Word: falstaffs
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This conclusion by itself would at least be defensible. But some of the pruning was done in order to insert some of the preceding play, notably the scene (II, iv) where Falstaff and Prince Hal take turns impersonating the king. This is a wonderful scene, but belongs where it was written. Anthony has ruined Shakespeare's line of development...
...Henry IV, Falstaff and Hal spend a lot of time carousing and frolicking together. In the present play, the dramatist has very carefully decreased Hal's participation in the comic scenes in order to prepare the prince -- and us -- for Hal's eventual and necessary rejection of Falstaff and the world of wantonness and waste he represents. Anthony has missed this point completely. What the Bard hath put asunder, let no man join together...
...current Falstaff, Jerome Kilty, is new to the Festival stage this season. But he is no newcomer to the role. Though still a relatively young man, he has been playing Falstaff off and on for close to twenty years. Even as a Harvard sophomore (see photo) he was highly acclaimed for his portrayal, and W.H. Auden was not the only one to rate it the finest he had even seen...
Kilty brings an extraordinary intelligence to the role and he has long since solved most of its problems. Visually he is just right. The Falstaff of Part Two is older and sicker than the Falstaff of Part One; and Kilty now quite properly brings a touch of the has-been to his portrayal, whether intentionally or not. Shakespeare allowed no flagging of the wits, however; and Falstaff remains, in Farjeon's words, "a mind of mercury in a body of lead...
...Kilty trills his r's with relish and reluctantly relinquishes his final sibilants shows us how much Falstaff loves the sound of his own voice. But, being old and fat and short of breath, he must speak in spurts. Time and again Kilty will seem to end a sentence, make to move, and then turn back as though to add an afterthought. This is Falstaff exactly, one who loves to spout a comment and then vary it, amend it, augment it, or top it -- and one who, as Milton said of Belial, "could make the worse appear/The better reason...