User reviews

These history plays are the least ambitious of the BBC Shakespeare series in terms of directorial approach - an almost semi-documentary feel accompanies the personalities and political machinations that lead to war. There's no attempt here to replicate Vermeer or some other Old Master. That doesn't short-change the work in any way, and if you're curious about this play, don't hesitate.

Anthony Quayle plays a jolly Falstaff who is also a flinty, manipulative SOB. The approach works like a charm. Jon Finch's King Henry IV is part lion, part water buffalo, but always in charge. The potentially tiresome Hotspur is redeemed with a welcome note of humor by Tim Pigott-Smith. John Cairney's Douglas is marvelously peppery, and Brenda Bruce's Mistress Quickly avoids cliché by bringing out touching warmth and humanity.

When David Gwillim first appears as Prince Hal, you wonder "can this glass of milk really grow into Henry V? Has BBC casting lost its senses?" But in fact, he manages the transition to adult responsibility very well, and by the end of the play he's obviously made of the right stuff. So Shakespeare has fooled us successfully once again.

A special note should be made of Clive Swift, in his pre-"Keeping Up Appearances" days. As Worcester, he personifies the actor's dictum that acting is reacting. His voice is plain and his delivery unremarkable, but oh, that man can listen! As The Dumpy Bald Guy in the Corner With a Silent Grievance, he absolutely invents the category.

We should also note the battle scenes, always problematic in the studio and here quite well done. And the lovely outdoor set, including a steep hillside, bursts the bonds of BBC's TC1. The pace is not fast, but it is reasonable. An excellent production all round.

I am a huge fan of all Shakespeare, but the Henry IV and Henry VI plays are some I've put off reading and watching until now. I have read a lot about them and heard many references to them, but I only just watched this BBC production. And I liked it. But I was particularly struck by something about Falstaff, who is one of the absolutely most popular characters in all of Shakespeare: he's not that likable a guy! The banter between him and Hal are not that good-natured but rather sharp and even occasionally condescending! In this production, at least, one gets a clear sense that Hal's entire habit of socializing with the likes of Falstaff is almost purely a part of his plan to prove an unexpectedly capable leader after he is crowned. He doesn't like Falstaff very much at all! He does not truly condone his indulgences in wine-drinking and thievery. He only keeps Falstaff's company in order to learn what life is like in that social class, and to disguise his true and noble nature to the courtiers. This is actually a much more pointed and poignant portrayal of Hal than what we saw in those flashback scenes in Branagh's (otherwise excellent) Henry V. David Gwillim is masterful as Hal, and clearly the best of the cast of the BBC production. I am greatly looking forward to Part 2, which I will watch at my earliest convenience.

The BBC Television Shakespeare is a fascinating series for seeing so many talented actors and seeing the plays, familiar and not so familiar, adapted and performed relatively faithfully on the whole. Some are better than others, with not every performance in the series working and there could be issues with low budget production values and in some productions stage direction.

When it comes to the best productions of the BBC Television Shakespeare series, to me 'The First Part of King Henry the Fourth and The Life and Death of Henry Renamed Hotspur' is among the best. Have enjoyed to loved most though, but it was lovely to see one of Shakespeare's best mixes of comedy and drama done so beautifully and those not familiar with it will find it an education.

It is visually a solid production, while not elaborate or lavish the action feels opened up and not confined. The use of music was lovely, couldn't question any of the placements and it is lovely music in its own right.

On a stage direction level, it is one of the main reasons as to why 'The First Part of Henry the Fourth' is one of the series' best. It is always absorbing, and it is agreed that it mixes both comedy, which is very funny and often hilarious, and drama, which is poignant. Not only because the energy is never lost, it's never static (even the more action-oriented scenes), it is always tasteful with no pointless touches and that it never resorts to overblown excess that swamps everything else. It's also because of the subtleties and the details, big and small, where the characters are so well fleshed out motivations are clear and everything seems to happen for a reason and not randomly.

Jon Finch is very commanding in the title role, no signs of discomfort here. Another standout is Anthony Quayle having the time of his life as Falstaff while David Gwillim is movingly conflicted as Hal. Tim Pigott Smith is an amusing Hotspur.

Concluding, wonderful. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 (1979) was directed for the BBC by David Giles. Like most of the BBC productions, the acting is solid and the text is respected.

