Henry IV Part 1

168 snips

Mar 5, 2026

Guest

Laurence Publicover, Associate Professor of English at Bristol, Lucy Munro, Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at King’s, and Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford, chat about Falstaff, Hotspur and Hal. They discuss kingship and succession, Hal’s tavern life and performance of identity, the politics of history plays, staging challenges, and the play’s enduring popularity.

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INSIGHT

Succession Anxiety Reflects Tudor Politics

Henry IV Part 1 frames succession and legitimacy as urgent Tudor concerns by using historical distance to discuss Elizabeth I's unnamed heir.
Emma Smith explains the play moves from one battle's aftermath to another, ending in stasis rather than resolution, keeping succession open.

ANECDOTE

Falstaff Began As Oldcastle And Was Renamed

Falstaff was originally named after the historical John Oldcastle, a Protestant martyr, and the Oldcastle family objected to the mockery.
Emma Smith recounts the name change from Oldcastle to Falstaff between performance and publication to placate descendants.

INSIGHT

History Plays Were 1590s Blockbusters

History plays were the dominant popular genre in the 1590s, driven by companies like the Queen's Men touring the country.
Lucy Munro notes Shakespeare borrowed and expanded plays from that repertory, creating varied historical drama.

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Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the most successful of Shakespeare's plays in his own time. Written with no Part 2 in mind as 'Henry the Fourth', the play explores ideas about who can be a legitimate ruler and why, and how anyone can rightly succeed to the throne. This was an especially pressing question for his Tudor audience as Elizabeth I had named no successor. Playwrights, banned from openly discussing the jeopardy her subjects faced, turned to these themes of power, legitimacy and succession in distant and recent history. When Shakespeare combined this relevance with the vivid characters of Falstaff, Hotspur and Hal and with the tensions between noble fathers and sons, he had a play that fascinated well into the Jacobean era and has been revived throughout the centuries.

With

Emma Smith Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford

Lucy Munro Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at Kings College London

And

Laurence Publicover Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Bristol

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Hailey Bachrach, Staging Female Characters in Shakespeare’s English History Plays (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

Warren Chernaik, The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare’s History Plays (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Stephen Greenblatt, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power (Bodley Head, 2018)

Graham Holderness, Shakespeare: The Histories (Red Globe Press, 1999)

Jean Howard and Phyllis Rackin, Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare's English Histories (Routledge, 1997)

William Shakespeare (eds. Indira Ghose, Anna Pruitt and Emma Smith), Henry IV Part I: The New Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford University Press, 2024)

William Shakespeare (ed. Gordon McMullan), 1 Henry IV: A Norton Critical Edition, 3rd edition (Norton, 2003)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.