Shakespeare’s Sequels: Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V.
Research Assistant Hailey Bachrach looks at why you don’t need to know English monarchical history to have a good time at one of Shakespeare’s History plays. In this blog she looks at Henry IV Part 1.
Richard II ends with a promise: the newly crowned King Henry IV vows to take a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to atone for his role in the murder of King Richard. A couple years later, Shakespeare decided to follow up on King Henry IV’s reign, opening Henry IV Part 1 with a reiteration of this promise. He brings back a cast of characters that those who have seen Richard II will recognise: Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV; the Earl of Northumberland; and Northumberland’s son, whose fervour in battle has now earned him the nickname Hotspur—which is also the alternate title we’ve given the play.
So the two plays are definitely linked… but they’re also very capable of standing alone. In fact, in early attempts to cut down the play, co-directors Federay Holmes and Sarah Bedi tried to remove as much of the backstory relating to Richard II from the script as they could, for the sake of clarity, and recognizing that not everyone in our audiences will have seen Richard II. As rehearsals went on, however, we found that it was almost impossible not to add those lines and references back in. One of the fundamental questions of Hotspur is whether the present can ever really make a clean break from the past… so it makes sense that the characters can’t stop reminiscing about it.
However, this definitely doesn’t mean that you need to have seen Richard II in order to understand Hotspur (or Henry IV Part One to understand Part Two, for that matter). Hotspur develops its own characters and its own versions of past events. One conspicuous example is Northumberland’s brother, the Earl of Worcester, who is frequently referenced in Richard II, but never seen in that play. In Hotspur, he is treated as a central conspirator, and characters describe him as if he was present for events that Richard II does not depict him as a participant in.
This slight disconnect can help us understand how early modern writers and audiences may have approached the idea of sequels. Multi-part plays, especially those based on history or mythology, were very popular during the 1590s. However, this wasn’t the only way audiences experienced sequential historical narratives. As I discussed in my previous post, audiences could also watch multiple versions of the same historical figure’s life in different plays by different companies, or even by different writers for the same company. When we remember this, the not-quite-seamless nature of Shakespeare’s sequels begins to make a lot of sense. People were accustomed to seeing multiple ‘takes’ on a single set of historical figures and events. Serial history plays feel less like a box set or a TV drama and more like big superhero movies, where different writers offer slightly different takes on characters and events that all coalesce into a collective mythology rather than a single linear storyline.
Hotspur is therefore a continuation of Shakespeare’s own play, but also a continuation of the broader mythology of Henry IV, the king who usurped his crown. The play introduces another well-known figure, the future Henry V, who was famous for his reckless, irresponsible youth and surprise transformation into an adept military commander and widely-admired king. Both of these cultural legacies are as important to the play’s background as any of the specific events of Shakespeare’s Richard II.
This naturally raises the question of whether the same principle applies to Shakespeare’s other history plays. Do you need to see the histories we’ll be performing this summer—Henry IV Part One and Two and Henry V—in that order? We think that you don’t. That’s one reason why we’ve given them new individual names: Hotspur, Falstaff, and Harry England. As with Richard II, all three plays both do and do not follow directly on from one another. Time moves forward across the plays, and they reference past events. But they also slightly reset themselves, giving the characters the chance to re-enact the story arc they’re best known for. In all three, Prince Hal must labour to convince the world that he’s better than his reputation; in both Hotspur and Falstaff, King Henry must grapple anew with his guilt over the crown and his mistrust of the son who will inherit it. In Falstaff, Falstaff remembers an event that actually took place in a completely different play about the youth of Henry V, while King Henry IV and one of his lords reminisce about a scene from Richard II for which neither were present. This is a perfect example of the complex ways in which early modern ‘sequels’ relate to one another and to other plays about the same characters, the way they exist in sequence and in parallel at the same time. The order that you see our productions in will change your understanding of each play, but the plays are designed to withstand being seen in any order, with any level of prior knowledge of the characters and events they depict.
In short, if you loved Richard II, come join us to see the next chapter in the story of Bolingbroke, Northumberland, and Harry Percy. And if you missed it, choose any play you like and embark on an entirely new adventure this summer.
Henry IV Part 1 opens on 23 April. Henry IV Part 2 opens on 25 April and Henry V opens on 30 April.
Photography by Pete Le May