Many Worlds, One Play: the RSC’s Performance of Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV
Walking into the Royal Shakespeare Theatre for director Gregory Doran’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV, I expected a continuation of the true-to-period setting and costumes presented in part 1. However, unlike part 1, I anticipated that the play would focus less on plot and dwell more on Hal’s maturation and the relationship development between characters that is so crucial in part 2. While the latter notion certainly came true, it was even the minor actor’s stunning performances that struck me in this production. Even in the most insignificant of parts and scenes highlighted the text’s contrast between the two worlds of youth and age as well as royalty and the tavern life of Eastcheap.
The play introduces these contrasts in the very beginning. Rumour struts onto stage with a swagger appropriate of a teenager. Played by Anthony Byrne, Rumour appears with disheveled hair (and an attitude to match, as he smiles and gesticulates at the audience) dressed cleverly in a Rolling Stones t-shirt, a play on the textual direction that Rumour enters dressed in “tongues.” His alternative, modern-day look along with the background lighting of hashtags and other social media symbols gives the play an apparent contemporary flavor immediately, despite the Shakespearean language and the immediate fade into fourteenth-century dress. Rumour’s opening presence and clever fading into the first scene as a Porter to Northumberland enforces not the idea that the play has contemporary relevance; this seamless shift mimics the transitions from bawdy, carefree Eastcheap to solemn royalty, introducing the play’s distinct contrasts between age and maturity, rich and poor.
The play’s sense of age without maturity appears most strongly with Antony Sher’s performance as Falstaff. Falstaff appears for the first time on stage accompanied by his page, played by Luca Saraceni-Gunner, a surprisingly young and charming boy of only six. Falstaff grins lovably at the page and the audience, chuckling and holding a mirror, which he sits down and then places in front of himself and the boy alternatively, indicating that Falstaff is just as young and childlike as his page. Falstaff notes blithely that the page was a gift from Hal. Immediately, then, Hal, Falstaff, and the boy are cleverly triangulated: though Hal is not present on stage in this scene (or perhaps more so because of his absence), the three characters distinct differences in age and maturity are thrown into subtle contrast in a way that underlines the immaturity of each of them.
Sher also emphasizes this immaturity in his performance of Falstaff’s role as a carefree, corrupting father figure to Hal through Falstaff’s guidance of the page. Falstaff brings the page to taverns and has him do his bidding with the whores and drunks of Eastcheap. The page even appears in one scene wearing Falstaff’s hat. Throughout these scenes with the page, Falstaff acts both in a fatherly and an uncaring manner, patting the page on the back and tossing him apples while also toting him to brothels, highlighting his paradoxical vivacity and selfishness. Moreover, the drawing of such a direct comparison between Falstaff and this young boy through both Sher’s acting and the page’s blissful, adorable obedience emphasizes Falstaff’s debasing influence as well as his own innocence. Despite his obvious age in appearance, Falstaff acts like a child. The play then creates spheres between youth and age as well as innocence and maturity.
King Henry’s dream soliloquy
Similarly, in one brief but memorable scene in Eastcheap, Pistol (also played by Antony Byrne) actually takes off his trousers for an extended period, sitting casually on a bench with the other tavern-goers and then rollicking around the stage in youthful ridiculousness. I couldn’t help but wonder if Pistol’s doubling as Rumour and looks equally disheveled and ridiculous with his hair and costume holds significance: perhaps Doran comments on our own youthful innocence in contemporary society, suggesting that gossip and rumors are both modern and lower class. Pistol’s extreme behavior in this scene furthers the divide between the two worlds of youth and age, royalty and barflies.
In Doran’s production, the text’s royal family seems wholly separate to the bawdy but genuine family feel of Eastcheap. Henry, played by Jasper Britton, only appears in this production settled in an austere bedroom. However, unlike his stifled performance in part I, he voices his age and grief as well as sickness strongly in this production. While he staggers weakly in almost every scene, Henry is the one character who actually transverses the play’s distinct worlds of age, class, and maturity. In Act III, scene I, Henry wanders in a hypnotic, almost crazed state as he recites his soliloquy, stepping carefully but precariously over Quickly’s blithely sleeping body. The stage lighting creates an ambiguous sunset or sunrise scene—do Henry’s death and Hal’s kingship portend good news for England? Is the ever-widening divide between the English classes represent the dawn of a new age or the setting sun of innocence?
However, these tensions between youth and innocence, age and maturity, royalty and the taverns of Eastcheap appear most prominently in Alex Hassell’s performance of Hal. Just as in the text, Hal doesn’t appear onstage until fairly far into the play. But when he does, he rips off his shirt. While this action seems carefree, Hassel appears physically muscular and manly and adult, contrasting Pistol’s coarseness and the obvious physical age discrepancy between Falstaff and the page. Hassell’s performance shows a clear progression from immaturity to austerity in only a few scenes. By the end, Hal’s inability to make eye contact with Falstaff during the banishment scene brought tears to my eyes. Here, Hal becomes the father, the King, the younger but equally austere version of his father. Hassell’s unblinking regality in bright red robes and careful gait coupled with an unblinking emotionless proves that Hal cannot take care of Falstaff, his son and his own innocence, any longer.
When the closing lights went down on the page, I gasped. This choice proves that innocence, both in the characters of Falstaff and Hal, the royals and the people of Eastcheap, are captured even in the text’s most minor characters, its most insignificant scenes. I now see Henry IV as a whole entity full of comedy, grief, and stark contrasts, rather than a psychological study of character development. Through each actor’s energetic performance, the RSC’s production does what all good art does, and I was moved. Doran’s 2 Henry IV questions the meaning growing up, friendship, parenting, and what it really means to be adult, to be human.