Search And Destroy - Shakespeare

You might get along better with Graham Holderness on the histories, if you don't already know his work.

For all their qualities, the Henry plays are dispiriting.

The Bush/Hal parallels are eerily obvious:

"Be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out, may waste the memory of the former days."

Or perhaps I mean: how can we reconcile Shakespeare's 'support for war' in HV with those lines at the end of HIV2?

They really are the Smoking Gun; or perhaps the Discharg'd Pistol.

Other major issues:

1) does HIV as a whole seem to legitimate the Henries as Kings? If it wants to do so, why insist so often on their illegitimacy, as usurpers? (Empson said that usurpation was the secret theme of the Henriad.)

2) How facile is it that HIV tells HV: "I was never seen as legitimate, cos I was a usurper; but you'll inherit from me, so you'll be seen as legitimate"? (This is what gets me thinking of Bush: not the father-son succession, but the way Bush will find later ratifications of his initially bogus legitimacy.)

3) How about the trickery and treachery of the royal forces in HIV2, Act IV? Unbelievable! The King's party is Machiavellian through and through.

4) Note the utter callousness, with a strong class edge, of Hal in HIV1. Not so much the famous soliloquy in which he dissociates himself from Falstaff et al (bad enough), but the dreadful scene in which he 'humiliates' the Drawer Francis ('Anon, anon!'), then has the cheek to mock Francis's lack of verbal range! It is insupportable to read of this character being endorsed as 'mirror of English kings', 'ideal form of the monarch' (see the astoundingly bad finale to Maynard Mack's intro to Signet HIV1).

Although Henry V is commonly portrayed as a hero-king (see Olivier's film) I don't think many people in any audience feel that way by the end of HIV Part 2.

What do you make of the epilogue to that play? It seems baffling to me: I can't think of another play Shakespeare felt the need to apologize to the audience for. It also seems odd that he promises to bring Falstaff back in the next play, and doesn't (not that he could have had any place in it, without ruining the patriotic bombast).

Very strange. Empson again (Kenyon Review, Spring 1953): Falstaff's 'food for powder' speech says to HIV: "that is all you Norman lords want, in your squabbles between cousins over your loot, which you make an excuse to murder the English people".

C.L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (1959) on folk tradition and carnival (and cf also Bakhtin, Rabelais And His World)

Robert Ornstein, A Kingdom For A Stage (1972), on history and Shakespeare's aesthetic play with it in the histories

Derek Cohen, Shakespearean Motives (1988), on rituals of violence

Graham Holderness, Shakespeare's History (1985), on politics of Shakespeare's epic drama

question for debate: who was the Hal/Henry V of Orwell's day?

one day I will change this.

did Edward Bond do Early Morning, the one about Queen Victoria having an affair with Florence Nightingale, and her heir being half of a pair of siamese twins?

Surely, in its way, Angels In America fits this criterion.

just watching this again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xHlngY6Bgk

as a result of reading this
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/03/ian-mckellen-10-best-shakespeare-roles-on-film?CMP=fb_gu

proper chills.

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/faq/misquotesfaq.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08b2cgm

Released On: 21 Apr 2020

Khalid Abdalla, Matthew Needham and Cassie Layton star in Shakespeare's tragedy. This version is staged in an imagined near future, in which a power-hungry Turkish president attempts an attack on Cyprus. The western forces rush to Cyprus' defence, under the command of the fearless General Othello. But can an Arab-born, Christian convert ever be truly accepted by the people he serves?

Shakespeare our contemporary. pic.twitter.com/fxFi5WijMy

— Stephen Unwin (@RoseUnwin) January 25, 2023