The Royal Shakespeare Company’s most recent production of Henry IV Part 1, when it wasn’t giving us flashy battle scenes, did a wonderful job of giving us insight into the psyches and motivations of its characters, or at least the director’s versions of the characters. Many of these moments of major characterization occur through actions completely outside Shakespeare’s original dialogue. The title character, Jasper Britton’s King Henry IV gains much in the way of characterization via the staging and body language choices made for the RSC’s production. These choices helps to define the particular brand of guilt that Henry IV feels for his past actions, as well as the specific discomfort he feels with his current position.
King Henry IV’s guilt over his part in the death of his predecessor, Richard II, is apparent from the very first lines of the play, in his speech about hoping to return to more peaceful times and pay recompense for the violence and sins of the past. Besides Henry’s rather kingly phrasing, however, which give the suggestion that this speech is not just for the audience’s ears, the play itself gives no context for the king’s words. In actually preforming the play, however, some sort of scene must be set for the king’s speech. For Gregory Doran’s production, the scene is placed inside of a darkly lit church, right before the king is to set off for his pilgrimage.
The entire scene, complete with candlelight, low chanting, and a full complement of monk / bodyguards, manages to be both very empty and oppressively claustrophobic. By having the scene so darkly lit, with just enough props to indicate the holy setting, the audience can easily picture the grand church where the scene is taking place, and the emptiness that would undoubtedly accompany such a small group meeting in such a large place helps to suggest that the newly minted king, the focus of the scene, finds the job to be not everything he dreamed in to be. The audience can feel that the king finds his role to be empty, and hollow, in a sense. At the same time, King Henry begins the opening scene all alone, only to be quickly surrounded by hooded figures. Much of the opening scene is delivered in such a fashion: a dark room with the king surrounded on all sides by others. This sort of staging suggests a sense of claustrophobia that King Henry IV, and by extension the audience, feels. In the king’s case, this claustrophobia can be seen as a parallel to how he feels in his new role as king. Instead of relishing in his new power while seeing everything fall into place, he is burdened even more than before by a country on the brink of civil war, as well as his own son’s continued disappointment. These issues serve to cast a blanket of oppressiveness over the king and his actions, which continues throughout much of the play.
Another interesting note about this opening scene is that King Henry is without his hard won crown for much of the scene. In fact, the king is depicted not wearing his crown for the majority of his stage time. While the crown will often appear in scenes alongside Henry IV, he is rarely wearing the crown; instead, the crown either sits untouched to the side of the action or in the king’s hands. Only in a very few scenes, when Henry IV must assert his authority as the king, does he ever put it on, and even then, these moments are brief. The king snatches off the crown only seconds after he places in on his head. This is clearly a choice on the part of the production, as even Hal mimics the behavior when pretending to be his father. For much of the king’s interactions with others, including the potentially traitorous earls and Hotspur and the king’s own son, the king chooses to present himself not as the controller of the crown, the most powerful man in their worlds, but as he was before the death of Richard II: noble, but a man on an equal level to those around him. This choice to present the king in such a manner serves as a reminder of the guilt that Henry IV feels towards the actions that won him his crown, pushing the emotion to something similar to regret in several places. Henry IV’s refusal to keep the crown on also illustrates the oppression he feels from the object and the role in represents. By keeping the crown off of his head, it seems that the king can convince himself, however briefly, that the grim reality of his world and the decisions he must navigate are not such immediate problems; they are issues that can wait until the next day, despite the urgency that would normally be afforded to a looming rebellion or a heir apparent lecherous and immature behavior.
The staging and body language choice made concerning the opening speech and King Henry IV’s behavior for the rest of the play serve to fully flesh out that character, and take the emotions of guilt and discomfort we know he feels from the text to the next level. Instead of these slightly vague emotions, we can see that King Henry has come to almost regret his actions in Richard II and has become to look for ways to escape from the heavy duty of the crown.