“A garment all of blood”: Michael Pennington’s Prince Hal

Shakespeare Bulletin, Number 37 Fall 1994, Renée Pigeon

According to its founders, Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington, the English Shakespeare Company grew out of their mutual desire to do something independent of the two British theatrical institutions for which both had worked, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Their initial project was “The Henrys,” a staging of the two parts of ‘Henry IV’ and ‘Henry V’ that toured in Britain and Europe, and Canada from the winter of 1986 through the summer of 1987.  This was followed by two tours of “The Wars of the Roses” – the first and second tetralogies,  with the three parts of Henry VI condensed into two plays, ‘Henry VI – The House of Lancaster’ and ‘Henry VI – The House of York’. The production toured widely, playing in Britain, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States in 1987-88, and, with many cast changes, Britain, Australia, and Germany in 1988-89.

The company adopted the recent fashion for scheduling marathon performances; originally the three ”Henry” plays were offered as a trilogy on Saturdays, and later the “Wars” were also presented in sequence, beginning Friday evening with ‘Richard II’ and finishing late Sunday with ‘Richard III’. The final date on the second tour was Swansea, Wales, in April 1989, and it was here that the production was videotaped, using five stationary and two hand-held cameras.

Bogdanov’s feeling that in some productions “the story and the politics had both been submerged in an effort to bring medieval pageantry and protocol to the stage” led to one of the production’s most successful features, its eclectic design. When the first tetralogy and ‘Richard II’ were added to the original production of “The Henrys” the decision was made to start with ‘Richard II’ in a Regency setting, progress through Victorian and Edwardian periods, and more or less reach the present day with ‘Richard III’. However, within this broad progression towards the present day, styles are eclectically mixed, so that while Henry IV's court wear Victorian frock coats, the tavern crowd look like punks and bikers; the French army wears elegant uniforms, but Henry V’s “warriors for the working day” wear modern combat fatigues; the principals at the battle of Shrewsbury wear medieval tabards and fight with swords;  Richard III and Richmond wear full armor for their final confrontation, but, having prevailed, Richmond delivers his final speech from a television studio. Unlike productions which (often effectively, of course) set Shakespeare’s plays in a specific period – an eighteenth-century ‘Love’s Labours Lost’, an Edwardian ‘Merchant of Venice’ – the design of Bogdanov’s cycle not only prevents the audience from seeing the plays merely as colourful medieval pageantry but prevents their historical localization all together: then and now, past and present, blur into a nightmare of power and violence.

From the first, Bogdanov, influenced by the work of Jan Kott, saw the plays as offering inescapable parallels to modern-day Britain; as he put it,

“The Henrys were plays for today, the lessons of history unlearnt.… How could the plays not be understood in a contemporary context?  The Irish problem still with us; the Scots clamoring for devolution and the desire to assert their own distinctive culture; the Welsh beleaguered in their welcoming hillsides, fighting a rearguard action to save their language…; the North laid waste by speculative bulldozers and lack of investment; urban decay hastened by the plethora or concrete car parks and high-rise high-rent office blocks. Nothing had changed in six hundred years, save the means.”

Bogdanov’s vision of the plays insists upon these parallels, on the immediacy of Shakespeare as our contemporary; while viewers may object to some features of the production as simply off-base or far-fetched (the execution of Joan of Arc, for example, as a South African style ‘necklacing’ was often panned by critics), in general Bogdanov quite simply makes the plays live, especially for an audience not immersed in Shakespeare. The punks who appear at the Boar’s Head tavern, for instance, serve to clarify for a contemporary audience not composed of Shakespeare specialists how far from his father’s court Prince Hal has strayed. The occasional but well-chosen additions to the plays also work; probably the most effective is the Chorus who prefaces ‘Richard III’ by introducing the convoluted Plantagenet family history,  the players and their eventual fates.

Given that the performances were taped live and that the tight budget permitted very little reshooting, the overall technical quality of the video series is quite good. The use of seven cameras allowed a range of shots, which keep the video productions dynamic, although the editing sometimes frustrates: an extended close shot of one actor when a medium shot would allow us to see the reaction to his words, or an odd angle at a crucial moment – as Hotspur, played by Andrew Jarvis, speaks his dying words, for example, we look down on the top of his shaved and shining head. The energy of the productions in and of itself would make the series a valuable resource for both teachers and scholars; but what is more significant is the distinctive interpretation of the history plays this series offers, especially in contrast to the BBC Shakespeare series.(1) To illustrate the nature of performative choices made by Bogdanov and Pennington and their company, and as a detailed example of some of the strengths of the cycle, I’d like to focus on the performance of the Company’s co-founder Pennington as Prince Hal in the first and second parts of ‘Henry IV’.

