[In the following review of a 2000 production of Henry IV, Part 2 directed by Michael Attenborough, Carnegy praises Desmond Barrit's immensely comic Falstaff and David Troughton's emotional King Henry.]

The themes of a coldly-strong king blighted by guilt and rebellion, and of a dissolute prince growing into his destiny, are of course a recapitulation of those in Part 1, but their development sounds a deeper, darker note [in Michael Attenborough's production of Henry IV Part 2]. Attenborough and his strong cast have the perfect measure of the trajectory from darkness into the dawn of a new beginning.

Inseparable from it is the comic spirit incarnate in Desmond Barrit's Falstaff. With support from Arthur Cox as Bardolph, Benjamin Whitrow as Shallow and Peter Copley as Silence, Plump Jack's adventures in Eastcheap and Gloucestershire are irresistibly hilarious. There's a masterful ease about Barrit's Falstaff. When the Prince makes a rather too carefully studied farewell to Falstaff (and his wild oats), Barrit quite rightly burlesques his gravitas. It could also be taken as a salutary warning lest William Houston, whose Hal sports the melancholic ardour of a Hamlet, make too sanctimonious a Henry V in August. But no question that there's powerful pathos in the reconciliation with his dying father. As Henry IV, David Troughton's magnificent surge of misplaced paternal condemnation collapses in the catharsis of understanding and forgiveness and, as he sets the crown on Hal's head, the tears course down the new king's cheeks.