Although the play's title would make you assume that King Henry was the central role, that's not correct. The real story of the play--and the movie--is the coming of age of Henry's son, Hal, the Prince of Wales. A major theme is the contrast of the Prince with his warlike contemporary, another Hal, called Hotspur. (In reality, Hotspur was much older than the prince, but Shakespeare's version is much more dramatic.) Also, of course, this is the play in which Shakespeare introduces the roguish fat knight, Sir John Falstaff.

David Gwillim as Hal, Tim Pigott-Smith as Hotspur, and Anthony Quayle as Falstaff are all excellent. Almost all of the BBC productions are shot indoors, but I think director Giles shot the battle scenes outdoors. As usual with the BBC, the supporting actors are good, as are the actors playing minor roles. Costumes are great, settings are minimal. (It worked for the Globe, and it works for the BBC.)

If you know the play well, you'll be happy with this version. If you don't know the play, Henry IV, Part 1 is a good history play with which to start. (It's not the first play in chronological time, but it's a great introduction to Shakespeare's history plays.)

The BBC films were made for TV, so they work well on the small screen. I saw one scene on a large scene in a classroom setting, and that also worked well.

You need to remember that these were all filmed for the BBC/Time-Life Shakespeare plays; the budget did not allow high production values. Still, (disagreeing with the other comment) Jon Finch's Henry IV is a highlight. Twisted up, obsessive, but still with something regal, the performance seems better every time I watch. Finch was Polanski's Macbeth. It is Tim Piggott-Smith who does Hotspur (not Purchase, who does Old Percy) in a fine performance. Quayle's Falstaff is spitty and reptilian, and Gwillim's Hal nuanced. One of the gems of the series. The histories are some of the gems of Shakespeare, too often ignored in the US. You must know Falstaff, and this is as good an intro as any. Review the characters in advance, and you'll be fine.

When the BBC started doing the Shakespeare plays in which we on the other side of the pond were privileged enough to see, they did a wise thing in having the same actors play the same characters giving continuity to the plays. All of the people from Richard II whose roles were repeated in Henry IV got to do their parts again. Most important was Jon Finch who as Bolingbroke usurped the crown from Richard II in the previous work and now is Henry IV in both Henry IV Part One and Two.

In this production Finch is finding out what it's like to be king as some of us supporters are now disillusioned with him. Most prominently the Earl of Northumberland and his son Henry Percy known as Hotspur for his skill as a fighting man and a rather quick temper. They're gathering some similarly malcontented people to their cause in overthrowing the king they feel was not up to the job.

Henry IV had several sons and what happens with them is the subject of several succeeding historical plays Henry V and the three parts of Henry VI as well as Henry IV Part Two. The oldest is Prince Henry known as Prince Hal. Instead of helping dad out with running the kingdom, he'd rather hang around the taverns with such low born folks as John Falstaff and have a rollicking good time.

And playing Hal one of Shakespeare's most popular characters is David Gwillim. He gives a splendid interpretation of the part, playing nicely against both Finch as his father and his older companion in merriment Falstaff who is also fully realized in character by Anthony Quayle. This character proved so popular back in the day when he was created in both Henry IV plays, Master Will Shakespeare was forced by public opinion which meant then the lords and ladies and titled folk who saw his work to create a separate work around Falstaff with The Merry Wives Of Windsor. It's a great part for one to give full range to the emotions. Falstaff is a braggart and a liar, but he does it with such aplomb that you can't help liking him. In fact the character in a modern guise appears in My Own Private Idaho where parts of Henry IV Part One and Two are used in Keanu Reeves's dialog who was Prince Hal in that Gus Van Sant classic.

The fun loving Hal is contrasted with Henry Percy who is played with fire and passion by Tim Pigott-Smith. Hotspur is a character you see recur in many of Shakespeare's work, a single minded hot head like Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet and Laertes in Hamlet. He's contemptuous of Hal, but when the time comes Prince Hal shows dad and the audience he has the right stuff.

Henry IV Part One follows in the same excellent tradition of Richard II. At some point I would love to see all the BBC Shakespeare plays from this series and hope they all maintain the same quality.

Anthony Quayle was one of last century's most effective Falstaffs on stage. His performance here is brilliant but encumbered by the overall interpretation.

David Giles called the second tetralogy a "Henriad", the story of how Hal grows up to be Henry V, and the plays are cut accordingly. For instance, Falstaff's words to Hal, "thy love is worth a million, thou owest me thy love," are gone, as is much of the warmth between the old knight and the young prince. As a result, Falstaff becomes a secondary character who hums and haws with nervousness.