Barbara Hodgdon writes in ‘The End Crowns All: Closure and Contradiction in Shakespeare’s History’ that in ‘Henry IV’ Shakespeare constructs a “highly mythologized economy, structured through binary oppositions – court/tavern, honor/dishonor, time/ timelessness…. In which the first term represents the desirable ideal, the second its inversion. As the only figure who can move flexibly between their boundaries, Hal encompasses their contradictions…”. As envisioned by Bogdanov and performed by Pennington, Prince Hal is racked by the contradictions Hodgdon argues he encompasses. In his study of ‘I Henry IV’ in performance, Scott McMillin traces the development of an emphasis on Prince Hal in post-World War II productions of the play, a development he attributes to the trend towards performing the “Henriad” as a cycle; McMillin argues that “the change of emphasis that makes Prince Hal the central character requires ‘Henry V’ as well, and there is no evidence that the three plays were performed as a sequence during the first 250 years of their existence”. The modern emphasis on Prince Hal thus began, according to McMillin, with Richard Burton’s performance in the role in Anthony Quayle’s Festival of Britain production in 1951, the first major production to shift emphasis from what he terms “star turns for the actors of Falstaff and Hotspur”.

Pennington’s Hal is very far indeed from the self-contained young prince of David Gwillim in the BBC “Henriad” or even the more ambivalent Keith Baxter in Orson Welles’ ‘Chimes at Midnight’. There is a deep bitterness in Pennington’s performance, accompanied by a sense of desperate frustration that could, one feels, turn sadistic given the right provocation. Rather than a young man sowing his wild oats, resolute in his plans for future reformation, Pennington’s Hal is an ambiguous figure, who seems at times an aging playboy. The credibility of his promises, to the audience and to his father are questionable; the “long-grown wounds of [his] intemperance” (3.2.156) seem as though they’ve festered for years; and his father’s angry despair over his behaviour appears well-grounded. In part, this is due to the actor’s age: in the account of the cycle and the company that he and Bogdanov co-wrote, Pennington, born in 1943, admits that he was “already a bit old for Prince Hal and not getting any younger” and, during the second tour (1988-89), a younger actor, John Dougall, alternated with him in the role.

Pennington’s age may have been less apparent in the stage performances than it is on television (he has a slim physique, if a receding hairline); but in the video close shots, Hal is plainly a decade or more older than his companion Poins (effectively played by Charles Dales as a petty London crook), and I at least can’t achieve the necessary suspension of disbelief to see him as twenty-something rather than forty-something. Pennington looks far more at home in a well-tailored suit playing a suave Buckingham to Jarvis’ Richard of Gloucester in the ESC’s ‘Richard III’ than he does in the jeans and denim jacket he often affects as Prince Hal.

One has to conclude, of course, that Pennington plays the roles he does because he co-founded the company, which had a wealth of young actors who would have been more natural choices to play Hal. Critical reaction to Pennington’s performance throughout the cycle’s tours were largely positive, although Bernard McElroy found him a “shallow actor who seems to reduce all his various roles to the same set of physical and vocal mannerisms”. In the context of the series as a whole, however, his doubling as Richard II and Hal is certainly effective, adding a resonance to Bolingbroke’s accusations to his son in ‘I Henry IV’ that “For all the world, / As thou art this hour was Richard then /When I from France set foot at Ravenspurgh” (3.2.92-94). In the final balance, Pennington’s unconventional casting as Hal, while it has some drawbacks, adds to some interesting tensions achieved in his performance, at least in the video version.

The staging of the first tavern scene (2.4) effectively demonstrates the complexities of Hal’s relationship with Falstaff, played by Barry Stanton.(2) Stanton’s Falstaff seems a plausible knight and gentleman, his upper-class accent distinguishing him from the distinctly working-class tavern regulars and aligning him with Pennington’s Hal; this impression is emphasized by his costumes, which initially make him look rather like a boulevardier, though he wears a more traditionally “Falstaffian” outfit for the Gadshill robbery and subsequent tavern scene.

