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Shakespeare's history cycle in

performance: Actor and audience
perspectives
a
Abigail Rokison
a
Cambridge University , Cambridge, UK
Published online: 18 Mar 2009.

To cite this article: Abigail Rokison (2009) Shakespeare's history cycle in performance: Actor and
audience perspectives, Shakespeare, 5:1, 105-113, DOI: 10.1080/17450910902764397

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 Shakespeare
Vol. 5, No. 1, April 2009, 105
113

Shakespeare’s history cycle in performance: Actor and audience

perspectives
Abigail Rokison*

Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

This article is concerned with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) perfor-
mances of Shakespeare’s history plays as a sequence in regnal order as part of the
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Complete Works season of 2006, and previous such serializations. Surveying the
problems of coherence when the plays are unified into an artistic singularity, the
article pays particular attention to the ways that actors playing the same
characters in different plays (that is, playing ‘‘through-casting’’) approach their
work. Drawing on an interview with Geoffrey Streatfeild (Prince Hal in the RSC
production), the article weighs up the critical and performative gains and losses
that follow from putting the history plays together in this way.
Keywords: Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC); history plays; serialization; cycle;
coherence; characterological study; 1 Henry 4; 2 Henry 4; Henry 5; 1 Henry 6;
2 Henry 6; 3 Henry 6; Richard 2; Richard 3

On Thursday 13 March 2008, around 1000 people gathered in the Courtyard Theatre
for ‘‘The Glorious Moment’’
the final performance of the RSC Histories cycle in
Stratford-upon-Avon, with all eight plays performed in chronological order by a single
company of actors over four days. This project began as part of the RSC Complete
Works Season in 2006, for which director Michael Boyd revived his successful
productions of the first tetralogy from 2001. The Histories company thus began their
journey by rehearsing, and initially performing, the plays in the order in which they
were written. In the process of 2007 the second tetralogy was added and the plays
performed in repertory, occasionally with the eight plays in chronological order.
The second tetralogy has been already been reviewed in this journal by Kate
Wilkinson; the current article more specifically explores the impact of performing
the plays as an eight-play cycle with a single acting ensemble. I examine the history of
the performance of the plays as a cycle, including the influence of critical views
relating to the function of the tetralogies on theatrical performance, noting the way
in which Boyd’s venture departs from previous productions of the tetralogies at the
RSC. I consider the effect of cyclical performance on an audience’s perception of
the characters and themes of the plays. As a study of the experience of the actor in
this process, I discuss with actor Geoffrey Streatfeild the process of taking the role of
Hal through the two Henry IV plays and into his role as King in Henry V.
Performing the History plays as a cycle of eight plays is not new. The first history
cycle took place in 1864 at the Weimar Court Theatre, directed by Franz von

*Email: ar363@cam.ac.uk
ISSN 1745-0918 print/1745-0926 online
# 2009 Abigail Rokison
DOI: 10.1080/17450910902764397
http://www.informaworld.com
 106 A. Rokison

Dingelstedt (Hampton-Reeves 232). The two tetralogies were not performed together
in England until 1901, when Frank Benson directed them at the memorial theatre in
Stratford-upon-Avon with a single cast, reviving them again in 1906. However, on
neither occasion did Benson’s company perform the full eight plays.1 Since Benson’s
productions the RSC has staged the two tetralogies as a cycle on only three occasions

