ABSTRACT
Mark Van Doren offers a close reading of the Henry IV plays based not on historical perspective/ideas of convention but on a sensitivity to the idiom of Sir John Falstaff's talk about vocation and his expertise in miming, or to the explosive rhythms of Hotspur in which William Shakespeare learned at last to make poetry as natural as the human voice. The poetry of Hotspur and the prose of Falstaff have never been surpassed in their respective categories and in Falstaff alone there is sufficient evidence of Shakespeare's mastery in the art of understanding style. Northumberland is a high horse with dancing steel for muscles, an uncontrollable charger with gadflies and his earliest appearance in Shakespeare was during the Richard II rebellion, when, entering to his father without a nod for Bolingbroke who stood by, he was asked whether he had forgotten the noble Duke. His answer was in some indefinable way as Henry IV already simmered in his blood.