1.2, played as a hungover morning-after-the-night-before, had established an easy camaraderie between Hal and Falstaff. In the second act, Bogdanov’s Boar’s Head tavern is a boisterous London pub featuring a live band that plays through the first minute of the scene. Hal is clearly drunk, swaying slightly; he is having a terrific time, but his enthusiasm tinged with a slight edge of hysteria. His parody of his rival, the “Hotspur of the North,” has a nasty, jealous edge; this is clearly not a Hal already secure in his plan to reform and best his rival.

The “play extempore,” a crucial moment in many modern productions, gives us both Hal and Falstaff playing to the galleries; Falstaff’s speech is bathetic until his repetition of “banish not him thy Harry’s company.” “Banish plump Jack, and you [sic] banish all the world” then echoes in the suddenly still tavern; Hal, looking down from his mock throne set atop a tavern table, his drunken euphoria now dissipated, responds, of course, “I do, I will (2.4.472-76). As in many recent productions, what had been boisterous carousing becomes, at that moment, a serious exchange between Hal and Falstaff, one which prefigures the eventual rejection of the Prince’s companion.(3) This moment seems heightened by what I noted earlier with the actors’ accents: Hal and Falstaff can suddenly shut out everyone else and communicate on a different level with one another, partly because of their closeness but also because they are different from the others in the tavern. When the knocking at the door echoes and Falstaff must rely on Hal’s collusion to hide him from the authorities, Bogdanov lets us see the Prince, still sitting on the mock throne, test his power over his companion with a deliberate pause before he agrees – a decision Falstaff greets with an exaggerated sigh of relief. Pennington’s Hal here effectively foreshadows the king he will become: engaging in the diversions of the tavern, he is nevertheless isolated by his position, even from Falstaff, for whom he feels the most affection; his companions seek his company because of that position, while he seeks theirs for reasons he may not fully understand; in any event, it is a position circumstances will allow him only fleetingly to forget, usually with the help of a bottle. Moreover, the exercise of power gives him a momentary frisson of excitement – and we sense again that his frustration and bitterness are tinged with latent sadism.

Hal indulges himself in a sardonic exchange with the Lord Chief Justice (whom Bogdanov has replace the sheriff, thus preparing for his appearance in the second play), savagely mimicking a ‘Hooray Henry’ upper class fop’; the Lord Chief Justice’s aversion to this nightmare of a royal heir is plain. Hal then dismisses Peto, crosses to the curtained bed on which Falstaff now lies sleeping, stands over him and strokes his hair, then gently pulls the curtains to around the bed and leaves the deserted tavern, swinging his bottle of sack.

It’s become a critical commonplace that Falstaff is a substitute father-figure to Hal (with some scholars, such as Valerie Traub, arguing recently for him as a maternal figure); but here it is the Prince who shows a fatherly tenderness towards the knight, his demonstrative act taking place only when there are no witnesses to it. It is an effective gesture, one which both establishes his loneliness and foreshadows the duties of kingship to come, as Falstaff sleeps and the Prince watches over him.

The human contact in which Pennington’s Hal indulges as Falstaff sleeps is clearly denied him in his relationship with his own father, a relationship given a complex emphasis in the ESC production. This is hardly novel: in the 1975 RSC version of the two parts of ‘Henry IV’ and ‘Henry V’, directed by Terry Hands, “two neurotics … father and son, were the heart … of the production” (McMillin). Similarly, in Trevor Nunn’s less well-regarded 1982 RSC version, featuring Patrick Stewart as Henry and Gerard Murphy as a boyish immature Hal, the father-son relationship was emphasized. In both the RSC production, the father-son relationship seems to have been underscored at the expense of other possible interpretations of the play’s issues, with the personal taking precedence over the political. Notable in the ESC cycle is the way in which Bogdanov shows the personal driving the politics: as McMillin puts it “the leading idea of the production was that the refusal of communication between this repressive father and the anxiety-ridden son he produced would have political consequences – fatal for many – in the kingdom and overseas”. (4)

Hal’s first encounter with Henry occurs in 3.2. As the scene opens in the ESC production, Michael Cronin, who plays Henry, is seated behind a large black desk (a prop effectively used as a throne in the deposition scene in ‘Richard II’ and again in ‘Henry V’). when he rings a  small bell on his desk, Hal enters – clearly nervous, his denim jacket and jeans in sharp contrast to his father’s dark frock coat – and walks with a mock military swagger, coming to a parody of heel-clicking attention in front of the desk. In the course of his father’s long harangue, he squirms uncomfortably, until Cronin’s sensitive expression of Henry’s desire for his son: “Not an eye/ But is aweary of they common sight/ Save mine, which hath desired to see thee more –“ (3.2.87.89). Here the son tries to read his father’s face, to see if he is in fact sincerely moved to tears.

