Word: hotspurs
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Practical politics. But is that all? At the Boar's Head tavern, Prince Hal carouses with his companions in open parody of the society at court; at court, "Hotspur" Percy (the other Hal) releases his rage with the complete lack of self-control typical of the society at the Boar. The two worlds, in other words, are peopled with men and women of the same mettle, though any good production of Henry will, as if constructing a strong suit of armor, in joining the various elements hold them in tension...
...peak of this production is reached when Falstaff, balancing his weight on a chair balanced on a table top, wearing a pillow on his head as crown, chastises Hal in mimicry of his father, the king. Even at the climax of the play's final battle scene-in which Hotspur and Hal engage-it is Falstaff the comic spirit who steals the victory, a bit too successfully, quite literally from the jaws of death. As the two Hals meet, Falstaff staggers in to warn his friend that he will "find no boy's play here." But right on Falstaff...
...contrast, the other actors generally remain trapped within the superficial seriousness of their roles. From the first moment he rushes onstage to confront the king, John Bellucci's Hotspur is the embodiment of the choleric passions that gave that character his name. Racing from lord to lord in a plea to keep his prisoners, Belluci's Hotspur is impulsive, impatient and proud. And where his frenetic gestures grow tiring, his beautiful voice, sneering at some words, spitting out others, compensates. Still, the limitations of Bellucci's portrayal are apparent in the scenes he plays with his wife. While Susan Kander...
...ferocity could have vanquished the disguised Prince Hal, when Hal stole his loot from him after the highway robbery lark (Henry IV, Part I) at Gadshill. But that would have destroyed the confidence of the next King of England, so Falstaff let Hal win. And as for stabbing dead Hotspur and claiming to have killed him in battle, well, Hotspur might not really have been dead. Why take chances? The worst libel of honest Falstaff occurs in Henry VI, Part I, a play written earlier than the Prince Hal histories and probably only partly by Shakespeare; here "Sir John Fastolfe...
...Hotspur...