the happiest youth, viewing his progress through, would shut the book and sit him down and die
So in our copious free time, lareinenoire and I have been working on chipping out a timeline for Shakespeare's history plays and how the chronology stacks up against the actual events. She is doing the first tetralogy and I'm doing the second, which was clever of me because the second tetralogy is a lot less work, seeing as how the Henry IV plays in particular are made up of fictional events.
However, if you think too hard about the plays' internal timelines, it starts to give you headaches really quickly. Though I suppose you can explain everything by assuming that Prince Hal bends time and space around him. Perhaps he is really a Time Lord. It would explain a lot.
angevin2: of course, if you compare the characters' timelines against each other it gets a little brainbending
house_kitten: lol
angevin2: in the first scene, henry refers to calling a council meeting for "wednesday next"
angevin2: which duly occurs in 1.3
angevin2: in 1.2 we meet prince hal and falstaff, and poins comes in with news of pilgrims who will provide a convenient robbery target and are due to ride by the next morning at four o'clock
angevin2: 2.1 opens at either 2 or 4 AM the next day, and we see gadshill en route to the robbery
angevin2: which occurs in in the next scene
angevin2: 2.3 has kate and hotspur; the scene is usually described as taking place at warkworth castle, which means hotspur has had some time to go waaaaaay up north (since worcester sends him to scotland in 1.3 anyway to deal with douglas; there is no evidence that he goes there, but perhaps he does go up north)
angevin2: 2.4 presumably takes place on the same day as 2.2, since we see falstaff and his companions coming back from the ill-fated robbery
angevin2: by the end of the scene it is 2 AM (as established by the sheriff), but one wonders, then, where most of the day went, assuming the robbery happened in the very early morning (as established both in 1.2 and 2.1)
angevin2: fortunately i do not have to put this in the timeline, but prince hal is operating on a different timeline from everyone else
angevin2: also, in 2.4 hal get called in to put in an appearance at court the next day, which suggests 3.2 takes place a day after 2.4; meanwhile, between 2.3 and 3.1 hotspur has had time to go from northumberland to wales
house_kitten: Aristotle eat your heart out
angevin2: none of this takes into account that historically ten months pass between the battles referred to in the first scene and the battle of shrewsbury
angevin2: ...i have to stop thinking about this now or my brain will melt
However, if you think too hard about the plays' internal timelines, it starts to give you headaches really quickly. Though I suppose you can explain everything by assuming that Prince Hal bends time and space around him. Perhaps he is really a Time Lord. It would explain a lot.
angevin2: of course, if you compare the characters' timelines against each other it gets a little brainbending
house_kitten: lol
angevin2: in the first scene, henry refers to calling a council meeting for "wednesday next"
angevin2: which duly occurs in 1.3
angevin2: in 1.2 we meet prince hal and falstaff, and poins comes in with news of pilgrims who will provide a convenient robbery target and are due to ride by the next morning at four o'clock
angevin2: 2.1 opens at either 2 or 4 AM the next day, and we see gadshill en route to the robbery
angevin2: which occurs in in the next scene
angevin2: 2.3 has kate and hotspur; the scene is usually described as taking place at warkworth castle, which means hotspur has had some time to go waaaaaay up north (since worcester sends him to scotland in 1.3 anyway to deal with douglas; there is no evidence that he goes there, but perhaps he does go up north)
angevin2: 2.4 presumably takes place on the same day as 2.2, since we see falstaff and his companions coming back from the ill-fated robbery
angevin2: by the end of the scene it is 2 AM (as established by the sheriff), but one wonders, then, where most of the day went, assuming the robbery happened in the very early morning (as established both in 1.2 and 2.1)
angevin2: fortunately i do not have to put this in the timeline, but prince hal is operating on a different timeline from everyone else
angevin2: also, in 2.4 hal get called in to put in an appearance at court the next day, which suggests 3.2 takes place a day after 2.4; meanwhile, between 2.3 and 3.1 hotspur has had time to go from northumberland to wales
house_kitten: Aristotle eat your heart out
angevin2: none of this takes into account that historically ten months pass between the battles referred to in the first scene and the battle of shrewsbury
angevin2: ...i have to stop thinking about this now or my brain will melt