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Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations

The Henriad

See also individual entries for Richard II; Henry IV, Part I; Henry IV, Part II; Henry V; Henry VI, Part I; Henry VI, Part II; Henry VI, Part III; and Richard III

The term “The Henriad” has been used to describe two groups of Shakespeare’s history plays. It is most commonly used to refer to the so-called “second tetralogy” —that is, the second (chronologically, in dates of composition) of Shakespeare’s two groups of history plays. This “second tetralogy” consists of Richard II, Henry IV, Part I, Henry IV, Part II, and Henry V). However, sometimes the phrase “The Henriad” is also used to describe the group just mentioned and also (together with) the group that preceded “the second tetralogy” in dates of composition. This so-called first tetralogy consists of the plays Henry VI, Part I, Henry VI, Part II, Henry VI, Part III, and Richard III. Taken together, all eight of these history plays are sometimes called “The Henriad,” although the term is most often used to refer to “the second tetralogy.” For further information, please see the descriptions of each of the individual plays.

In their superb anthology Shakespeare on Television, J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen reproduced an essay from 1980 by Mark Crispin Miller, originally published in The Nation magazine, that took sharp aim at the whole BBC Henriad. He argued, for example, that the “fact of video adds a touch of humor to the BBC’s battle scenes, in which small groups of uneasy men try to roughhouse on fields of Astroturf. But the text,” he continued, “suffers most, paradoxically, from the BBC’s pedantic treatment of it. If Shakespeare were still alive, he would delete the dead puns and topical references which only his contemporaries could grasp at first hearing. The BBC has left it all intact, cutting only to save a little time, but never to interpret or illuminate the plays. This indiscriminate retention,” he thought, “is an expression of contempt, rather than ‘reverence,’ for Shakespeare. The BBC retained both good and bad, lasting and archaic, evidently figuring that the plays are all so great and hard and meaningless that it really doesn’t matter if nobody understands them, as long as everybody buys them.” Miller then quoted from the Chorus in Henry V, who asks “Can this cockpit hold / The vasty fields of France? … / Or may we cram / Within this wooden O the very casques / That did affright the air at Agincourt?” To which Miller responded: “What ‘cockpit?’ What ‘wooden O?’ All we see is some guy on television” in a studio, “not an actor performing in Shakespeare’s Globe—part of Miller’s sarcastic indictment of the whole tetralogy and perhaps the whole series altogether” (262)

Miller clearly disliked Prince Hal, writing that he “understands that power is based on an ability to perform convincingly; throughout his life on stage, he observes this Machiavellian principle with spectacular efficiency, putting on the attributes of those whom he surpasses and destroys,” whether humiliating Falstaff, “convers[ing] easily with the common soldiers,” courting Kate, or treating the “war in France, begun on the flimsiest of legal pretexts, … [as] only a theatrical occasion, offering Henry V a chance to play his greatest role.” Miller accused the BBC, interested in profit, of having “bowdlerized this difficult character, turning ‘the warlike Harry’ into a really nice person” and of having chosen an actor to play Harry largely because the actor looked like the king as depicted in old paintings. “This Henry,” Miller said, “is a peach. Telling us that he will dump his companions when the time comes, Gwillim makes it sound not like a calculated step but like a cute idea that’s just occurring to him.” Moreover, his “relationship with Falstaff is without tension, reminding us less of Shakespeare than of Neil Simon [who wrote The Odd Couple]: a slob and a prig, sharing a place, bicker adorably. And, in Henry V, when the king condemns to death three would-be assassins, Gwillim’s Henry’s diatribe is a long passage of exalted wrath, but Gwillim makes it mawkish, choking back the tears and sinking to a bitter whisper,” and his “rejection of Falstaff at the end of Henry IV, Part II is also played weepily, with Henry doing what he must despite his breaking heart. This tearful moment depends on the complete neutralization of Falstaff’s character, which is, in fact, no longer funny in Henry IV, Part II. His banishment is necessary, and no tragedy.” But the BBC Falstaff, according to Miller, “does not go from merriment to melancholy, or from any particular mood to any other, since Anthony Quayle’s performance is one long coy wheeze” (262). Miller felt that “only Jon Finch does credit to the playwright, achieving a performance of isolated brilliance as the bitter and guilt-ridden Henry IV” (263).

Ace G. Pilkington, in a 1993 essay titled “The BBC’s Henriad,” wrote that audiences have long been troubled by the rejection of Falstaff by his one-time close friend Prince Hal (the newly crowned King Henry V) at the conclusion of the second part of Henry IV, Part II. Pilkington suggested that in the BBC Henriad (i.e., the “second tetralogy”), director David Giles and Anthony Quayle, the actor playing Falstaff, “reduced the duration and therefore the warmth and impact of Falstaff’s last performance. The scene becomes the occasion for Hal, in the course of the Henriad, to move on to [becoming] Henry V, not the tragic end to the … most beloved character” of the two plays about Henry IV (25). According to Pilkington, “The end result of this developing of Henry V, through what David Gwillim [the actor playing that role] calls the ‘chrysalis’ of Hal (2H4 25), is a king who is complex because he has a history made from those earlier history plays, but who is in some ways simple as well and for the same reason.” Thus, “[i]f we see in Henry’s eyes that he remembers and mourns for Bardolph and Falstaff, if the director has given us visual evidence that Hal is bound to Hotspur, we are forced to see layers in the man that we otherwise might miss.” Pilkington quoted Gwillim as saying, “If you watch only Henry V he may seem just the archetypal hero, whereas if you’ve seen the situation in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 you know it isn’t like that at all.” Pilkington himself commented that “[i]f we know that Hal felt sympathy for [King Richard II]’s fate and condemned his father’s [Henry IV’s] action [in overthrowing Richard], we also know that his prayer the night before Agincourt [in Henry V] is sincere, and the ambiguity which many critics find in that moment disappears for this [BBC] production. Finally,” in Pilkington’s opinion, “the BBC’s Hal/Henry emerges as a consistent character through the course of the three plays, and in a real sense he is the centre of the central interpretation that David Giles and company have created, the essential Henry in the Henriad” (31).

Bibliography

1 

Miller, Mark Crispin. “The Shakespeare Plays.” Shakespeare on Television: An Anthology of Essays and Reviews, edited by James C. Bulman and Herbert R. Coursen, UP of New England, 1988, pp. 261–63. Originally published in The Nation, 12 July 1980.

2 

Pilkington, Ace G. “The BBC’s Henriad.” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 1, 1993, pp. 25–32.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"The Henriad." Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations, edited by Robert C. Evans, Salem Press, 2025. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CSSF_0047.
APA 7th
The Henriad. Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations, In R. C. Evans (Ed.), Salem Press, 2025. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CSSF_0047.
CMOS 17th
"The Henriad." Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations, Edited by Robert C. Evans. Salem Press, 2025. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CSSF_0047.