the historical figures. During his career, Shakespeare produced nearly 40 plays that reached multiple countries and cultures. Some of his most notable titles include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. His acclaimed catalog earned him the title of the world’s greatest dramatist.

Book preview

cover.jpg

HENRY IV, PART 1

By WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Preface and Annotations by

HENRY N. HUDSON

Introduction by

CHARLES HAROLD HERFORD

Henry IV, Part 1

By William Shakespeare

Preface and Annotations by Henry N. Hudson

Introduction by Charles Harold Herford

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5553-8

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5554-5

This edition copyright © 2017. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: a detail of Henry IV, by C. L. Doughty (1913-85) / Private Collection / © Look and Learn / Bridgeman Images.

Please visit www.digireads.com

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

ACT I.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

SCENE III.

ACT II.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

SCENE III.

SCENE IV.

ACT III.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

SCENE III.

ACT IV.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

SCENE III.

SCENE IV.

ACT V.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

SCENE III.

SCENE IV.

SCENE V.

BIOGRAPHICAL AFTERWORD

Introduction

THE First Part of King Henry IV. was first published in a quarto edition of 1598, bearing the title:—

The | History of | Henrie the | Fourth; | with the battell at Shrewsburie, | betweene the King and Lord | Henry Percy, surnamed | Henrie Hotspur of | the North. | With the humorous conceits of Sir | John Falstalffe. | At London. | Printed by P. S. for Andrew Wise. . . . 1598.

Five other quartos were issued before the appearance of the First Folio, each described on the title-page as ‘newly corrected by W. Shakespeare.’ They are dated 1599, 1604, 1608, 1613, 1622. Two more appeared in 1632 and 1639. Each appears to have been printed from its predecessor. The title in the First Folio ran: ‘The First Part of Henry the Fourth, with the Life and Death of Henry sirnamed Hot-spurre.’ It was printed, in the view of the Cambridge editors, from a partially corrected copy of the Fifth Quarto, with occasional reference to the earlier quartos.

The Second Part from the outset never rivalled the fame of the First. A single edition only was issued in quarto, in 1600, with the title:—

The Second Part of Henrie | the fourth, continuing to his death, | and coronation of Henrie | the fift. | With the humours of Sir John Fal-|stalffe, and swaggering | Pistoll. | As it hath been sundrie times publikely | acted by the right honorable, the Lord Chamberlaine his servants. | Written by William Shakspeare. London. Printed by V. S. for Andrew Wise and William Aspley. 1600.

In some copies of this Quarto, the first scene of Act III. was omitted; the omission being afterwards rectified by inserting two new leaves and resetting part of the type.

The Folio text of the Second Part was apparently derived from a transcript of the original MS. It contains several striking passages not found in the Quarto, yet clearly inseparable from the context. The text of both parts in the Folio has been rigorously purified of all profane oaths and biblical allusions.

The First Part was entered in the Stationers’ Register under date of Feb. 25, 1597-8, as ‘The Historye of Henry the iiiith.’ Critics are unanimous in regarding it as the work of one of the two previous years 1596-7. Some slight allusions have been detected to events of 1596; while the perfect uniformity of manner which connects this play with the Second Part, and both with Henry V., favours the later year. For the Second Part was clearly unknown and presumably unwritten when the First Part of the History was entered as ‘The History,’ i.e. in Feb. 1598.

But the Second Part must have been produced before the close of the year, for a few months later the character of Silence was already famous enough to point an allusion in Jonson’s second comedy, performed in 1599.{1} Henry V. is fixed with equal definiteness to 1599. The three plays thus composed in close succession form a trilogy on the career of the great Lancastrian king, clearly more after Shakespeare’s heart than any other figure in English history. A deep gulf separates this trilogy, in manner and matter, from all the previous Histories, even from Richard II, which looks so like a prelude to it. Richard III., Richard II, and John are almost devoid of prose. Of Henry IV. and Henry V. nearly one-half is prose;{2} and this external difference rests upon differences of dramatic method by no means wholly due to the less passionate and tragic quality of the subject. Richard II. moves throughout among courtly persons; if for a moment we are suffered to hear the vox populi (as in iv. 1.), it speaks pathetically, in blank verse, like the rest. Yet Richard, not less than Hal, had given occasion for scenes in the Eastcheap vein of humour and realism which flowed with such marvellous freedom in 1597-8. Characteristically enough it is only in the later play that Shakespeare draws the vivid picture of ‘the skipping king’ who

ambled up and down

With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits, . . .