in 1963
64, directed by Peter Hall and John Barton; between 1975 and 1981,
directed by Terry Hands; and in 2000
1 under the title of ‘‘This England’’. However,
all three differed from Boyd’s 2008 project in certain respects. Hall and Barton did
mount the plays with one company and in one theatre; however, Barton reduced the
three Henry VI plays into two,2 and elements of the plays were re-written or cut in
order to create a more consistent narrative. Terry Hands took the step of presenting
all eight plays, but out of chronological order and over five years.3 As a consequence
only a few of the company crossed over from one season to another and only
Alan Howard was in all the plays, playing four kings.4 Finally, for the ‘‘This
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England’’ season the plays of the second tetralogy were staged by three different
directors
Steven Pimlott directing Richard II, Michael Attenborough 1 Henry IV
and 2 Henry IV and Edward Hall Henry V in three different theatre spaces. The
Henry VI plays and Richard III, directed by Boyd, which followed in the next season
had an entirely different company, breaking the sense of continuity from one
tetralogy to the next.5 Boyd’s 2006
8 venture was thus unique in presenting all eight
plays, more or less in their entirety, in chronological order, with a single company, in
a single theatre.6
Boyd’s decision to employ an ensemble of actors is described by Streatfeild as a
‘‘compelling vision of a new (or very old!) method of making theatre’’ (‘‘An Actor’s
Perspective’’ 13) influenced, as Boyd confirms, by both the founding principles of the
RSC and the fact that ‘‘that was how Shakespeare operated’’ (‘‘In Conversation’’).
Boyd undoubtedly refers to Peter Hall’s creation of the Royal Shakespeare Company
in 1957, with its policy of having a ‘‘permanent’’ company
a group of actors
contracted for three years at a time (Fay 144). However, Boyd’s company differed
from Hall’s in that it was a true ensemble, with no actors relegated to playing only
‘‘spear-carriers’’ whilst others consistently took the leading roles. Whilst Jonathan
Slinger, for example, played Richard II and Richard III, he also played Fluellen in
Henry V, The Bastard of Orleans in 1 Henry VI and Richard, Bevis and Hume in
2 Henry VI. Streatfeild played Hal, Henry V and Suffolk, but also the minor role of
Rivers in 3 Henry VI and Richard III.
Despite the fact that the Histories are published in chronological order in the
First Folio of 1623, there is no evidence that the plays were ever performed as
tetralogies, let alone an eight-play cycle, in the Elizabethan period, or that they were
conceived as such.7 In the first place the historical order of the plays is not in
sequence with their composition, the Henry VI plays and Richard III having been
written prior to Richard II
1 and 2 Henry IV and Henry V. However, in 1944, E.M.W.
Tillyard published what remains one of the most prominent explorations of the
History plays, and that which has generated most critical response
Shakespeare’s
History Plays. Tillyard argued for the eight history plays as a coherent cycle
an
integrated endorsement of the Elizabethan world order, with a political role in
sustaining the Tudor myth. This narrative clearly influenced Hall and Barton in their
conception of the Wars of the Roses, Hall remarking in rather simplistic tones: ‘‘I had
learnt about the Elizabethan world picture at school and again at university.
 Shakespeare 107

Shakespeare believed that there was a natural order in nature . . . man is above beast,
king is above man and God is above king. Revolution . . . destroys the order and
leads to destructive anarchy’’ (x). Thus, for Hall, the plays were an enactment of the
retribution suffered by generations for the deposing of Richard as a rightful
monarch, culminating in a ‘‘happy ending’’ brought about by the arrival of
Richmond as ‘‘a progressive force’’ (xiii).
The RSC ‘‘This England’’ season in 2000 took inspiration from an opposing
critical viewpoint, one that argues against this unified view of the plays, in particular
the second tetralogy, asserting, as does Nicholas Grene, that to view these plays with
‘‘their formal distinctiveness and the weakness of the links between them’’ (9) as a
unified whole is reductive. The ‘‘This England’’ season divided these four plays
between three separate directors, advertising them as being in contrasting styles, and
although the actors provided a continuity between the plays, the productions were
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quite different in tone and aesthetic.

Boyd’s view of the plays is predominantly informed by his perception of them not
as a ‘‘linear, progressive, rationalist history’’ but ‘‘a concentric, cyclical view’’ that
looks back and forwards
’’towards a lost medieval catholic England’’ and towards
our own time (‘‘Different Histories’’ 4). This view of the plays was reflected in Tom
Piper’s design for the plays, which united ‘‘the historical, the Elizabethan and the
contemporary’’ with the broadly Medieval costumes of the first seven plays including
allusions to the First World War and Stanley Kubrick (Piper), whereas Richard III
was staged in modern dress, highlighting contemporary parallels of war, abuse
of power and political corruption. For Boyd, although Richard III provides a form
of catharsis, an ending which ‘‘makes us all feel better’’ (‘‘In Conversation’’) in a
way that none of the other plays of the cycle do, viewing the plays in chronological
order is only one way to see them
‘‘If you want to see the history of an England
emerging [or falling] from a medieval age of Christian faith [Henry VI] and chivalry
[Talbot] into an age of scepticism, compromise, individualism and doubt . . . then
follow Shakespeare through his own history, in the order of writing’’ (‘‘Different
Histories’’ 4).
Certainly one of the benefits of seeing the eight plays performed in chronological
order is that it allows an audience to perceive with greater clarity the often
complicated politics which provide the background to the reigns of the various kings