David Gwillim is engagingly ingenuous as Hal, and he very nearly succeeds in carrying the additional weight that Giles has loaded on him.

The rest of the cast is also strong, with Jon Finch a guilt-ridden usurper, Tim Pigott-Smith a fiercely mock-heroic Hotspur, and Richard Owens a pompously magical Glendower.

There are some good things about this film and some bad things. I guess the good this that this play was actually filmed, and that it is available to view for free on Youtube. Many of the history plays (with the exception of Henry V and Richard III) actually appear as film, as well as live performances, so being able to see this play performed is a benefit in and of itself. The other thing is that they stick to the play very faithfully. The scenes are film in order and the are complete. The only addition to this play was the death of Richard II, which occurs at the end of the previous play (which is also available on Youtube).

The thing that I did not like about this is that the effort seemed to be half-hearted at best. It is not that the acting was bad, but rather that the actors did not seem to put that much passion into the roles. Maybe it had something to do with the era in which it was made because many of these earlier Shakespearian performances were average at best. However Sir Lawrence Olivier's production of Richard III was, to put it bluntly, brilliant, and it was released quite some time before this play.

Many of the more modern plays seem to have much more life in it than these earlier performances, even though they tend to chop and change and delete parts of the play. Personally I don't mind this because the filmmakers are experimenting with the play using the television medium, which allows a lot more than a stage. For instance, the use of surveillance cameras in the recent release of Hamlet starring Patrick Stewart and David Tennant added to new dimension to the play (suggesting that what was initially done in private may not actually have been done in private).

I expected a lot more from Falstaff (though knowing that this was a BBC production I wasn't actually expecting all that much) and also a lot more from the scenes set in Eastcheap. In this film it is set in the basement which seems to be disconnected from the pub as a whole, in a way a sort of private gathering, while when I read the play I imagined that it was set in the main part of the pub. In a more modern setting, it would be in the main bar, with Falstaff being the dominant patron in the pub (as a number of pubs tend to have). This part of the play though does remind me of my days hanging around the Uni Tavern with our group and our 'members only' area.

If a small man with a mustache could choose any decade from which to film all 37 of Shaky Bill's stage plays, the decade from which the BBC chose the RSC to make this and other 36 is the best decade between "this muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention" and "Dune Buggy Capers 9: The Hunt for Booberella." "The History of Henry IV, Part 1" is this: a staged drama with identifiably staged scenes . . . identifiably staged scenes being an ailment that every partisan of Shakespeare's suffered before the invention of film. Ask yourself: Are you able to make believe? Can you suspend your disbelief? Can you convict yourself of things that you know to be not real? If you: "Yes, of course I can, who would mark the better value of Shakespeare as that which would* make a presentation a mere swifter sale of the goods? Whatever it may take to spare me from a long and labored reading!" . . and if you care to ask "Who's who in what?" you will be Bushy, Bagot and/or Green to find yourself unamused'd watching this mise en scène.

* "Which would" - a common root used by IMDb.com users to render readers fristed, fitch and foul.

When William Shakespeare's history play, "The History of Henrie IV" (later renamed "The History of Henry IV" Part 1 to distinguish it from its sequel) entered onto the literary stage towards the end of the 16th century, both figuratively and metaphorically, one of the most famous and popular of Shakespeare's characters made his debut: Sir John "Jack" Falstaff. As far as we know, Falstaff was an immediate sensation, attested by the numerous quarto editions printed prior to the so-called Shakespeare First Folio of his collected works which appeared in 1623. Sir John Falstaff, possibly loosely based on Sir John Oldcastle, a knight and friend of Henry V until he rebelled against the king, is an old knight whose "vassals" are a bunch of drunken lowlifes who congregate with him at his "court", a tavern far removed from real court life among the nobility. Although, one frequenter of the tavern and friend of Falstaff is Prince Hal, son of King Henry IV.

Three different groups of characters form the play "Henry IV Part 1". There is the king and his immediate group of advisers, a rogue group who have designs to overthrow the king, and Falstaff and his group of "courtiers" at his tavern. Prince Hal moves within the circles of two of the three groups, until, by play's end, all three groups converge in the climactic scene. While the play is named "King Henry IV Part 1", much of the stage-time is devoted to the relationship between Prince Hal and Sir John Falstaff. We never know why Prince Hal congregates with these drunkards, but we learn at play's beginning, he's been doing this for a long time.

