Word: hotspurs
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WHEN JOHN BELLUCCI '81-4 was a freshman, he played Hotspur in a Loeb Mainstage production of Henry IV Part I. "I had this great choreographed fight at the end with Prince Hall," he remembers. "We would go at it with these enormous magnesium swords really grunting and groaning and making it look like we were falling down all over the place, until finally he killed...
...himself the title of Henry IV. As Henry IV, Part One, begins, he discovers that, having usurped the crown, he is himself beset by usurpers. The Percy family, which helped him to the throne, has learned too well the lesson of rebellion. The firebrand of the family, young Hotspur, refuses to accede to the new king's demands for prisoners captured in a conflict along the Scottish border. The result is the civil war between Henry and his former allies that provides the basic plot for both parts of Henry...
Those two plays might better be called Fathers and Sons. While he is 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...
...heart of his production. Instead, just as the progress of the prince from tavern to court expresses the theme of the play, so Jonathan Emerson's performance as Hal points up the lesson at the Loeb. Emerson handles his comic scenes skillfully, lolling drunkenly onstage, stingingly imitating Hotspur and his lady Percy, and showing, as when he helps the helpless Falstaff into his boots, a tender and subtle shift of mood. But when confronted with a serious scene, Emerson abandons his character to the exigencies of position. So, when reprimanded by the king, Emerson's Hal does not convincingly defend...
...banners behind the prince do not look quite splendid enough; the trumpets ring a little hollow. As the lights go down on this Henry IV one remembers not the holders of exalted positions but the ignoble Falstaff who has already exited offstage, dragging the body of Hotspur as if he had killed the young leader himself. The final lesson of this production is that it is people who endure. The positions they hold, no matter how impressively presented, are, as Falstaff might say, mere "scutcheons...