something which may have been more familiar to an Elizabethan audience, in an
era in which Henry V was frequently cited as an heroic monarch with at least three
other plays dramatizing his victorious reign having graced the London stages in the
late 1580s and 1990s (Taylor 3).
Boyd’s production explicitly emphasized and clarified the links between the plays
and references to previous events, notably through the return of various characters as
ghosts in plays in which they are not strictly part of the dramatis personae. Ghosts
are only a feature of the text of Richard III, which contains the appearance of the
ghosts of Clarence, Hastings, Lady Anne, Rivers and Grey, Buckingham and the two
princes after their deaths. Having an ensemble of actors who each performed in seven
of the eight plays meant that Boyd was able to have an actor appear on stage, briefly,
as a memory of their character from a previous play. In 2 Henry IV, for example, the
ghost of Richard II returned at the beginning of the play
dragged on in a coffin by
Rumour, reappearing in 1.3 during the Archbishop’s speech about the changes in
allegiances (88
111), and again at the end of 3.1 when Henry asserts his desire to go
 108 A. Rokison

‘‘unto the Holy Land’’ (107)
a constant reminder of the corrupt means by which
Henry had acquired the throne.8 Having appeared, triumphant over France, at the
end of the previous play, the ghost of Henry V opened the Henry VI plays, walking
bleeding into his grave, appearing again at the storming of the gates of Rouen (3.2),
thereby reinforcing the sense of speed with which England’s fortunes had changed.
The Henry VI plays were peopled by a series of ghosts
Cardinal Beaufort,
Buckingham, Suffolk, Talbot and John Talbot and the Duke of York
all returning
to haunt those who had betrayed them; and in Richard III Boyd made greater use of
ghostly figures than his text demanded, having the ghosts of Rivers, Grey, King
Edward, Henry VI and York all enter in the scene of Richard’s coronation as well as
with the other ghosts in his dream before Bosworth, a spectral reminder of those
sacrificed at Richard’s hand, and a premonition of his impending doom. The ghosts
worked best when the plays were experienced in sequence, since the audience was
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able to recognize the ghostly figures who haunted the stage. They reminded us of
what had gone before and reinforced our sense of the consequences of a particular
character’s actions, strengthening the connections between the individual plays, and
especially between the two tetralogies.
With the use of his ensemble, Boyd also made a feature of doubling as a linking
device over the eight plays
highlighting connections between characters and
situations. The most notable example was that of Keith Bartlett and Lex Shrapnel,
who played an assortment of fathers and sons across the two tetralogies
the Earl of
Northumberland and Henry Percy in Richard II and 1 Henry IV, Talbot and John
Talbot in 1 Henry VI and the ‘‘Father who killed his son’’ and ‘‘Son who killed his
father’’ in 3 Henry VI. In Boyd’s words, through this device ‘‘with great poignancy
they remind us of the other sons and fathers throughout the plays’’ (‘‘In
Conversation’’). Their appearances, whether as characters or silent ghosts, served
to represent all the fathers and sons who die in pursuit of honour throughout the
cycle of plays. Similarly Geoffrey Freshwater’s doubling of the Archbishop of
Canterbury in Henry V with the Bishop of Winchester and Cardinal Beaufort in the
Henry VI plays
grasping, ambitious characters, played by Freshwater in similar
ecclesiastical garb
heightened the audience’s sense of a corrupt, politically
manipulative church, running across the reigns of these kings.
As well as reinforcing significant links between the plays, the performance of the
histories as a cycle inevitably exposes inconsistencies between the plays, proving a
challenge for any company attempting to stage them as a coherent whole.
Despite what Grene asserts about the first tetralogy having been conceived as a
coherent ‘‘series, planned as a series, planned indeed for serial production’’ (19), the
link between Henry VI and Richard III provides a major irregularity in terms of time-
scale. As Boyd comments, the second play takes place either ‘‘three months later’’ or
‘‘a shorter period, whereby Henry’s body hasn’t decomposed, so probably a week or
so, or the length of time it takes a tiny wee baby to grow up to be a twelve year old i.e.
twelve years’’ (Interview). Boyd used this particular inconsistency as an artistic
impulse ‘‘to take a leap chronologically’’
updating this final play to the twenty-first
century such that any minor temporal anachronisms became irrelevant.
The inconsistencies between the plays in the second tetralogy have been
frequently discussed by critics considering the question of whether they were
conceived as a coherent whole. One of the issues most often raised in such a
discussion is that of the character of Hal/Henry V, both between the first and second
 Shakespeare 109

