SOURCE: “Shakespeare's Poor Relation: 2 Henry IV,” in Berryman's Shakespeare, edited by John Haffenden, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, pp. 335-39.

[In the following unfinished essay, originally composed in 1970, Berryman presents a comparison between the two parts of Henry IV, stressing that he does not agree with those who see the two plays as a whole.]

Producers, critics, and mere readers have not been kind to Part II, Henry IV. In thirty-five years of playgoing I have seen it performed only once. The single quarto of 1600 was never reprinted, so far as we know, and one may doubt whether one in fifty readers of Part I go on to Part II. As for critics, they have mostly considered the two plays together, with very little said about the second. But it happens that in recent years half a dozen of them have bestirred themselves on its behalf, some on the unity of the giant double play considered as a whole, some on the unity of Part II taken alone as a sequel to the immensely successful Part I. It forms no part of my present purpose to canvas these views, though of course I shall refer to them now and again. My purpose is to account for the relative inferiority of Part II and then to make some remarks in mitigation of that argument: that is, to try to say why spectators and readers who do push on to it find themselves disappointed, in spite of the obviously great self-confidence and competence of the play and its occasional glories. Let me say first, though, that I cannot agree with those who see the two plays as a whole, and I feel no affinity with those who are surprised and depressed by the final rejection of Falstaff.

Shakespeare faced two problems. Hotspur was gone, and the relations between Prince Henry and Falstaff clearly had to deteriorate if the rejection was not to chill the reader wholly. The greatest dramatist the world has ever known took steps.

He kept the spirit of Hotspur going with two fine elegiac scenes. And in an attempt to replace him with some character inward among the nobles, he took special pains with poor ill old Northumberland—well done, but hardly a substitute for the vaulting Harry Percy. One critic, Clifford Leech, remarks that this is a play about old men; to this may be added that there is no fighting—the faith breech at Gaultree Forest compares miserably with Shrewsbury. The world where Hotspur flourished is gone, and his father Northumberland's betrayal bears on one less than his betrayal in Part I. Everything is cheapened and darkened in the play. One sees this in the women, in what we may call the love interest. Kate Percy being now merely a widow (a splendidly articulate one), it is Doll Tearsheet who replaces her, with Falstaff (“I am old, I am old”), and Doll is no chicken. The love scenes in the two parts are correlated: both begin with abuse and wind up in reconciliation. But what a world of difference there is between

Fal.
… the rogue fled from me like quicksilver.
Doll.
Yfaith, and thou followedst him like a church, thou horson little tydee
Bartholomew borepigge, when wilt thou leave fighting a daies and foyning a
nights, and begin to patch up thine old body for heauen.
Fal.
Peace good Doll, do not speake like a deaths head, do not bid me remember
mine end.

and Lady Percy's “I faith, I’ll break thy little finger, Harry.” Both passages delight, but one also with sadness (church, heaven), the other purely with young love's mockery. One can hardly imagine the Welsh lady and her song and her “lap” (so attractive to Hotspur) in 2 Henry IV. The loves here are remembered loves, Justice Shallow's senile exploration with Falstaff of their early exploits imaginary and unsatisfactory. Falstaff despises Shallow (though with a grand gesture Shakespeare gives him one enlarged acknowledgement: “We haue heard the chimes at midnight, M. Shallow”) and has a horrid description of him. No one in this play likes anyone else very much.

Names matter, for instance. Prince Hal of Part I is not “Hal” through four long acts (this is Shakespeare's longest play so far except Richard III, 3,180 lines in Hart's count, suggesting his deep interest in its themes): he only becomes so in Falstaff's mouth in the final scene of entreaty and rebuke and loss. Prince Henry's intimate in this play is, surprisingly, Poinz, and the nearest one gets to the old Part I is their disguised overspying of Falstaff at the Boar's Head. Exploits like the Gadshill robbery are out of the question. In fact, Prince Henry does not figure largely in this play, except for the scene with his dying father and the chastisement, after his coronation, of Falstaff. It takes place in the world that he will transform—another play about him is promised by the Epilogue—after his change. This observation leads us in two directions. First, the failure to develop Henry in an intimate way, before his explanation to his father about the taking away of the crown, is certainly one of its author's gravest omissions. Shakespeare even takes the trouble to darken the stain on the whole royal family, by altering Holinshed to make Prince John of Lancaster responsible for the ghastly, Machiavellian business at Gaultree Forest.

Second, both D. A. Traversi (“Henry IV—Part II,” Scrutiny, XV:2 [Spring 1948], pp. 117-27) and Leech (Shakespeare Survey, 1953) connect this play with Troilus and Cressida and other later works of profound disillusion, with images of sickness and so on, and raise the question of whether a personal reorientation towards the world and towards human nature distinguishes Part II from Part I—in short, whether we are not looking partly forward to the tragic period beginning with Hamlet two years hence in 1600.

