Word: hotspurs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...swell, and it traces the upward curve of most of its characters' destinies. Falstaff, still the boon companion of the errant, frivoling Prince Hal, swaggers and swills in rich midsummer plenty. In a flare of eloquence and arms, the rebellion against Henry IV, led by the heedless, dauntless Hotspur, progresses to the plains of Shrewsbury, where the day is lost...
...Part II events move downward, and the drama becomes muffled and intermittent. Hotspur lies slain by Hal; the rebels are betrayed and broken; guilt-laden Henry, who had usurped Richard II's crown, sickens and dies; Falstaff roisters now without his Prince, "Who-when he becomes his King-brutally dismisses him. Only for Hal does glory lie ahead...
...verse. (The musicomedy-sized Century Theater made for hearing trouble.) But they had the main thing-a real Shakespearean robustiousness. In Part I they contrived a fine balance between the historical scenes and the humorous ones, a telling contrast between that arch-romantic and exemplar of heraldic honor, Hotspur, and that arch-realist and epitome of worldly wisdom, Falstaff. And they had for this two brilliant actors...
Actor Olivier's Hotspur was no ranting hothead, but a feudal lord with tremendous dash-gay, sarcastic, masterful. (In Part II Actor Olivier turned up delightfully as that "forked radish," gaunt, garrulous Justice Shallow...
Publishing houses, like men, can have "dangerous years." Manhattan's Prentice-Hall, Inc., staid publisher of textbooks, was behaving last week like a middleaged family man on a fling. Its light-o'-love: Duchess Hotspur,† a bedroomy historical novel. Less than a fortnight after publication it had sold 70,000 copies...