parts of Henry IV and between 2 Henry IV and Henry V. Grene devotes the final
chapter of Shakespeare’s Serial History Plays to an examination of the development
of Hal through the three plays, arguing that his ‘‘transformation . . . from man to
monarch, previewed in Richard II, twice enacted in 1 and 2 Henry IV, consummated
in Henry V, is rendered complex and problematic by the extended sequence of its
dramatisation’’ (219). Critics have posed various possibilities for the repetitive and
‘‘extended’’ nature of the dramatization of Hal’s story. Some have argued that the
two plays were conceived as a single unit, others that each play is complete in itself.
Harold Jenkins suggested, rather convincingly, that Shakespeare decided to write the
second play whilst in the process of writing Part One, initially intending to complete
the play with ‘‘the hero’s rise of an eminence of valour . . . accompanied, or at least
swiftly followed, by the banishment of the riotous friends who hope to profit from
his reign’’ but altering this pattern around ‘‘the fourth act’’ resulting in ‘‘two versions
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of a single reformation’’ in the character of Hal (16
17, 21). Whichever of these

claims we choose to accept, it remains the case that ‘‘by the end of 1 Henry IV, the
Prince seems a wholly reformed character, reconciled to his father, having won his
spurs at Shrewsbury with the conquest of Hotspur. Yet by the start of 2 Henry IV it is
all to do again’’ (Grene 219), and this is something with which an actor playing the
role through the two plays must contend.
Despite Tillyard’s conception of the three ‘‘Henry’’ plays as a unified entity
depicting the education of a prince, later to become the ideal monarch, he
nevertheless found discontinuity in Shakespeare’s depiction of the Prince and the
King between the Henry IV plays and Henry V, claiming that in the latter
Shakespeare ‘‘jettisoned his old creation’’ (311). William Babula accords with this
view, arguing that ‘‘in Henry V we simply do not have Hal . . . it is a different prince’’
(59). Grene asserts that although ‘‘an actor cast to play the part of Hal/Henry
through the three plays can build for himself, must perhaps build for himself an
emotional and psychological trajectory from Eastcheap to Agincourt . . . Henry V is
so much its own thing formally, the identity of the King as king so absorbs any
remaining traces of the prince as individual, that through-readings feel strained and
suppositious’’ (245).
So did Streatfeild, playing the roles, find a significant discontinuity between
characters, and if so, how did he deal with it? Streatfeild broadly agrees with the critics
who stress the disjunctions between the depiction of the character across the three
plays: ‘‘you talk about whether Henry IV and Henry V add up in terms of character
for me, well no they don’t’’ (Interview). He notes inconsistencies between 1 Henry IV
and 2 Henry IV, within 2 Henry IV itself, and between 2 Henry IV and Henry V,
explaining that although, as Grene suggests, ‘‘early on’’ he did attempt to find a
consistent narrative from Eastcheap to Agincourt, he later rejected this approach:
It’s a play, it’s not reality. Trying to make them [the three plays] add up just causes a
headache and the reduction of meaning in any particular moment. I think that it comes
down to thinking
what do you actually say in each individual moment? and why do
you say it?
and it’s because you are trying to resolve that particular problem with those
particular words, rather than wishing that it existed in another way. It doesn’t help to
look at it as a reality outside the play. When I first looked at it, I thought very much
along the lines of this being a boy who has run away from his father and there being a
level of unhappiness about that, but actually that is taking it outside the world of the
play and trying to explain too much.
 110 A. Rokison

Streatfeild’s approach seems refreshingly practical and informed by an appreciation

