ABSTRACT
In Henry IV there is a variety of style, fully mastered, which is new in Shakespeare and which can hardly be matched even in his later work. Shakespeare’s subjects start with an advantage; their ‘fables’ already are charged with resonant meanings, to which the ‘many-imaged life’ gives a fully realized dimension. Between the tetralogies, Shakespeare evolved from a fascination with men’s drives to a fascination with their whole natures, and with the lives that circle round them. About the rest of his creation Shakespeare displays a fascinated sympathy with their natures, their lives past and present, their relationships and neighbourhoods, their minds and concerns. The word ‘antithesis’ appears for the early plays in the author's title, as against ‘synthesis’ for the later, because Shakespeare centres his dramatic interests less in rounded character and its social context, such as so enriches the Henry IV plays, than in assertive, often acerbic, crackling with vitality and captivatingly exciting, polarized in ideas and passions.
