Described by Dr. White as an elegy – both a paean and lament directed towards a dying and passing world – this second of Shakespeare’s plays on Henry IV features the recurring themes of death, disease, and corruption. Again, Hal (the future Henry V) takes center stage, with a view towards his eventual role in the final of the Henry plays. In this extensive conference, Dr. White addresses, along with making many other insightful and passing observations, the perplexing prologue offered by an allegorical character; a climactic battle which never occurs; themes of frustration and disappointment (consonant with the overall focus of the play); and, as in the play’s predecessor, Henry IV, Part 1, the person and wit of the inimitable Falstaff.
Dr. White’s second installment in his series of four comprehensive presentations on Shakespeare’s English history plays. This conference delves into the world of Henry IV, a historical comedy that affords a background glimpse into the life of Prince Hal, who will be the main character in Henry V. According to Dr. White’s account, the play unfolds simultaneously in three different settings: the court, the tavern, and the battlefield; and each one is dominated by a different character. Hal’s presence in each setting weaves the disparate dramatic backdrops together, and he learns vital lessons in each. Also discussed substantively is the nature and role of Falstaff, Henry’s bawdy and ultimately tragic companion.
In Shakespeare’s Henry V, Prince Hal, who was in effect the subject also of the preceding plays, Henry IV (parts 1 and 2), finally takes center stage in this play that chronicles the struggle of former Prince Hal to put away youthful ways and adopt the persona and integrity of a king. Dr. White, in this last of his four presentations on the Henry plays and Richard II, posits that Henry V is an epic of sorts, tracing as it does the chronological, emotional, and moral quest of the new young king Henry for greatness, maturity, nobility, justice, and mercy. Of note is the effort expended by Henry to become the opposite of the man of our age – integrated rather than alienated; a coherent whole rather than fragmented parts; a genuinely moral and stately figure, rather than a pathetically amoral and degraded vagabond.
Dr. White reviews the classical tragic structure of Shakespeare’s Richard II in this first of several lectures on the Bard’s English history plays. This is perhaps Shakespeare’s first great tragedy, outlining the fate of Richard II who is in the drama a great figure indeed, blighted only by his excessive pride. Not only is that tragic flaw responsible, in true classical fashion, for his own demise, but it leads likewise to the ruin and chaos of his fourteenth-century English environs. Also consistent with the classical model is the fact that while suffering Richard gains knowledge about himself and reality that was arguably otherwise unobtainable.
Before his introduction to comedy, Dr. White declares A Midsummer Night’s Dream to be one of the few perfect works of art, and that it is comedy with a serious core. He then delves into the nature of comedy: a structure of action leading to delight, renewal, and re-invigoration. He goes on to describe the Greek satyr play, the beginning of comedy; and he discusses the history of “old comedy” originating in Greece and the “new comedy” (romantic comedy) that came from Rome. Dr. White says comedy brings us down to earth and that it must be true.
Here Dr. White begins his detailed analysis of the groups of lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by describing the different poetic forms in which Shakespeare has them speak, i,e., iambic pentameter, rhymed couplet, prose, etc. It is, he says, a play about weddings, with recurrent themes such as the moon and dreams. White points out the absurdity of young lovers who go to extremes to break the law, and he sites ones of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”