of the theatrical context in which Shakespeare was writing:
I think Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 are very interesting. I don’t know much about the history
of the two plays, but the theatre feeling I get of it is that one was successful
Falstaff
was successful
so management come up to him and say ‘‘can we have another one with
Falstaff in it?’’. Shakespeare could have probably squeezed in the whole of the plot of
Henry IV Part 2 into the end of Henry IV Part 1, but either he went back to leave the
door open, or he just leaves the door open enough at the end of Part 1. For most of
Henry IV Part 2 nothing happens and as a consequence Hal doesn’t exist
he does a
substandard repeat of Gadshill, just to remind you of the gist of the situation and then
throws it all back together in Act 5. It’s the most marvellous sort of meandering, but it
used to be really annoying to me because I would get to the end of Henry IV Part 1 and I
would be ready virtually to do Henry V. (Interview)
However, although by end of 1 Henry IV the reconciliation of Streatfeild’s Hal
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with Clive Wood’s Henry
’’thou hast redeemed thy lost opinion’’ (5.3.48)
seemed
genuine, and the audience could perceive an increasing maturity in the character,
it was with equally genuine affection that he said to Falstaff ‘‘if a lie may do
thee grace, / I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have’’ (5.4.147
48), seemingly
placing his friendship with the old knight above concerns for his own glory.
Streatfeild explains this:
My process of trying to understand it has evolved. What I do now is to embrace the fact
that at the end of Part 1 in his youthful naivety he thinks that he has squared the circle

that he can be friends with his Dad and with Falstaff
that the world can still
accommodate this. I think by the end of Part 2 he is aware that it can’t. But even then,
you get to the banishment and think, well it could have accommodated it, if the fat man
hadn’t stood in front of the coronation train and gone ‘‘hey give me a job!’’, which forces
the situation of ‘‘well if you’re going to do it like that then I’m going to have to do this in
front of the watching world because you’ve made me’’. (Interview)

Henry’s lines to Falstaff were delivered with a moving poignancy. Streatfeild paused,
seemingly fighting against his genuine fondness for Falstaff before the line ‘‘I know
thee not, old man’’ (5.5.41), and his assurance that ‘‘as we do hear you do reform
yourselves, / We will, according to your strength and qualities, / Give you
advancement’’ (62
64) seemed heartfelt advice designed to help Falstaff to reform,
as Hal has reformed himself.
The realization that Hal can retain his ‘‘youthful naivety’’ and his affection for
his tavern companions throughout 1 Henry IV and into 2 Henry IV undoubtedly
informed the changes in Streatfeild’s performance over the run. His Hal was initially
influenced by his awareness that the character was to become the great King Henry
V; however, he has come to accept that Hal ‘‘is not someone who wants the crown’’
(Streatfeild, Interview). His Hal’s initial incarnation was described by some critics as
‘‘a cold fish’’ (Nightingale Richard II and 1 and 2 Henry IV 956; Clapp 958) lacking
‘‘a sense of fun’’ (de Jongh 955; Nightingale, Richard II and 1 and 2 Henry IV 956),
but many changed their views on this performance, which by the end of the Stratford
run was unrecognizable from these descriptions. For Billington, Streatfeild’s Hal had
transformed from treating Falstaff with ‘‘a cold, time-filling indifference’’ to
regarding him ‘‘with an exasperated affection, beautifully symbolised by the moment
when he covers his corpulent, sleeping body’’ (428). Nightingale had similarly noted
a change from the disdainful Hal of the production’s opening days to one ‘‘vastly
 Shakespeare 111