As his father continues to rebuke him, it is finally the accusation of cowardice – his taunt about Hal’s “vassal fear” (3.2.124) that evokes an impassioned response. “Do not think so. You shall not find it so” (3.1.129) is desperate, his revulsion at this father’s censure apparent. Pennington emphasizes Hal’s self-loathing and self-doubt; his two references to his “shame” are not merely courtly, civil dispraise of self but deeply, agonizingly felt:

… I will wear a garment all of blood

And stain my favours in a bloody mask,

Which washed away, shall scour my shame with it.

… for every honour sitting on his helm,

would they were multitudes, and on my head

My shames redoubled! (3.2.135-37, 142-44)

Henry appears at first surprised, then gratified by Hal’s passion; but Pennington’s tortured reading of Hal’s lines make us question the way Henry’s eyes light up as his son promises to wreak his revenge on his opponent. His condemnation has unleashed in Hal a dangerous streak of violence, and there is something disturbing in the fatherly pride he now shows in his son. He moves to embrace Hal, promising him “charge and sovereign trust” (3.2.161) in the coming battle – but their embrace is forestalled by the entrance of Blunt. (5) Hal waits awkwardly, the moment of contact with his father disrupted, until Henry’s “Our hands are full of business. Let’s away” (3.2.179) becomes a dismissal. Henry and Blunt exit; Hal, left alone on stage, cries out in frustration and kicks at his father’s desk before running off.

Balancing Pennington’s neurotic, vulnerable Hal is a Hotspur (played by Jarvis) whose weaknesses are correspondingly minimized; his native youthful idealism is heightened, and his rashness seems less blameworthy given the politicians who surround him. This view of the character is intensified by Jarvis’ performance, since he is a dynamic stage presence in all the roles he undertakes in the cycle, culminating in his Richard of Gloucester.

Bogdanov again uses accents here to good effect: the decision to play the Percies with Yorkshire accents, juxtaposed against Pennington’s elegant Southern inflections, helps to make the rebels initially seem sympathetically anti-establishment figures, renouncing the yoke of southern rule. When the elder Percies betray Hotspur, his exhortation to his troops before Shrewsbury, becomes one of the play’s most moving moments. Jarvis’ Hotspur is single-minded, certainly, but not a zealot, and he is, like his relatives, untainted by cynicism.

Bogdanov’s staging of the play’s final scenes is among the most innovative aspects of the production and contributes significantly to the production’s interpretation of a tormented Hal. Bogdanov grants his Hotspur a final act of magnanimity: as Hal and Hotspur fight, Hotspur gains the advantage, and Hal is left weaponless. The Prince cowers on his knees, arms covering his head, awaiting the final blow from the opponent, who hesitates only slightly, then drops a sword on the ground in front of him. Their combat concludes as Hal quickly slays Hotspur. In essence, then, Hal wins not because he finally comes into his own and “pay[s] the debt he never promisèd” (1.2.203) but because he is willing to seize the moment and take advantage of the heroic idealism of his opponent. His own insecurity about his valor (remembering his reaction to his father’s taunt about his “vassal fear”) is borne out when he cringes in front of his adversary – he does lack Hotspur’s courage. His victory thus becomes ambiguous, an effect heightened by the alterations Bogdanov makes to the play’s final scenes and Falstaff’s claim to have killed Hotspur.

