Father Son Relationship In King Henry IV

This week’s first lecture began by us watching a short clip of Richard the II that was performed by sir john Gilbert. Richard the II was the first play in Shakespeare’s second tetralogy, Henry IV is the second play in the sequence. We talked briefly about the plot of Richard II and how Bolivar became king Henry IV. We then talked about the beginning of Henry IV in which the king is being plotted against due to his apparent forgetting of debts due, and his son whom behaves in a non-royal manner hanging out with thieves and commoners. We mentioned the idea that the central hero of Shakespeare’s historical plays was England itself always being tempted or assailed. The more apparent central character in this tetralogy is young prince Hal who goes …show more content…
There are several father son relationships throughout, such as hotspur and Northumberland, Hal and the King, as well as the relationship between Falstaff and Hal which is similar to that of a father and son. We looked at a scene in which Falstaff and Hal engaged in a bit of roleplay to act out the conversation between Hal and his father the king. In this Falstaff acts as the king berating Hal’s choice of friends and his bearing of course with the exception of himself of course, Hal then chooses to have them switch places as he does not believe his father would not speak of Falstaff in such a way. This conversation leads to Hal berating Falstaff in the guise of the king and Falstaff determined to defend himself in the guise of Hal. We talked about how this conversation has a much deeper meaning in that Hal knows he must change his lifestyle and remove Falstaff from his party of friends when he needs to step up and change the perception of the people. We then spoke about the opposite temptation that prince Hal was experiencing pulling him between good and evil in a sense. There are the destructive temptations posed by Falstaff which are the vices of the flesh such as women and wine, as well as the spiritual temptations represented by Hotspur such as impulsiveness and anger. These forces are counterbalanced by the call to duty of his father and country to become a better symbol for the