Description
As the play opens, Henry IV faces civil war across the kingdom he seized from Richard II. He gets no help from his disgraceful
son, Prince Hal, who spends all his time carousing in taverns with the fat old bawdy knight, Falstaff. Here’s what Falstaff says about honor: “Can Honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is Honour? A word. What is that word ‘honour’? Air.” If honor is air, how build a society? How will Prince Hal navigate between these two powerful father figures? We’ll consider and discuss the play’s questions, looking at some film clips along the way. No background in Shakespeare is needed.
Cammy Thomas has published three books of poems with Four Way Books. The most recent is Tremors (2021). Her two previous poetry collections are Inscriptions, and Cathedral of Wish, which won the Norma Farber first Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Cammy earned a PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation on the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. She has taught literature and creative writing for many years, and lives in Bolton, MA.