Bogdanov has said he finds ‘Chimes at Midnight’ “one of the best Shakespeare films ever made,” and its influence on him is particularly apparent in the play’s last scene. Like Welles, Bogdanov reorders the final moments of the play: Hal, elated by the day’s events, eagerly reports to his father, when Falstaff enters bearing Hotspur’s corpse and claiming to have slain him. Hal is at first amused by his friend’s lie – it’s such a whopper, so characteristic of Falstaff, that he just bursts out laughing – until he sees his father’s stern reaction. He steps toward Henry to explain, but his approach is forestalled by his father’s raising his sword and then exiting. Hal watches him leave. Then turns slowly back to Falstaff, so overcome he cannot at first speak; he throws down his sword while Falstaff, with a somber expression, faces downstage, awaiting the Prince’s judgement. (The blocking here effectively echoes that of the tavern scene, when Falstaff waited for Hal to agree to hide him from the authorities.) “For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, /I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have” (5.4.155.56) is delivered in exhausted despair as Hal leans over Hotspur’s body to retrieve his “favor.” Like other addictions, Falstaff at first attractive, has become inescapable; having traded the cold rejection of his real father for the surrogate warmth of Falstaff, he cannot now reverse the exchange. Barry Stanton’s emphatic delivery of Falstaff’s “I’ll follow, as they say, for reward” (5.5.160), said within the Prince’s hearing, stresses his avarice. The damage he has done to Hal’s possible reconciliation with his father erases any amusement we may feel at his earlier antics, while our knowledge of the real nature of the final conflict between Hotspur and Hal undercuts any sense of closure the play may provide. Like Falstaff, Hal’s fears have been resurrected, not put to rest at Shrewsbury. In the final moments, as the credits roll, Hal stands, his back to the audience, crossed swords raised above his head, an ambivalent victor.

Bogdanov’s changes to the final scenes of ‘1 Henry IV’ serve to lessen the difficulty of the transition to ‘2 Henry IV’; since the resolution at Shrewsbury was so ambiguous, we are not surprised to find Hal back again in his disreputable lodgings in 2.1. Now the Prince’s coat of arms is tossed carelessly over the back of the couch; Pennington’s costume is still casual, but the jeans of ‘1 Henry ‘ have been replaced by more stylish khakis and a red shirt. (6)  The dialogue between Hal and Poins is riddled with tension; they bicker, fed up with each other, the difference between their accents again highlighting the Prince’s isolation from true companionship. As the scene closes, Pennington delivers “Follow me, Ned” in a tone of pointed command.

The Prince’s self-disgust, intermittently expressed in the first play, is now clearly evident. Pennington plays him as having grown weary of his slumming, becoming increasingly ready to assume his proper station in life and to exercise his power (shades of a current Prince of Wales?); to sport has become as tedious as work. His last visit to the Boar’s Head Tavern, accompanied by Poins, attempts to recapture the horseplay of the first part’s encounters, but too much has changed; when this scene, like the first, is interrupted by news from court, Hal’s “I feel me much to blame / So idly to profane the precious time” (2.4.360-61) is heartfelt indeed.

Because of Bogdanov’s emphasis on the relationship between Hal and Henry, and Pennington’s interpretation of a neurotic Hal, the two plays reach their emotional peak not in the fifth act with the rejection of Falstaff but, instead, in the fourth act, in the scenes of the King’s death. Told that his eldest son is present, Henry is eager to see him, until he notices the crown is missing. Weakened by his illness, he is supported on either side by two of his other sons, Clarence and Gloucester, at whom he blindly lashes out, roughly shoving one on the line “See, sons, what things you are” (4.5.64). His volatile mood swings contrast sharply with his earlier rigid control; but his passion for his eldest son is also stressed, the dutiful younger brothers bearing their father’s fury, as he literally throws them aside. His rage is replaced by sobs at Warwick’s explanation of the Prince’s whereabouts – “But wherefore did he take away the crown” (4.5.88) – then rage again as Hal enters.

At the king’s command, the two are left alone together, and Hal nears hysteria as he pleads with his father to believe him. Hal kneels sobbing at the foot of the bed; Henry, sitting on its edge, stretches out his hand and places it on top of his son’s head, who, without looking up, reaches out and grasps his father’s hand – the first moment in the course of the two plays, with the brief hand-clasping at Shrewsbury, that father and son have actually touched one another. Hal then climbs up, like and eager child, to kneel on the bed for his father’s final speech. Henry tenderly rocks his son in his arms as he speaks rapidly, fighting off death to offer his last words of advice to the future king – to “busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels” (4.5.213-14) – and passes to him the crown. In order to live up to his father’s legacy, Hal must now become Henry V and “awake … the sleeping sword of war”; the bloody field of Agincourt is thus born as a father finally nurtures his prodigal son.