Mingled his royalty with capering fools, . . .

Grew a companion to the common streets,

Enfeoff’d himself to popularity; etc.

(Henry IV., Part 1, iii. 2. 60 f.)

The quality of the verse is still more decisive. Even in the most intense and dramatic situations of Richard II. it rarely escapes a suggestion of the lilting rhetoric, the wanton and self-indulgent sweetness, the highly poetised and somewhat abstract ornateness of phrase, by which the lyric Shakespeare had won renown. In Henry IV. this manner is no longer Shakespeare’s own, but only the dramatically expressive utterance of lyrical natures like Glendower (who had ‘framed to the harp many an English ditty lovely well’), and his daughter, whose beautiful love-lyric (interpreted by Glendower) in Part 1 iii. 1. 214-222 was admired and imitated by later dramatists. Here we have for the first time the mature dramatic verse of Shakespeare with its wonderful capacity of wedding itself with the character of each speaker and the matter of each speech; so that it seems as natural a vehicle for Hotspur, vowing that he

had rather live

With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far,

Than feed on cates and have him talk to me,

as for the king’s solemn expostulations, or Vernon’s dazzling description of ‘young Harry, with his beaver on.’

The plot-structure, finally, shows a radically changed appreciation of the dramatic elements of history. Richard III., Richard II., and John are in effect tragedies; they carry us through crimes or follies to a ruin weighted with Nemesis; they represent a struggle carried on by move and counter-move through situations of ever - heightened intensity to the mortal catastrophe. In Henry IV., on the contrary, the interest is not criminal but heroic. If the king broods remorsefully over his crime, and sees its Nemesis in his riotous son and his rebellious subjects, it is only that the prince may gloriously shatter the illusion. The guilt of the House of Lancaster, though confessed by both kings, falls altogether into the background as a dramatic motif, and Henry V., no longer the head of a usurping dynasty, but the ‘star of England,’ king and brother to all the peoples of the English nation, reigns by the title of merit. And, to judge from the Epilogue to Henry V., even the subsequent ruin of the House of Lancaster in the person of Henry VI., was held to have befallen it, no longer as a Nemesis for their usurpation, but because of his

state so many had the managing,

That they lost France and made his England bleed.

Lastly, certain discrepancies of detail between Richard II. and Henry IV. confirm the view that a considerable interval separated their composition. Henry’s account of Richard’s prophecy (Hen. IV., Part 2, iii. 1. 65 f.) does not agree with the actual representation of it in Rich. II. v. 1. Warwick was not ‘by,’ Henry was already king, when according to the later play he ‘had no such intent.’ And what is more important, Henry in the earlier play accepts the throne as a divine mission (‘in God’s name, I’ll ascend the regal throne,’ iv. 1. 113), while in the later he sorrowfully excuses the act as unavoidable. The cold and calculating Bolingbroke of the earlier is not clearly recognisable in the remorseful king. And the prince, as reported, is much more like the ruffianly scapegrace of the Famous Victories than the Hal of Shakespeare.

