Old Play in Manhattan

Henry IV, Part I (by William Shakespeare; produced by Maurice Evans). Though Henry IV contains the greatest comic figure in English literature, it has been produced on Broadway only once (for a week in 1926) in 43 years. One reason: the whole play cannot be performed in a single evening; another: Falstaff is not only the greatest but the fattest of comic figures, and a severe physical strain on any actor who, all padded and stuffed, impersonates him. For that weighty reason, Maurice Evans announced he would play Falstaff for only four weeks.

There are other reasons than Falstaff why Henry IV* is richly worth reviving. One of Shakespeare's most vigorous and varied chronicle plays, it rings with martial clamor, abounds in striking personages, lights up momentous times. In Part I, the rebellion of the Percys and their confederates against Henry IV opposes the heedless, gallant Hotspur to the cooler, better-balanced Prince Hal. There is rousing theatre in Hotspur's eloquent defiance; warmth in his half-boyish, half-intense love scene with his wife; pathos in his death.

But Falstaff o'erstrides the play. Unknightliest of knights, a "tun of a man," a "huge bombard of sack"--guzzler, lecher, liar, braggart, coward, thief--he is like some centrifugal force overcoming gravitation. Far from being a villain, he is the most entertaining and lovable of knaves. Caught out in his outrageous boasts, his fantastic lies, shamming dead (to avoid being killed) on the battlefield, he never loses his unshatterable aplomb, never lags in invention or languishes in wit. At bottom Falstaff may well be a superb showman, not expecting to be believed, only counting on being relished; not expecting to be acquitted, only certain of being pardoned. "He carves out his jokes," said Hazlitt, "as he would a capon or a haunch of venison, where there is cut and come again; and pours out upon them the oil of gladness. His tongue drops fatness, and in the chambers of his brain 'it snows of meat and drink.' "

For plot, Henry IV poses the cool Hal against the fiery Hotspur; but for theme it poses Hotspur against Falstaff, contrasting on a mighty scale the romantic and realistic ways life. To great-hearted Hotspur honor is everything. But Falstaff asks: "Can honor set to a leg? . . . Honor hath no skill in surgery then? . . . Who hath honor?--he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. . . . Therefore I'll none of it." So Falstaff lives; and Hotspur dies.

As in the uncut Hamlet, Margaret Webster's fine direction gives life and movement to a congested, multiform play. If the production has faults, they spring from excess of theatricality, not from taking Shakespeare too reverently. As Falstaff, Actor Evans has gusto and wit, though not quite enough of the knight's profound worldliness. And--perhaps surprisingly--he is better as the fat roisterer than he was as the melancholy Dane.

*Which, for stage production, effectively splits up into Parts I and II.

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