The play begins circa 1400. It's been approximately one year since Henry of Bolinbroke, now King Henry IV (Jon Finch), deposed his inept and unresolved cousin, King Richard II in one of the most famous coups in English history. However, even after a year, there is still uncertainty in the court regarding King Henry, mainly among the nobles and barons that he has no legitimate claim to the throne. And there had been an outbreak near the Scottish and Wales border at the play's beginning, involving King Richard's chosen heir, Mortimer.

Edmund Mortimer, brother of Henry Percy Hotspur, is being held ransom by a Welsh traitor, Owen Glendower. Hotspur insists Mortimer fought valiantly against the rebels, but the king, based on his own intelligence, doesn't believe Mortimer to be as loyal and brave as Hotspur propagates and refuses to pay the ransom for Mortimer's release. The Percy's also hold in their charge prisoners from the rebellion, and the king wants them turned over to him, but they refuse to comply because of Edmund Mortimer. This compels Hotspur and other members of the Percy family, notably his uncle Thomas Percy, to raise an army and rebel against the king. The Percy's had backed Henry during the coup allowing him to become king.

On another front is Prince Hal (David Gwillim) who has been commiserating with Sir John Falstaff (Anthony Quayle) and his congregation of drunkards at a tavern, presumably in the seedier side of London. Most of the cronies are far older than Prince Hal, save one, Poins, who appears not only to be the same age as Hal but probably more intelligent than the others. Poins convinces Hal to play a trick on Falstaff and his drunkards. Through conniving, they convince Falstaff that he and some of the other bar-flies should rob money from some wealthy traveling tradesmen/travelers. Unbeknownst to them, Hal and Poins in turn plan to rob the money from Falstaff and friends, knowing that when they return to the tavern, Falstaff will boast that they were set upon by 20 to 30 vagabonds. Their predictions prove right, but Falstaff exceeds expectations, claiming he was set upon by 100 vagabonds who he fought off valiantly!

Eventually, a messenger is sent to the tavern summoning Hal back to the court at the king's behest. In a brilliant scene, Falstaff and Hal re-enact Hal's return to the king, with Falstaff playing the king and Hal himself, then reversing the roles. However, when Hal does confront his father back at the castle, neither of the play-acting scenes mirrors the confrontation. The king, in perhaps the most famous scolding in Shakespeare, reprimands his son for commiserating with the barflies at the tavern, reminding him he is to be king one day, and his behaviors shame him and his noble-royal family. He reminds Hal that they have serious matters to attend to, notably to confront Hotspur and the rebellion. Even though Hotspur's behavior has turned treasonous, the king admires Hotspur's military resolve, not convinced Prince Hal has the same metal.

This is a wonderful production of perhaps William Shakespeare's best fusion of drama and comedy in a play. Jon Finch makes a compelling King Henry IV, his resonant voice echoes the words of Shakespeare of the late 16th century portraying a medieval king of the early 15th century. David Gwillim makes a good Prince Hal, who must juggle his desire to hang out with Falstaff and friends and yet do his duty as prince to the king. However, Anthony Quayle nearly steals the show as Sir John Falstaff. Quayle makes the lines of Falstaff his own, the old knight constantly telling stories of passed exploits in which the details are just a little bit bloated. In an interesting turn, when Prince Hal rhetorically puts Falstaff in a corner after the old knight claimed he was set upon by 100 vagabonds, and Hal admits it was only he and Poins, Falstaff in true Shakespeare fashion comes up with a quick-witted response!

Though I admire the BBC for doing the complete works of Shakespeare unabridged, I would only recommend this Henry IV if your motivation for seeing it is completely utilitarian. The only advantage to seeing this over reading it is that it might be easier to understand and quicker.

A literal interpretation of this history play. It is interesting to watch the words become action, especially in the case of H. Percy, played with impatience and gusto by Bruce Purchase (he looks like a young and wild Ben Cross). If you've read the play, his performance is worth the view. Price Hal is done well, as is blustery, mumbling Falstaff; but the king, I thought, was played with very little artistry. It's a shame that his opening speech sets the tone for the play, because it sounds like it's being read rather than acted. It makes the whole production seem a little stiff.

DVD: The sound is terrible in some places, and it's difficult to get all of the dialogue. Subtitles were not available, which I think would have added to the production.