10:38 Henry IV, part 2

Day 10 of 38:38
Henry IV, part 2

I'm not really a big fan of the Henry IV plays. Actually of the eight plays in the two tetralogies, these two are my least favorite. I don't find the poetry as striking, instead I feel like Shakespeare is spending all his time in Eastcheap writing as many insults as he can come up with. The characters don't grab me in the same way on the page as characters do in the other plays. And I'm just not charmed by Falstaff. I know that everyone is in love with him and Harold Bloom wishes he could have sex with Falstaff, but I just can't bring myself to care about that character. And part of my distaste for him comes from the fact that whenever one or both of the Henry IV plays are done, they are usually done expressly for the actor playing Falstaff. Then the staging and cutting are geared toward that actor, and the play becomes all about Falstaff, to the detriment of the other characters.

Of the two parts of Henry IV, part one is more often performed, though I'm not convinced that it is actually more dramatically viable than part two. I actually prefer part two. There are corresponding battles, comic scenes, and great speeches between the two parts, and both of them equally like part of a larger story (as opposed to one standing on its own better than the other). The only thing that part one has that part two doesn't is Hotspur, and he is a well-liked character. But part two -- part two has some moments that I love: The "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" speech. The scene between Hal and his father right before the king dies, containing the "o polished perturbation" speech. The pathos of the scene where Hal denies Falstaff -- "I know thee not, old man" -- and Falstaff attempts to keep up a brave front -- "I shall be sent for in private to him." And I also love the assholery of Prince John in regards to the rebels. He promises them peace, they dismiss their armies, and then he arrests them as traitors.

Does anyone find one part more dramatically interesting than the other?

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Favorite Female Character:
Doll Tearsheet
Favorite Male Character:
King Henry IV

Laugh out loud:
Chief Justice Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.
Falstaff I would it were otherwise: I would my means were greater and my waist slenderer.

How insulting:
Doll you poor, base, rascally, cheating, lack-linen mate!

Oh, misogyny:
Falstaff If the cook help to make the gluttony, you help to make the diseases, Doll: we catch of you, Doll, we catch of you.

Favorite Moment/Line:
I love the two speeches I mentioned above, but what particularly struck me on this reading were the following lines of King Henry:

O God! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,—
Weary of solid firmness,—melt itself
Into the sea! and, other times, to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O! if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.