"Father and son." Henry IV and V

Our picture of the English kings from Richard II to Richard II (which includes Henrys IV. V and VI and Edward IV) is largely shaped by Shakespeare’s plays. Thus we have the evil Richard III, the saintly but ineffectual Henry VI, the romantic if hopeless Richard II, the warrior-playboy Edward IV and the glorious Henry V. But Henry IV is oddly elusive despite appearing in three of the plays, two of which bear his name. As Bolingbroke he seems to have no inner life as he moves remorselessly to the crown. As king, he is always on guard, facing rebellions from within and without England, and even within his own family. It is not a role that attracts the great actors, and is overshadowed by Prince Hal, Hotspur and that great glorious force of life Falstaff.

But both Henry IV and V may well have been unfairly treated by Shakespeare. (And let’s not get into Richard III.) Henry IV overthrew a tyrant to the general acclaim of his countrymen, and through tenacity, courage, military prowess and mercy, left his son a secure throne, and set England on the path to Constitutional Monarchy. Henry V was both a religious hypocrite and fantatic, not afraid to go to war in the name of God and sacrifice common men to secure his own glory. So argues Ian Mortimer in his two books The fears of Henry IV: the life of Engand’s self-made king, and 1415: Henry V’s year of glory.

Mortimer, as I’ve mentioned before, writes exciting readable histories, and is not afraid to be inconclastic without being gratuitious. His books are well-researched and well-argued. Henry Bolingbroke is a rounded believeable character, far-removed from the politic and guilt-ridden character in the plays. His relastionship with his two wives, his problematical relationship with his eldest son, and his relationship with the lords and powerful of his time are all brought to life in fascinating detail.

The fears of Henry IV is a conventional biography in form, while 1415 takes a very different approach. He studies wills, diaries, letters, account books and other sources to create an almost day-by-day look at this crucial year. Sometimes this can became, I found, a little tedious but on the other hand it serves to bring the era to life in compelling detail. The Henry of this book is colder, more machievellian than Shakespeare’s, while still being a great king and warrior.

Mind you, Shakespeare’s Henry V, on a close reading, is not quite the straightforward hero of popular thought. Through the characters of Pistol, Nym, Bardolph, as well as Fluellen and Williams, we see the king as a powerful man who uses the little people as a tool on his way to glory. The ghost of the rejected Falstaff lurks nearby, and makes us query this man’s actions and rhetoric. Harry is a great king, but a great king is not necessarily a great man.

Having recently played in a production of Henry IV 1, which prompted me to read both these books, I wonder at Shakespeare’s great design of his plays. Shakespeare, I have no doubt, wrote on the fly, without too much revision or planning. But still, having written the plays covering the War of the Roses, he was then prompted to go back and write the story of the lead-up, from the deposition of Richard II. I wonder now if Shakespeare, as a loyal subject of Elizabeth I, didn’t see the deposition of Richard, the annointed monarch, as a great sin, that in almost Greek fashion could only be extirpated by the death of all involved, whether that involvement was their own or their family’s. Only when all the Plantagenants were dead could true peace return to the realm. It’s an attractive theory, attractive in the sense that it can never be disproved. But ‘tis mine, and I will have it.

"None so blind." AIDS and America

I don’t often have visceral reactions to book. Sure they can make me laugh, make me cry, but until I read  And the band played on: Politics, people and the AIDS crisis, I’ve never thrown up in my mouth a little. And it wasn’t the revelation of various more extreme gay sexual practices (which oddly I seem to have been largely aware of) or the descriptions of the diseases that suddenly were infecting young men with horrific results, nor the horrid hatred that was revealed against gays. No, it was the reaction of a bathhouse owner to the threat of closure.  For those of you not in the know, the bathhouses were places where gay men would have multiple anonymous partners, and as such were one of the hubs of the American AIDS crisis. One of the owners turned to a doctor after a meeting and said, “What do you care? We make money when they come here, you make money when they get sick.” Another said, “There is no evidence that AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease.” Togther, they made the bile, or something, rise to the back of my throat.

The AIDS epidemic, as author Randy Shilts, says, didn’t happen to America, it was allowed to happen. Between “not inflaming the homophobics while not offending the gays”, government indifference, from all levels and all parties, scientists arguing over funding and credit rather than doing research, and gay activists more worried over their civil right to anonymous multiple partners than the lives of others, AIDS got a grip in America in a way that could easily have been, if not avoided, certainly minimised. It’s a book that will make you angry and saddened.

At the same time, you meet men and women, gay and straight, who were not afraid to tell the truth, to take on the problems of trying to deal with a disease that was either being ignored or denied, working with little or no support, inadequate or no funds, watching friends, loved ones, patients dying around them, fighting in the political, social, economic, and scientific arenas. Some of them ended up with the disease themselves but kept going. Some of the good guys are unexpected. For example C Everett Koop, a Reagan-appointed fundamentalist Christian, was the Surgeon General who treated AIDS as a public health issue, rather than a moral or social issue. It was late but it was something.

Some of the people are inspiring, some infuriating, some touching, some more ambivalent. The infamous Patient Zero, Gaetan Dugas, deliberately was having sex without telling his partners he had the disease or taking any precautions. And yet, while he angers with his actions, he comes across sometimes as a tragic figure, tormented by chance and his personal demons. Although Shilts has been accused of creating a gay bogeyman in Dugas, I thought his portrayal was compassionate without losing sight of Dugas’s role.

The book covers the year 1980 to 1985 in detail, culminating in Rock Hudson’s announcement of his disease, when AIDS finally became part of the public discussion. Apart from the social and political story, it is also fascinating to read how a new disease is recognised, found, defined and isolated. And for a book full of science, technical terms, and government departments and acronyms, it’s quite the page turner. Its believed AIDS arrived in the US in 1976 with the Bicentennial celebrations. Before then it was already in Africa and France. Only in America, because of how it first presented, did it become known as the gay disease, with disasterous consequences worldwide. Shilts was the only journalist to follow the story from the beginning, and was uniquely placed to write this book. We should be grateful he did.

There is still no cure for AIDS, only treatments. As more young gay men, as I am told, are thinking AIDS is no longer a threat, this book may still be timely reading.