entertained by Falstaff’s japes and follies’’ though still able to experience more
‘‘serious moments’’ (Nightingale 1 and 2 Henry IV and Henry V 427).
The changes in Streatfeild’s performance are epitomized by his treatment of the
Prince’s first speech. As Streatfeild acknowledges, ‘‘this could be Iago
I know
exactly what I’m doing here and how I’m going to do it’’ (Interview). This is the
interpretation which critics seem to have read into his early performance, Spencer
praising his characterization as demonstrating ‘‘the cold calculation which underlies
the prince’s decision to slum it in the dives of London’’ (Spencer Richard II and 1 and
2 Henry IV 955) and Shuttleworth commenting on the lack of ‘‘surprise in either his
prophetic ‘I know you all’ speech in Part 1 or its fulfilment at the end of Part 2’’
(956). For Streatfeild, the delivery of this speech altered over time, but only towards
the end of the run did he find the interpretation with which he felt most comfortable:
There’s something very technical about it which is to do with performing it in a theatre,
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which I’ve only discovered in the last two performances which is that that line is very
hard to say
it’s hard to say with brevity, because there are so many vowels, and that has
only just started to make sense to me as a sort of stage direction to call after them,
because the line literally goes ‘‘da da daah!’’. As soon as you get that music then it
makes sense. Putting a pause in to try and make it something that Hal is thinking about
absolutely kills it dead, makes it cold and makes it calculated and introspective. And if
he’s introspective at that point then you start to distrust him, whereas the fact is that he
has just made a decision with an energy that is quite youthful and is captured in the
vowels of the line which is: ‘‘got yah!’’. It’s taken me a year to trust the fact that you can
throw a ball like that. It sounds harsher than it is
‘‘I know you all’’, whereas it can just
be ‘‘I know what you’re on about, you just want the money, but don’t worry, it’s going to
be fine’’. (Interview)
The move from Hal into Henry is also one which Streatfeild refined over the run
of the play. Elements of his more playful and youthful Hal were transferred into his
Henry and critics found greater nuances in his performance. Whilst early reviews
concentrated on the ‘‘efficiency’’ (Mountford 1386), ‘‘coldness’’ (Spencer Henry V
1387) and ‘‘melancholy’’ (Hart 1389) of Henry V, the critics in London praised the
character’s mixture of ‘‘a sense of boyish vulnerability’’ and ‘‘public responsibility’’
(Billington 428) which makes him a ‘‘magnificent and inspiring leader and a haunted
private individual’’ (Spencer Richard II, 1 and 2 Henry IV and Henry V 427).
Streatfeild explains that he came to see ‘‘Hal and Henry are separate creations’’
(Interview), and allowed himself to accept this and to enjoy it, permitting the
characters their differences, as well as finding moments where Hal and Henry linked:
To put it crudely, there’s a sort of feeling that I get in some of the scenes, as an actor, and
once we had done Henry V I took that ‘‘feeling’’ and put it into some of Henry IV Part 2
just to try to smooth the transition. It literally means taking a little bit of the costume or
something, but also allowing the beginning in Henry IV Part 1 to bear no resemblance
to the person in Henry V, whereas initially you are trying to make it fit. When
Shakespeare is writing Henry IV he isn’t thinking ‘‘I’ve got to write the guy who’s going
to speak the St Crispin’s day speech’’, so as an actor you have to have the same courage,
which is to go: ‘‘that may never happen’’ and for the audience to be thinking: ‘‘that
doesn’t look like it’s going to happen’’, because that’s the point. (Interview)

For an actor performing these plays, the notion of tetralogy seems to be both
helpful and at times misleading. A knowledge of a character’s previous actions might
be helpful in providing insight into their behaviour in another play, but Shake-
speare’s histories, as we have seen, do not always provide a simple continuity. Such a
 112 A. Rokison

lack of continuity may, as Streatfeild suggests, prove equally misleading for an actor
attempting to make use of their knowledge of how a character develops in future
plays.
For an audience, however, such a lack of continuity in characters seems smoothed
over by watching the plays performed by a single cast. We are inclined to believe that
Henry is a more mature incarnation of Hal, and to see elements of the young Prince
in the King, simply because we are watching the same actor bring elements of
themselves to both roles. One might argue, therefore, that performance of the plays
as a series helps to provide a coherence lacking on the page. There is certainly a
danger, as Michael Hattaway argues, that the performance of the tetralogies as a
single unified cycle ‘may dampen the political charge’ (‘‘Shakespearean’’ 9) of the
individual plays. However, my experience of watching Boyd’s production was that,
whilst providing clarity, continuity and a sense of the thematic links between the
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eight plays, far from proving reductive, it allowed the audience to perceive with
clarity the discrepancies between the reigns of six very different kings.

Notes
1. In 1901, Benson omitted 1 Henry IV, 1 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI from the cycle and in 1906
he omitted 1 Henry IV.
2. Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington also reduced the three plays to two for their
English Shakespeare Company Histories cycle in 1986.
3. Henry V followed by 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV in 1975
76, 1, 2 and 3 Henry VI and
Henry V again in 1977
78, and Richard II and Richard III in 1980
81.
4. Richard II, Hal and Henry V, Henry VI and Richard III.
5. Information on all these Stratford-upon-Avon productions can be found on the RSC
Performance Database.
6. It should be noted that 2 Henry IV was directed by Richard Twyman, but with the same
cast, on the same set and in the same costumes as Boyd’s 1 Henry IV.
7. Nicholas Grene argues that there is a distinction between the two tetralogies, finding in the
first a coherence which suggests that it was planned to be produced as a series (19).
However, given the lack of external evidence this idea must remain speculative.
8. Quotations from the plays refer to the Complete Works, ed. Bate and Rasmussen, this being
the edition used for Boyd’s production.

References
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