Word: falstaffs
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...battling the Percys, Henry is also fighting for the loyalty and affection of his son and heir, Prince Hal. Hal, that "nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales," as Hotspur derisively calls him, has given himself up to bad living and bad companions, led by the fat and riotous Falstaff; his revolt against duty is a more serious threat to Henry's kingdom than Hotspur and all his kin. The distraught Henry wishes that Hotspur had been his son and it could be proved that "some night-tripping fairy" had switched babies in their cradles...
...between Henry and Falstaff, or order and disorder, for the allegiance of Hal is the dominating theme of the first two Henrys. But what neither man knows is that the outcome has been foreordained: Hal, the consummate politician, is only pretending to be bad so that when it is time to be good he will seem all the better. "Yet will I imitate the sun," he says, "who may be more wonder'd at, by breaking through the foul and ugly mists of vapors that did seem to strangle him." Fortunately Shakespeare gives Hal a heart as well...
...transformation from brat to warrior is a shaky bridge for any actor to walk. Audiences have always found it hard to sympathize with his duplicity in leading on a lovable rogue like Falstaff, and the actor who plays him must make his deviousness seem right as well as log ical. To preserve his life and his position he must be more clever than other men: he is the son of a regicide and knows that the throne he will inherit has been made slippery by blood. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," cries his father. David Gwillim adroitly...
...Falstaff, Shakespeare's greatest comic invention, is scarcely an easier part to play, but Anthony Quayle makes it seem not only simple, but natural, as if he had grown into it, just as Falstaff grew into his big belly. His most eloquent speech comes not from his mouth, but from his eyes, when Hal, now king, repudiates both him and his own past misdeeds: "I know thee not, old man . . . Presume not that I am the thing I was." Jon Finch is also good as Henry IV, who has won a crown but lost his peace of mind...
Shuffling about the stage, doing business with his pipe, playing with a mimed dog, recoiling from a searing tea pot, Hughes gives Da even more life than Leonard wrote into the script. At times, he recalls Uncle Ernie of My Three Sons; at others he is Shakespeare's Falstaff. But throughout, Hughes' twinkly eyes and subtle, vaporous quality make him the perfect embodiment of one of Hugh Leonard's bothersome voices...