The relation of the Two Parts is not altogether clear. The Second can hardly be maintained to be either an integral part of the original plan or a mere afterthought. Much in the first four acts looks like a reworking of motives used in the First Part: the plot of Scroop tamely echoes the rising of the Percies; Falstaff’s recruiting is a dramatised version of his account of a corresponding exploit before Shrewsbury. On the other hand, the loose threads left hanging at the close of the First Part point to a sequel; the appearance of the Archbishop of York in the First has no meaning unless his conspiracy was to follow. The great death-scene of Henry, and the new king’s final rebuff to his followers must have been designed from the outset. And much that makes the Second Part less attractive is due to the deliberate preparation for this catastrophe. The prince is no longer ‘the king of good fellows.’ After once becoming himself at Shrewsbury, he cannot again throw his soul into the squalid revels of Eastcheap. He is fain, it is true, to ‘remember the poor creature, small beer’; but he is conscious that the desire ‘shows vilely’ in him, and he is ‘exceeding weary’ of it all (Part 2, ii. 2.). His jests are bitter and joyless, and already in the third act his curt ‘Falstaff, good night’ closes the days of their fellowship. Falstaff himself is far from falling off in humour; and his intellectual ascendency is thrown into relief by the introduction of new and contemptible figures, Pistol and Doll Tearsheet, Shallow and Silence. In place of a farcical victory over the dead Hotspur, he is allowed to effect a bona-fide (though dramatically questionable) capture of the ‘famous rebel’ Colevile. But his more imposing position only makes more emphatic and significant the abrupt dismissal in which his glories end.

The political movements of Henry IV.’s reign, as told by Shakespeare’s standard authorities, Holinshed and Halle, offered little salient matter for the dramatist. Nevertheless it is here that he most decisively abandons the boldly reconstructive methods of Marlowe; here that he unfolds with most consummate power his own method, of creating character and detail within the limits of a general fidelity to recorded fact. His most direct divergences from the tale of the chroniclers amount to little more than compressions of isolated and scattered event.{3} But he supplements their tale and interprets their silence with a prodigal magnificence of invention unapproached in the other Histories. Hence Henry IV. presents analogies to the group of brilliant Comedies with which it was nearly contemporary, not only in its obvious wealth of comic genius, but in the points at which this is exercised. The historic matter, like the serious story of Twelfth Night or Much Ado, is taken over without substantial change; while within its meshes plays a lambent humour which, ostensibly subordinate and by the way, in reality reveals the finer significance of the derived story itself, and forms, as literature, the crowning glory of the whole.

Some hints of the comic substructure Shakespeare found in one of the crudest of the older Chronicle-plays, The Famous Victories of Henry V, containing the Honourable Battell of Agincourt (acted by 1588, licensed for printing in 1594, and extant in two editions, 1598 and 1617). Henry’s riotous youth is painted in the early scenes; here we find ‘Ned’ and ‘Sir John Oldcastle,’ and a revel in ‘the old tavern at Eastcheap,’ and a robbery of carriers on Gadshill,—even the ‘great race of ginger’ they convey. The prince himself is arrested by the Mayor and Sheriff, and deals his famous box on the ear to the Chief Justice,—a scene immediately afterwards travestied by the Clown in a fashion which perhaps suggested Falstaff’s brilliant personation of the king.{4} But there are hints of the serious story too: Henry’s apology to his father; his unlucky abstraction of the crown; his exoneration of the Chief Justice; his stern dismissal of his boon companions.

Shakespeare’s Henry IV. in so far resembles the early scenes of this crude jumble, that it is virtually a prelude to the Famous Victories of Henry V.,—that its real subject is the future, not the reigning, king. But the old playwright made no attempt to solve the psychological problem of Henry’s career as recorded by the chroniclers; his only thought was to paint a crude and glaring contrast. He seems to have held the sudden-conversion theory put forward by Canterbury in the famous words:—

At that very moment [his father’s death]

Consideration, like an angel, came

And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him.

In Shakespeare this bald antithesis of riot and ripe wisdom receives for the first time a coherent interpretation, and the revels of Eastcheap and the frolics of Gadshill take their place in the development of a genial and large-hearted king. Not that we are entirely to accept the prince’s own explanation of his conduct (Part 1, i. 2. 173),—to suppose that he deliberately obscures his merits, in order that, when he pleases at length to be himself, ‘being wanted, he may be more wonder’d at.’ This is a flash of his father’s politic artifice, not altogether in keeping with his own hearty delight in living and in all frank and unconventional forms of life.{5} His Bohemianism may be controlled by tact and justified after the event by calculation, but it is immediately prompted by exuberant vitality and impatience of court formalism. He is not, like the prince of the Famous Victories, a ringleader in outrages which his gang reckon on his presence to commit with impunity; he accepts a share in the