What is most compelling about Pennington’s Prince Hal is the way in which he makes one rethink the role and text, and that value extends to the ESC series as a whole. Admittedly, the individual plays in the series are not uniformly successful: to my mind, ‘Richard II’, the most conventional was the weakest; the condenses versions of the three parts of ‘Henry VI’ are engaging, especially given the relative unfamiliarity of the plays, while ‘Richard III’ is a remarkable achievement, a play in which Bogdanov’s eclectic touches work very effectively indeed, and Jarvis is a mesmerizing Richard. Despite occasional missteps, the achievement of Bogdanov and Pennington and their company is remarkable; we should be very grateful that funding was obtained to preserve this memorable endeavour on video. (7)

Notes

(1) The video series of the seven plays is not, however, a wholly faithful rendering of the production as performed on stage. While popular music was apparently used extensively in live performances, licensing costs prevented its inclusion in the videos. And some scenes and speeches Bogdanov chose to admit. One of the most controversial touches in ‘Henry V’, frequently mentioned and occasionally condemned in reviews, was eliminated: as the English tavern crowd arches off to war in France, we hear Bardolph,, Pistol and Nym chanting “’Ere we go, ‘ere we go, ‘ere we go” like English football supporters, but the screen fades to black. On the video, the audience cannot see the large banner unfurled on stage reading “FUCK THE FROGS.” The opening line of the next scene (2.4), the King of France’s “Thus come the English with full power upon us” is understandably greeted with sustained laughter by the live audience, but the joke is lost on the video.

(2) The performance of the ESC’s first Falstaff, John Woodvine, was widely acclaimed. Stanton stepped into the role for the second tour in 1988-89, and many published reviews and critiques of the series express dismay over the absence of Woodvine; Samuel Crowl, for example, found that Stanton lacked Woodvine’s “exquisite sense of timing”. Without having seen Woodvine, however, I found Stanton a memorable Falstaff.

(3) McMillin argues that the serious emphasis on this moment originated with Anthony Quayle’s 1951 production of the play.

(4)  McMillin’s comments are based on the prompt-book of the earliest staging of the ESC sequence, “The Henrys,” which toured in 1986, and his observation of the 1987 Toronto performances, checked against notes supplied to him by Barbara Hodgdon. Cast changes between the first and second tours of the full cycle were significant: Barry Stanton replaced John Woodvine as Falstaff; Patrick O’Connell played King Henry in “The Henrys,” John Castle in the 1987-88 tour, and Michael Cronin in the 1988-89 tour. Changes in such important roles understandably resulted in many changes in the staging, both small and large: for example, Hodgdon writes in ‘ The End Crowns All’ that Pennington, seeing the supposedly dead Falstaff, “dismissively speaks his epitaph”, while on the video Pennington kneels by Falstaff’s body and sobs.

(5) Another version of this moment has been recounted in some of the commentary of the stage production: both Samuel Crowl and Scott McMillin describe Pennington as purposely avoiding the embrace with his father. Crowl writes that “Hal was aware, of course, that to accept his father’s embrace was also to accept his place in history and to be folded into a world of time and death, parricide and regicide”; McMillin writes that “How little Hal would give to this rigid father was stunningly clear, as was the violence that would erupt in the kingdom from their refusal to understand each other”. My interpretation of the scene as it appears on the video is that Henry steps toward his son with open arms to embrace him; Hal steps toward him; Blunt is heard to enter (his loud footsteps echo before he can actually be seen),  with Hal possibly sensing his presence first; Hal then draws back slightly, and, as his father realizes the intrusion, he does the same; both men react against what would become a public display of their reconciliation.

(6) Samuel Crowl notes that this costuming change from part one indicates a move “in colors towards those of St George, whose banner always hung at the center of the rear stage for the English Council Chamber scenes.”

(7) An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 1993 California State University Shakespeare Symposium. I’d like to thank my colleagues in attendance there for many stimulating comments and suggestions.

Works cited

Bevington, David, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 4th ed. New York: Harper Collins 1992.

Bogdanov, Michael and Michael Pennington. The English Shakespeare Company: The Story of the Wars of the Roses 1986-1989. London: Nick Hearn Books, 1990.

Crowl, Samuel. Shakespeare Observed: Studies in Performance on Stage and Screen. Athens: Ohio UP, 1992.

Hodgdon, Barbara. The End Crowns All: Closure and Contradiction in Shakespeare’s History. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.

McElroy, Bernard. The Plantagenets in Chicago. Shakespeare Quarterly 39.4 (Winter 1988)

McMillin, Scott, Henry IV, Part One. Shakespeare in Performance Series. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1991.

Return to The Wars of The Roses Articles