1. When was the play first performed?
1597-99.
2. Where was the play first performed?
At The Theatre, James Burgage’s playhouse in Shoreditch, north of London’s city walls.
3. How does this play fit into Shakespeare’s career?
Your word of the day: “tetralogy,” a set of four works. Shakespeare wrote two tetralogies based on English history. His first, when he was learning his craft, looks at the War of the Roses in the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III (the only one regularly staged). The second tetralogy—Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV, and Henry V, all four among the most admired of Shakespeare’s works—comes towards the middle of his career.
4. How is this play like Shakespeare’s other plays?
This is a sequel to Shakespeare’s blockbuster Henry IV, and Shakespeare looks out for the box office by picking up the narrative from where Part 1 leaves off and by giving Part 2 a structure that looks to be the twin of Part 1 as it switches back and forth from the world of royalty—the King, Prince Hal, the rebellious nobles—to the tavern life of Falstaff and his companions…
5. How is this play unlike Shakespeare’s other plays?
… BUT Shakespeare, who never behaves, tempts us to expect a serio-comic play like Henry IV, Part 1, that ends in a “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” between Prince Hal and Hotspur. He gives us instead something deeper, a comic-serio play about the Prince and his two father figures, the King and Falstaff.
6. What do scholars think about this play?
As many film critics rank
Godfather II above Godfather I, many Shakespeare scholars think that Henry IV, Part 2, may be even better than its predecessor. I am one of those many. It might also be the best play yet about a man growing old.
7. Are there any controversies surrounding the work?
None except academic squabbles about when exactly Shakespeare wrote this relative to The Merry Wives of Windsor, the other “Falstaff play.”
8. What characters should I especially look for?
Shakespeare introduces an unusual number of new characters near the middle of this play: Doll Tearsheet (Falstaff’s combative “whore”), Pistol (Falstaff’s outrageous “ensign”), and Justice Shallow (Falstaff’s prosperous “host” in Gloucestershire). All brighten and deepen the play.
9. What scene should I especially look for?
The final scene is perhaps Shakespeare’s most haunting, and Act Two, scene four, at the Boarshead Tavern, is perhaps his best.
10. What is the language like?
As fancy as calling a crown a “polished perturbation,” as simple as “I am old.”
Dr. Ralph Alan Cohen
ASC CO-FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF MISSION
Ralph is Co-Founder and Director of Mission of the ASC, Emeritus Professor of English at James Madison University, and currently Gonder Professor of Shakespeare at Mary Baldwin University, where he founded the graduate program in Shakespeare and Performance.
He was project director for the building of the Blackfriars Playhouse and has directed 30 productions of plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. He founded the Studies Abroad program at James Madison University, where he won Virginia’s award for outstanding faculty. He has directed four scholar summer institutes on Shakespeare and staging sponsored by the National Endowment forthe Humanities. He is the author of ShakesFear and How to Cure It: The Complete Handbook for Teaching Shakespeare.
In 2001, he established the Blackfriars Conference. He has received numerous awards and fellowships including the Governor’s Arts Award with ASC Co- founder Jim Warren (2008), the Theo Crosby Fellowship at Shakespeare’s Globe in London (2009), the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Shakespeare Steward Award (2013), and the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker award — the first American to receive this honor (2014). He earned his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth College and his doctorate at Duke University, where he received the outstanding alumni award in 2016.