Word: iv
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...decades earlier, another great critic, James Agate, reviewing a production of I Henry IV, stated: "Shakespearean history is like beer; some is better than other some, but none is bad. I could sit for hours and listen entranced to such cataloguing as: 'Of prisoners, Hotspur took/Mordake the Earl of Fife, and eldest son/To beaten Douglas; and the Earl of Athol,/Of Murray, Angus and Menteith.'" I doubt that there are many who would agree with Tynan, and I'm sure precious few would echo Agate...
...both Tynan and Agate were Britons-and we are Americans. Director Coe, who is English himself, had to make numerous decisions about how best to present I Henry IV at Stratford-on-Housatonic rather Stratford-on-Avon. In his printed credo, Coe announces as his goal to "realize, to as great a degree as possible, the playwright's original intention." Fine, but Coe has proceeded to depart from his promise in several ways...
...text had to be cut. That is pretty standard these days, since directors generally assume that audiences will not sit through an uncut text (unless it's written by Eugene O'Neill). But Coe has cut more than usual here. To what end? Well, instead of letting Henry IV speak his opening lines, Coes has the King sit in silent thought while we hear a taped chunk of Richard II played on a loudspeaker with a hideous echo track...
...then decided that the more Falstaffian comedy he includes, the better American audiences will like it (he may be right about this). So he has imported Doll Tearsheet from 2 Henry IV and interpolated a low-life scene from that play. And just before the end of the show, after the climactic Battle of Shrewsbury, Coe brings on Falstaff to declaim his long paean to the wonders of sherry sack--which also comes from the later play--and thus mars Shakespeare's carefully wrought conclusion. There are, too, some lines that have been moved from their proper place...
...fond of 2 Henry IV--indeed I am found of it too-but he should realize that the whole story cannot be presented in one night any more than can Wagner's four-day Ring cycle. The tale takes four plays to tell, but each one is self-sufficient and intelligible by itself Attempts to conflate two or more plays have been only partly successful-as Orson Welles discovered in his 1965 film version, Chimes at Midnight...