A very short review of Henry IV part II.

This week, I finally finished slogging through William Shakespeare's King Henry IV part II.  Now a class made me once again a fan of The Bard, and I have enjoyed a lot of what I have read by him over the years.  I even enjoyed Henry IV part I, despite having a bit of a difficult time reading it.  So it came down to reading Henry IV part II, because I felt like I should continue the story.  Granted, I probably should have started with Richard II, but I didn't feel like entrenching myself that deep without feeling out the rest of the series.

For some background, it should be mentioned that William Shakespeare had a very popular series of plays involving the histories of some of the kings of England.  Those plays were Richard II, Henry IV part I, Henry IV part II, and Henry V.  Each of these plays has about fifteen billion characters, and approximately 67% of these characters are named Henry.  They're not exactly the easiest plays to read, even by Shakespearean standards.

Anyhow, for more of my thoughts on Henry IV part II, here is my review from Goodreads.


King Henry Iv Part Ii: Second Series by William Shakespeare
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Far be it from me to say that a Shakespeare play is "boring," but let's be honest, not a whole lot happens in this play.  Half of the play is nothing more than Jack Falstaff being sassy, and the rest of everything else is rather drawn out.  Essentially only two things happen in this play - The rebels surrender and Henry IV dies to make way for Henry V.  And yet both of those things happen in the last two acts.  I realize that Shakespeare wrote in a five act structure.  I realize that his tetralogy was very popular at the time.  I realize that William Shakespeare is far more acclaimed by critics and professors and popular audiences than I could ever conceive of being.  And don't get me wrong, I like Shakespeare.  It's just that Henry IV Part II is kind of like Shakespeare's Pirates of the Caribbean 3: A needless extension of a previous story that only exists to get more mileage out of popular characters where plot threads are dropped unceremoniously.


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Perhaps I am being harsh.  There are people who would probably stone me to death for daring to criticize William Shakespeare.  But luckily, those people are in a presently shrinking minority.  There's no reason why we can't hold the authors of our classic literary canon up to scrutiny.  And not just scrutiny in the sense of dangerous themes that the present, like how Joseph Conrad is extraordinarily racist or how every female character in Frankenstein ends up murdered.  I mean that the literary giants, yes, even William Shakespeare, from time to time wrote things that just aren't good.

And that's all right.  Shakespeare practically invented half of modern English usage.  He wrote more beloved plays than I will ever draft.  His reputation not going to hurt from the criticism of a puny literature blogger.  And even if more people stop holding him as flawless, he'll still be a great playwright.  That's how things are.