Henry IV Part I

"It takes place around 1400, with the usual battle in the background, and the basic story is that King Henry IV is beleaguered and besieged, and is waiting for his son, Prince Hal, to give him a hand. It keeps cutting off to Hal in taverns wasting his life, and in the meantime, his rival Hotspur is making his own bid for the crown, assuming Prince Hal will never amount to anything. I just love Shakespeare’s version of a coming-of-age story. For me, the wonderful turning point is where Prince Hal, who’s had a fantastic time playing around and joking and drinking, throws off his friendship with his ne’er-do-well companions (particularly Falstaff) and gives that absolutely wonderful speech: ‘I know you all, and will awhile uphold the unyoked humour of your idleness.’ It’s just such an absolutely brilliant and cold-hearted declaration of what it is to be a king. Well exactly – it suggests a kind of recognition of his own destiny. One’s not sure how much he’s recognised it all along and has just been biding his time. There’s a lot of time spent talking about the betrayal of Falstaff, but I think that’s terribly sentimental: Falstaff was born to be betrayed. The wonderful thing about teenage years, and coming of age and so on, is that shift that happens: that moment when everything is refined and everything suddenly leaps into focus. Maybe it happens from middle age to old age as well, when you suddenly see people and you realise they’re old, but that’s what I absolutely love about Prince Hal: the fact that it is a moment – because it’s a play – that’s completely condensed into that one speech."