Those who lament the idea of sequels — as with too many “Star Wars,” “Lethal Weapons,” “Die Hards,” “Carries,” “Gone With the Winds” and (gads) even “Weekends at Bernie’s” — actually should be more respectful.
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The man who put sequels on the map (there being no movie screens to put them on back then) was William Shakespeare.
In fact, you could retitle three of his most famous history plays and call them “Hal and His Pal, Parts 1, 2 and 3.”
Their actual titles, of course, are “Henry IV Part 1,” “Henry IV Part 2” and “Henry V.”
They have to do with the torturous relationship between the brooding King Henry IV and his ostensibly dissolute son, Prince Hal; the convivial but sometimes bitter relationship between Hal and his drinking companion, Sir John Falstaff; and the marvelous climax in which Hal matures into King Henry V and goes off with his small band of brothers to defeat a vasty horde of overfed French knights at the Battle of Agincourt — England’s most famous victory after Waterloo (which was actually won because of the Prussians’ help).
Prequel and sequel
If you count “Richard II,” in which that king supposedly is murdered by Henry IV, and “The Merrie Wives of Windsor,” in which the romping Falstaff is undone by two much cleverer ladies, you have a prequel and a sequel to the sequels (all five were written between 1595 and 1600).
“It is a continuum, though he actually began `Henry V’ before he did `Henry IV, Part 1,'” said the award-winning British actor/director/playwright Keith Baxter, currently starring as the king in the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington’s production of “Henry IV, Part 1.”
“Shakespeare always intended `Part 2′ when he was writing `Part 1,'” Baxter continued. “Otherwise, why does Prince Hal say in his very first speech, `So, when this loose behavior I throw off’? All the way through the first half, Prince Hal is always saying . . . `I will.’ If Shakespeare didn’t intend for there to be a second half, why does he have these things dotted through?”
A comeback
Henry IV has enjoyed renewed currency in recent years.
The work has been performed in Chicago both as two individual plays and with the two compressed into one.
New York’s Lincoln Center has just concluded a production that was mostly “Part 1” with some of “Part 2” tacked on at the end.
This Washington production is two separate plays, one following the other. So much is left unresolved in “Part 1” that one wonders how a critic could dare review the first play without waiting to see the other.
“We wish we could get to `Part 2′ quicker,” Baxter said. “It’s not for another two months.”
If not a boffo draw like “Hamlet,” “Richard III” and “Julius Caesar,” Henry IV has a unique appeal, Baxter thinks.
“If you come to the play with a totally open, virgin mind, you’re going to be told a wonderful story: A rather callow young man finds his way to become the legendary medieval king of Britain, and that story Shakespeare lays out in a remarkable way. The idea of a boy coming home to have a confrontation with his father and dreading it is wonderful. It’s very moving that the father [Henry IV] doesn’t understand his son.”
Also, “Henry IV” is one of the more egalitarian of Shakespeare’s plays, many of which have an endless stream of nobles entering and exeunting.
“In `Richard II’ you have a gardener. Everybody else is a nobleman,” Baxter said. “In `Henry IV,’ you have thieves. You have robbers. You have hustlers. You have people running an inn. You have a whole cross-section of society . . . the kind of people Shakespeare knew around London.”
“Henry IV’s” popularity was not always so.
“In the last century, `Henry IV, Part 1′ was the only part that was done,” Baxter said. “`Part 2′ wasn’t done because it deals with more serious matters.”
Credit the Brits
But all that changed, thanks to British star power.
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“In the 1940s, at the Old Vic, Laurence Oliver and Ralph Richardson did [`Henry IV’],” Baxter said. “It was hugely successful, not least because it gave Larry the opportunity to play Hotspur in the first half — in a very glamorous wig and being very romantic, as well as shallow in the second half, opportunities which he loved. Ralph, of course, lent his own particular distinction to Falstaff. It was the success of the Old Vic.”
I love to interview actors old enough to call Olivier “Larry.”
“Henry IV” got another boost in the 1950s.
“At Stratford-on-Avon, under the aegis of Anthony Quayle, they did a spectacular [series]: `Richard II’ through `Henry V,'” Baxter said. “Michael Redgrave played Richard II and then he played Hotspur. Richard Burton played Prince Hal. Of course, it made his career. It was the first time people had seen the whole story unfold from `Richard II’ right through `Henry V.’ Ever since then, in Britain anyway, people would never think of doing Part 1 by itself.”
I, for one, wish that Shakespeare had gone on and on with Hal and his pal, like Holmes and Watson, or if you will, like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover.
If nothing else, they’d have been great in those tavern scenes.