Last performed in 2007
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King Henry IV: The Shadow of Succession is an adaptation by Charles Newell and David Bevington of Shakespeare’s two Henry IV plays. The script also includes lines from Richard II, King John, and Henry V. In condensing Shakespeare’s works about Henry IV and his son, the Prince of Wales, the adapters focused on the theme “a young man’s coming of age.” The drama premiered in January 1996 at the University of Chicago’s Court Theatre.
Fathers and Sons in The Shadow of Succession
The father-son relationship captured Shakespeare’s imagination throughout the writing of his second cycle of history plays. These dramas focus on the fortunes of Bolingbroke (who became Henry IV) and his eldest son, Prince Henry, known to his friends as Hal.
To create a more poignant portrayal of fathers and sons, Shakespeare makes Hal (1387-1422) approximately the same age as Harry Percy (1364-1403), called Hotspur, who was actually 23 years older than the prince. In The Shadow of Succession Hal and Hotspur are archrivals—both wayward, headstrong sons whose fathers play them off against each other.
As the play begins, King Henry IV is temporarily blinded by the shallow values of the fiery Hotspur, son of the Earl of Northumberland, a proud, self-serving and devious man. Henry admires Hotspur’s single-minded pursuit of chivalric honor, even though the ill-tempered youth heads a rebellion against him. The king chides Hal for being a mere “shadow of succession,” one whose hereditary claim to the throne is insubstantial because it is not supported by “worthy” deeds like Hotspur’s.
Just as Henry wishes he could exchange sons with Northumberland, Hal has more affinity with the merry monarch of riot, Sir John Falstaff, than with his natural father. Presiding over his kingdom of childish pleasures at the Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap, Falstaff becomes to Hal a supportive, affectionate father figure who ridicules chivalry and tramples upon royal decorum.
“If I had a thousand sons,” says Falstaff in his first line, “I would teach them to addict themselves to sack.” In this case “sack” symbolizes Falstaff’s entire way of life: the way of pleasure, comforts and mirth. In Falstaff’s world there is no place for a man like Hotspur, who is driven by ambition and an exaggerated sense of honor. Falstaff refuses to take any responsibility seriously. Worse yet, the fat knight becomes increasingly abusive of others to sustain his extravagant lifestyle.
As Hal embarks on a course toward maturity, he recognizes that Falstaff’s view of life is just as flawed as Hotspur’s. Both the rebel who would displace the king and the rogue who commits petty crimes are enemies to order in the state.
However seemingly wasteful, the time Hal spends with his surrogate father must be regarded as useful to a king in training. Falstaff’s mockery of artificial chivalric values and aristocratic coldness gives the prince valuable insight into courtly society. In Falstaff’s Eastcheap, Hal also comes to understand an entirely different segment of society whose members will some day be his subjects.
In time Henry IV’s fears that his son will bring disaster to the throne of England prove entirely unfounded. When the call of duty comes, Hal redeems both himself and his father’s kingdom. Father and son are fully reconciled as Henry lies dying.
Yet Hal’s reign, however, will be entirely different from that of his father—who as a shrewd, calculating politician took the crown illegally and wore it in fear and guilt. Henry V, the God-chosen king and chivalric hero whom historians refer to as “the mirror of all Christian kings,” is a kindly disposed, witty man who understands human nature.
Henry V’s first act as king is his own reconciliation with the Lord Chief Justice, England’s executive officer of law and order who once arrested young Hal. The king submits himself to the Justice’s “wise directions” and invites him to “be as a father to [his] youth.” It then becomes the duty of Henry’s new surrogate father to enforce the king’s banishment of his former surrogate father, Falstaff.
Hal has successfully made his own way along the road to kingship, assimilating the positive qualities of the father figures in his life and rejecting the negative. In the drama that bears his name, Henry V will take the stage as Shakespeare’s ideal monarch, for the king who emerges from the madcap prince is splendid indeed.
Janie McCauley
Dramaturg