2002/12/05 by James C. Bulman · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Scottish History and National Identity #American Constitutional Law and Politics #Throne #Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor #Coronation #Politics #History #Narrative #Law #Classics #Political science #Art #Literature #Performance art #Art history
paper · doi:10.1017/ccol052177277x.010
openalex publication_date 2002/12/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
The two parts of Henry IV dramatise Prince Hal's coming of age amidst the political unrest following his father's usurpation of the throne of Richard II. The consequences of that usurpation weigh heavily upon King Henry: civil broils prolonged by those lords who helped him to the crown and now feel abandoned by him; fear of a rival claimant, Edmund Mortimer, whom Richard designated his heir; and an acute awareness that by killing Richard, he has violated - and made impossible to assume for himself - the divine right of kings. Such obstacles help to explain why his son Hal chooses to idle away his time in a tavern rather than at court. But Hal must learn to surmount them if he is to succeed his father, and in the royal narrative of Henry IV , which chronicles his progress from the taverns of Eastcheap to his coronation at Westminster, he does so: he defeats the rebels, transforms himself from wastrel to responsible heir, and strives to prove that linear succession can serve as a legitimate alternative to divine right. In dramatising his success, the two Henry IV plays offer a comic view of fifteenth-century history. Yet they also address political and social issues pertinent to Elizabethan England, and their popularity for Shakespeare's audiences no doubt resulted in part from their use of the past to comment on the present.