Surely there is some truth in this view, just as surely as it is exagerated. In Chamber's chronology, Much Ado, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night shine at us between 2 Henry IV and the tragic period. (I may remark in passing that Chambers's classical chronology of 1930 and J. McManaway's remarks about it in Shakespeare Survey are strictly out of date, as I hope to demonstrate in later papers.) But certain meannesses there are which claim notice here. The worst is the hideous little scene where Mistress Quickly and Doll are dragged off to gaol, just before Falstaff's downfall and consequent inability to help them—indeed, he is arrested himself, and no spectator or reader likes this—surely the new King's tirade was enough punishment for—for what?—for whatever his sins may have been. What are his sins, anyway? Certainly he has been a highway robber. Certainly, in this play, a poor comedown, he allows Bardolph to allow two men to buy their way out of the draft. But really it is for his way of life that he is banished and then arrested.

He has run away from armed combat. He has gloriously lied about it. He seeks credit (at Shrewsbury) for what he has not done in the way of battle. He is prepared to steal horses in order to get to his friend's coronation. He looks on companions as prey: of Shallow he says: “If the yong Dace be a baite for the old Pike, I see no reason in the law of nature but I may snap at him.” The very sharp word “snap” defeats any Huckleberry Finn view of Falstaff. And yet does all this misdoing amount to much? Is it worth punishment? One feels a certain coldness in the young King's speech, put there by Shakespeare to swerve part of the audience's sympathy away from the King to Falstaff:

I haue long dreampt of such a kind of man,
So surfet-sweld, so old, and so prophane:
But being awakt, I do despise my dreame,
Make lesse thy body (hence) and more thy grace.

From a partaker in these riots, this is good, or seems so to us; I doubt that an Elizabethan playgoer would feel any sanctimoniousness here, being committed to monarchism (and nervous already about the succession to Elizabeth's throne). One might argue, even, that this word “grace” is too often at Shakespeare's disposal for this kind of situation—Caliban you remember promises to be wiser thereafter and “seek for grace.”

I have put the case against the play as strongly as I could. Let me now argue that a play containing the line “My father is gone wild into his graue” (V.ii.128) cannot be negligible. This is Prince Henry speaking to the Lord Chief Justice, and it might as well be Dylan Thomas three and a half centuries later. Less remarkable but valuable are some lines cut from the quarto, appearing only in the folio:

                                                            It was your presurmize,
That in the dole of blowes, your Son might drop …

(anything like this is inconceivable in the early histories), and

Thou (beastly Feeder) art so full of him,
That thou prouok’st thy selfe to cast him vp

(the Archbishop about Henry IV) and “Their eyes of fire, sparkling through sights of Steele.”

But the argument from style will concentrate rightly upon prose, and in fact upon Falstaff's second speech: “Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: the braine of this foolish compounded clay-man is not able to inuent any thing that intends to laughter, more than I inuent, or is inuented on me, I am not only witty in my selfe, but the cause that wit is in other men.” This really does have the tone of Hamlet, and since Shakespeare's prose developed much more slowly than his verse, it is remarkable. As in Part I he was merciless on Honour, so now he bandies back and forth “securities,” which he detests (having no credit rating), and his dialogue with the Justice is so funny that it has to be read to be believed.

I cannot tell, vertue is of so little regard in these costar-mongers times, that true valour is turn Berod [bear-herd]. Pregnancie is made a Tapster, & his quick wit wasted in giuing reckonings, all the other giftes appertinent to man, as the malice of his age shapes them, are not worth a goosbery, you that are old consider not the capacities of vs that are yong, you doe measure the heate of our liuers with the bitternesse of your galles, and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confesse are wagges too.

Only Thomas Nashe could have replied to this.

I would I might neuer spit white again: there is not a dangerous action can peepe out his head, but I am thrust vpon it. Wel, I cannot last euer, but it was always yet the tricke of our English nation, if they haue a good thing, to make it too common.

(I.ii.236)

To pass from style to incident: the little passage of Colevile of the Dale has always interested me. Falstaff on the battlefield recognizes this gentleman as a worthy foe, but on being recognized himself, Colevile yields without a blow. Falstaff shepherds him to where the leaders are, and not only does he receive no reward or thanks from Prince John, but John orders Colevile and others to “present execution.” Shakespeare is full of instruction and I suppose we are bound to interpret. Falstaff was once such a warrior that his name suffices to convict; in short, his braggardism is diminished for us. Now the world is such that he receives for his exploit: nothing; hence his frequent complaints against the world have some foundation in fact. Third, Colevile having so nobly (to our hero) surrendered that it strikes one as an extreme of butchery that he should immediately be slain or murdered; a sympathy from his association with Falstaff—and his testimony, as it were, to Falstaff's valour—well his death hurts us, and our feelings about Lancaster (no one has ever liked Lancaster) harden.

To pass from incident to motive. Falstaff somewhere contends [Unfinished]