In both cases, he perishes at the hands of the future Henry V, whose dose of battlefield glory signifies his evolution from drunken young wastrel to capable ruler. Hotspur, what a character! His death forms the climax of Henry IV, Part I, but in The King it comes only a few scenes in. But if the Scottish traitors you’ve taken prisoner are not brought to me as speedily as they might travel, I will hang you by your fucking neck. You are right, young Percy, I owe you much. But I’ve seen one eke enough wing-flap to clear a fence. And yet now, whilst you slobber over that chicken’s wing, he shivers in a western prison awaiting mutilation at the hands of Welsh witches…Ĭhickens can’t fly. We aided you in your ascension and still we fight for you. Yours are the ramblings of an old man so saturated with malice and mistrust that he no longer knows up from down, can no longer see beyond the walls of his own monstrous schloss. I believe yours to be the ramblings of a crazy old demon. He has betrayed England, and is now an enemy of mine, and therefore of yours. ![]() I refuse to pay Mortimer’s ransom because I refuse to believe him a prisoner. In The King, this exchange is broken up into a more traditional conversation between a bunch of characters, but here are the key portions (again, condensed slightly): Send me your prisoners with the speediest means, He durst as well have met the devil aloneĪrt thou not ashamed? But, sirrah, henceforth Thou dost belie him, Percy, thou dost belie him In changing hardiment with great Glendower… Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds, He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,īut by the chance of war to prove that true Whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost No, on the barren mountains let him starve įor I shall never hold that man my friend When they have lost and forfeited themselves? ![]() Shall we but treason? and indent with fears, That we at our own charge shall ransom straight Here’s how it goes down in Act I, Scene 3 (condensed slightly for length): The older Henry believes Mortimer is secretly in league with the Welsh, and demands young Hotspur give him the prisoners at once. After putting down an army of Scottish rebels, Hotspur has taken prisoners, and won’t transfer them to the crown unless Henry IV ransoms his relative, Mortimer, from the Welsh rebel Owen Glendower. Henry IV confronts Hotspur over Scottish prisonersīoth The King and Henry IV, Part 1 begin with a showdown between our hero’s royal father and the future outlaw Harry “Hotspur” Percy. (All quotations from the plays courtesy the Open Source Shakespeare project.) How does it compare to the original? We’ve taken excerpts from a few scenes that directly line up with Shakespeare’s own, to see. Instead of iambic pentameter, characters in The King speak in what we might call Game of Thrones English, a blend of short staccato sentences, stentorian pronouncements, a few old-timey phrasings, and frequent cursing. Timothée Chalamet’s Hal is now a noble pacifist who disdains war and imperialism, which is kind of like turning Romeo into an incel. Besides the language, they’ve also changed the fates of a few supporting players, and given the story new themes. There the change in scenery freed filmmakers from the burden of direct adaptation in keeping so much the same, the people behind The King have made each departure feel even more glaring. Edgerton and Michôd aren’t the first to rewrite Shakespeare - millennials will recall 10 Things I Hate About You kicked off a wave of adaptations that brought Shakespearean plots to American high schools, efforts that were generally more successful with comedies ( She’s the Man) than tragedies ( O). ![]() ![]() For their Henry V film The King, currently streaming on Netflix, the pair borrowed most of the plot, characters, and big moments from Shakespeare’s trio of plays about the monarch, but chose to jettison the Bard’s famous verse in favor of dialogue of their own creation. Photo: Left: Netflix/Right: ITV/Shutterstockįrustrated writers in search of more confidence would do well to study the example of Joel Edgerton and David Michôd. Timothée Chalamet in The King and Laurence Olivier in Henry V.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |