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A review by lisa_setepenre
Henry Henry by Allen Bratton
5.0
When I finished reading Allen Bratton’s Henry Henry, I was overcome with the desire to immediately announce, “I am just going outside and may be some time” and then disappear into the freezing wastelands of the Antarctic in effort to deal with the tumult of emotions the book stirred up. Since I couldn’t actually do that, I just spent the next few days wandering about in a haze, trying to get on with my day and then suddenly remembering Henry Henry and wanting to cry or scream. This is a devastating, haunting novel.
From the moment I started reading the ARC until I finished it, I barely slept. When I wasn’t reading, I kept thinking about it in spite of efforts not to. Now that I finished, there’s part of me that wants to immediately return to the first pages and read it all over again. Another part of me wants to take days or weeks to process everything, that barely stand the thought of a reread so soon after the book shattered me. Yet another part of me wants to wait/can’t wait for when I can sit down with the published hardback and read it again, without the murky ARC formatting. And another, final part of me wants to be years in the future where I can read academic analyses, thinkpieces and discussions about this book. Because seriously. This book.
Henry Henry is a loose queer retelling of Shakespeare’s Henriad plays that transposes the story onto the modern day. By doing so, the story is scaled down from a historical epic where characters rule and inherit kingdoms, depose and murder kings and fight military battles, to the mundane. Having stripped the characters from power and chivalry, Bratton focuses on the family drama, telescoping the action around Hal (Shakespeare’s wild prince, the future Henry V) and his fraught relationship with his father, Henry, and his one-time rival and new boyfriend, Percy (Henry “Hotspur” Percy, that is).
This is not a retelling concerned with extreme fidelity to the text. Bratton plays with the timeline, borrows from history (both medieval and more modern), deals with modern politics and concerns with the British aristocracy, keeps some characters alive, inserts characters who don’t appear in the Henry IV plays, and creates new characters. It is a truly transformative retelling. And, of course, Henry Henry is a queer retelling, giving us a Hal who is very much a gay disaster, a sexually fluid Percy, while many other queer characters.
I can imagine that sort of person who wants retellings to be written with extreme fidelity will not like this book. For me, the transformative aspect makes it all the more interesting. I don’t want a retelling where I know all the plot beats ahead of time and the dialogue feels like it’s been taken from a No Fear Shakespeare “translation” of Shakespeare’s text. I want to be surprised. There was a particular, intense joy when I found where Bratton had taken Shakespeare’s scenes and dialogue and transformed in such a way that it’s not immediately obvious what his source text is. I want to frame his version of Hal’s “I know you all” soliloquy because it’s stunning in its own right. The book’s editor, Brandon Taylor, said “you will simply die when you see what Bratton does with the famous arrow” but the play extempore had killed me before I reached that scene.
Bratton is an incredible stylist; his prose is exquisite. There were so many lines and paragraphs that I highlighted, that I lingered in and went back to and cried over and wanted to dissect and live in. I particularly liked the gothic weight he gave the London house. Bratton is going on my list of authors I will immediately preorder any future books he writes.
To be honest, Henry Henry feels a little bit like a fever dream for me. To have a queer retelling of my favourite plays, focusing on the characters and relationships that intrigue me the most, for Bratton to take the story where he does and to do such confidence and skill? It’s a dream come true, except I would have never dared dream it. I suppose it helps that I’m not particularly invested in or tied to any one interpretation or production of the Henriad (apart from Hal being a young, hot mess (the hot is negotiable) that is - and Bratton certainly delivers on that front). Bratton’s interpretation is far more audacious and astute that I could have ever imagined on my own. If you’re looking for a “wholesome” queer retelling of the Henriad, though, this isn’t the book for you – Henry Henry is intense, witty, brutal, funny, tragic, beautiful, sexy, and heartbreaking. It also deals with a father’s sexual abuse of his son.
*
There have been a few comparisons made between Henry Henry and Edward St Aubyn’s [b:Patrick Melrose Novels|11717571|The Patrick Melrose Novels|Edward St. Aubyn|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1408822626l/11717571._SX50_.jpg|16665636]. This is true on a number of levels: both are concerned with class, both have a tragicomic tone, both are written by incredibly talented authors, and both deal with drug addiction and a son dealing with the trauma of being sexually abused by his father. This last one, I fear, will be the book’s most controversial aspect.
Being an avid historical fiction reader, I’ve seen enough finger-wagging rants about “defaming the dead” to imagine the same sort of reaction greeting Henry Henry. To which I would say: get a grip. This is obviously not a thesis about the real Henry IV and the real Henry V, it’s a retelling of a Shakespeare play. Bratton is doing what countless other authors have done before: he is using a classic piece of literature as a way to talk about sexual violence (the most famous recent example is probably Pat Barker’s [b:The Silence of the Girls|37969723|The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy, #1)|Pat Barker|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519448688l/37969723._SY75_.jpg|59693763], but I’m also reminded of Jane Smiley’s [b:A Thousand Acres|41193|A Thousand Acres|Jane Smiley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388197504l/41193._SY75_.jpg|2234336]).
An extension of this criticism may be to question whether the plays themselves “support” this reading. I would say that they lend themselves well to a narrative about a father’s abuse of his son. A number of recent productions have shown Henry to be violent towards his son (who, after all, could forget Jeremy Irons backhanding Tom Hiddleston?). Looking at the plays, we might also ask: why has Hal alienated himself from his father? Why does he spend all his time drinking and partying? Why does he look to Falstaff and later to the Lord Chief Justice for a replacement father? But why does he always come back to Henry, seemingly wanting his love and approval? Why can Hal’s reformation seem like a trap instead of a triumph? I don’t say this to go “well, obviously, the plays are about Henry abusing Hal” or for someone to jump in with a history lesson (I’ve read the history books, thanks). My point is more that this is literature, this is the inherently adaptable, transformable Shakespeare. The plays do not answer these questions overtly so why can’t an author find different answers that show the plays in a different light?
But my main fear is the discourse about victimhood. I cannot forget the scandal around [b:My Dark Vanessa|44890081|My Dark Vanessa|Kate Elizabeth Russell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1583447793l/44890081._SY75_.jpg|67044583], where Kate Elizabeth Russell was forced to out herself as a survivor of CSA to be “allowed” to write about the complicated, messy ways abuse victims react to trauma (and even after that, was accused of being too explicit, of making her victim is too “complicit” in her abuse – a similar kind of outrage has also been directed at memoirs of sexual abuse written by victims). Hal’s responses to his abuse are undeniably messy. He makes for a “bad victim”, unable to divorce himself from the fact that he still craves his abuser’s approval and love, refusing to disown or openly accuse his abuser. His heavy drug use, his tendency to lie and be disingenuous have made him an unreliable witness. He is not a kind or good person, in fact he’s rather horrible. He blames himself, he wants to be punished for the abuse, he keeps coming back.
Bratton’s depiction of Hal’s responses to his abuse ring very true and sad. But there is a tendency to want narratives about abuse and trauma to be simple and comforting, as if by promoting this narrative we can fix the problem of victimhood. Victims should know they’re victims and be trying to save themselves (or be waiting for the right person to save them – a more predictable novel would have Percy saving Hal from his father) and they must never, ever have ambiguous feelings towards their abuser. They must never, ever want to go back (if they do back, they are not really characters but passive, empty dolls who never could be saved). Any story about sexual abuse and violence must end with realisation, catharsis and healing, or at least the hope of these things. They – and more importantly, the reader – should be reassured that it’s not their fault, that they have done nothing wrong, and this should be made patently obvious in every scene. They – and more importantly, the reader – should be told that this is not love and the narrative make it patently obvious, in case we might have to think complicated thoughts about abusers and their victims. Yet I wonder how helpful these “rules” are. Abuse does not really allow for, to misquote Mary Gaitskill, “a clear-cut hygienic way” of thinking. Abuse victims will always find some way to blame themselves; abusers often try to ensure it. They can even love their abusers and believe their abusers love them, and they will always doubt the stranger who tells them it isn’t love because what do they know? There may be value in telling these sorts of stories but there is no value in restricting all stories about abuse to these rules. Bratton, wisely, eschews all of these “rules”. Hal doesn’t come to realise that it isn’t his fault, that it wasn’t love, and he can be whole. He doesn’t get realisation, catharsis or healing. He gets to go on, living with this thing that happened to him.
And God, I wish Hal did get catharsis. I wished Hal could have heard Patrick Melrose’s “nobody should do that to anybody else” and taken it to heart. I wished Hal had told someone and that the one person he half-told had actually helped him come to terms with it instead of being a complete twat about it. I wished that Bratton had taken the novel through to the climax of Henry IV, Part Two
This is not the only trauma in the novel. Henry is a controlling, parasitical and abusive father to all of his children, who all are screwed up in various ways. As Hotspur says enumerates at one point: Hal's mother died when he was young, then his gay cousin died from AIDs, then Hal realised he was gay in a conservative and homophobic family, he’s been at boarding school since he was eight – and he’s Catholic, feeling intense shame for having a body in the first place, let alone everything else.
*
I said above that Hal is a horrible person in Henry Henry; that is true for nearly every character in this book. The most likeable figure might well be Falstaff – rather a surprising turn given the recent tendency to render him a more sinister figure. But this doesn’t mean that the characters themselves are wholly unsympathetic. If it’s not already clear, I felt a lot for Hal. Bratton doesn’t shy away from his nastiness but simultaneously allows us to see the vulnerable, hurting person beneath – I couldn’t help but imagine the child Hal, trapped inside him, crying “unloved! unloved! unloved!”
Nor is he the only character that you couldn’t help love even as you were repelled by them. Percy was a very interesting figure – he’s idealised by Hal (even in the earlier sections, where Hal finds him insufferable) and yet I would go so far as to say that out of all the characters bar Henry, Percy harms Hal the most, albeit unintentionally. His earnest, do-gooder personality doesn’t necessarily negate the harm he does. Edward Langley’s (Richard II’s Duke of Aumerle) cameo was heartbreaking, a particular standout in an excellent book. Although dead and only a memory, Bratton's take on Richard II made me remember what I found so fascinating about him.
Shakespeare did not write about the real Henry V’s female relatives; Bratton evens the playing field by writing back in his mother, Mary Bohun (though, like Richard, dead and only a memory), his stepmother Jeanne (Joan of Navarre) and his sisters, Blanche and Philippa, and by letting his maternal aunt, Eleanor (Richard II’s Duchess of Gloucester), survive. All of five characters are intriguing and I wished we saw more of them – this is probably the only depiction of Eleanor de Bohun I’ve seen outside of Shakespeare’s that doesn’t treat her as completely heinous. Philippa gets a lot of focus (beating Hal’s three brothers, who do appear in the plays, by a longshot) and, given how little attention has been given to her by Anglo historians, she’s effectively Bratton’s own creation and she’s incredible. I’d love to see more of her.
Some of the female characters in Henry IV go missing, namely Kate Mortimer, Doll Tearsheet and Mistress Quickly – though one could argue that they appear or are referenced, just not as centralised or even named figures, and honestly, I get it. There’s a lot to adapt and include. I was a little surprised that Bratton killed off Hal’s maternal grandmother before the novel started – historically, she lived quite late into the reign of Henry V and was, by all accounts, a quite formidable lady, though she never appeared in a Shakespeare play.
The characterisation of Hal’s sister Blanche did not necessarily disappoint but produced mixed feelings. Bratton gives her more focus than any other English author, be they novelist or historian, and she’s certainly a character I would have liked to see more of. However, in a novel that deals so much with the trauma caused by child sexual abuse, I couldn’t help but remember that the historical Blanche would be considered today a victim of child sexual abuse. Blanche, at age 10, married Louis or Ludwig, the future Elector Palatine and son of the King of Germans, He was 14 years her senior and got her pregnant most likely before her 14th birthday (despite popular misconceptions, this wasn’t normal). I don’t consider this a failing of Bratton’s. Rather, I blame the frankly careless and disinterested treatment Blanche has received from Anglo historians, who have tended to rely on the work of Victorian-era historians whose deficiencies are well-known and who got a lot wrong about Blanche and Louis, rather than seeking out the work of modern German historians, even those published in English, to ensure their work is up-to-date.
As I said, I don’t consider it a failure on Bratton’s part and I’m not necessarily disappointed. It is of course his prerogative whether or not to include this and he isn’t, as I said above, writing about the historical Lancastrians but an interpretation of Shakespeare’s version. Nor does Henry Henry exclude the possibility that Blanche has been abused, only that Hal (and presumably their siblings) isn’t aware of it. I do wonder what Hal would think and feel if he knew, though.
*
Henry Henry is not the first queer retelling of the Henriad, but it is one of only a handful. I am excluding Richard II here, a play implicitly concerned with queerness and whose queerness has been emphasised in a vast array of adaptations and productions. Queer readings of Henry IV have largely been consigned to the academic, which have tended to connect Falstaff and the world of the Boar’s Head with queerness and read Hal as a queer figure whose rejection of Falstaff at the climax of Henry IV, Part Two represents him “selling out to heterosexuality”, though there are other readings of the play that focus on his doubling with Hotspur or his relationship with Poins.
There are less theoretical queer readings of Henry IV, the most famous of which are the cult classic My Own Private Idaho, and a fantasy novel with a genderswapped cast, ([b:Lady Hotspur|39863295|Lady Hotspur (Innis Lear, #2)|Tessa Gratton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1533152633l/39863295._SY75_.jpg|50392632]). There are probably obscure productions that have given us a queer Hal, though the only ones I’ve come across any mention of are Ten Oorlog (a Dutch adaptation of the two tetralogies) and the Sydney Theatre Company’s Wars of the Roses (best known for the photos of Cate Blanchett’s Richard II lolling around in gold confetti). Perhaps their scarcity (and My Own Private Idaho’s cleaving to the narrative of Hal selling out to heterosexuality so completely it has him reject queerness well before he rejects Falstaff) reflects a refusal to accept Henry V – the warrior king, the representation of idealised masculinity, manhood and Englishness and frequently memorialised as one of England’s greatest kings, forever inextricably tied to his Shakespeare counterpart – might potentially be queer. The historical Henry V, however, is perhaps not as straight as his reputation might suggest.
Henry Henry may not be the first or only queer retelling of the Henriad, but it is quite possibly the queerest retelling not lost in obscurity, or at least the most explicitly and unapologetically queer. This is a Hal who sucks and fucks and who does not sell out to heterosexuality – at least, not yet.
*
This is a tremendous novel. I could keep talking about it. A morning was spent re-reading the last chapters and sobbing. I want to keep talking about it. I may have to come back to this review when I get the published hardback and read it all over again.
But for now, I must end this review. The red ice-breaker has come into port and I, with my copy of Henry Henry under my arm, must embark. I may be some time.
From the moment I started reading the ARC until I finished it, I barely slept. When I wasn’t reading, I kept thinking about it in spite of efforts not to. Now that I finished, there’s part of me that wants to immediately return to the first pages and read it all over again. Another part of me wants to take days or weeks to process everything, that barely stand the thought of a reread so soon after the book shattered me. Yet another part of me wants to wait/can’t wait for when I can sit down with the published hardback and read it again, without the murky ARC formatting. And another, final part of me wants to be years in the future where I can read academic analyses, thinkpieces and discussions about this book. Because seriously. This book.
Henry Henry is a loose queer retelling of Shakespeare’s Henriad plays that transposes the story onto the modern day. By doing so, the story is scaled down from a historical epic where characters rule and inherit kingdoms, depose and murder kings and fight military battles, to the mundane. Having stripped the characters from power and chivalry, Bratton focuses on the family drama, telescoping the action around Hal (Shakespeare’s wild prince, the future Henry V) and his fraught relationship with his father, Henry, and his one-time rival and new boyfriend, Percy (Henry “Hotspur” Percy, that is).
This is not a retelling concerned with extreme fidelity to the text. Bratton plays with the timeline, borrows from history (both medieval and more modern), deals with modern politics and concerns with the British aristocracy, keeps some characters alive, inserts characters who don’t appear in the Henry IV plays, and creates new characters. It is a truly transformative retelling. And, of course, Henry Henry is a queer retelling, giving us a Hal who is very much a gay disaster, a sexually fluid Percy, while many other queer characters.
I can imagine that sort of person who wants retellings to be written with extreme fidelity will not like this book. For me, the transformative aspect makes it all the more interesting. I don’t want a retelling where I know all the plot beats ahead of time and the dialogue feels like it’s been taken from a No Fear Shakespeare “translation” of Shakespeare’s text. I want to be surprised. There was a particular, intense joy when I found where Bratton had taken Shakespeare’s scenes and dialogue and transformed in such a way that it’s not immediately obvious what his source text is. I want to frame his version of Hal’s “I know you all” soliloquy because it’s stunning in its own right. The book’s editor, Brandon Taylor, said “you will simply die when you see what Bratton does with the famous arrow” but the play extempore had killed me before I reached that scene.
Bratton is an incredible stylist; his prose is exquisite. There were so many lines and paragraphs that I highlighted, that I lingered in and went back to and cried over and wanted to dissect and live in. I particularly liked the gothic weight he gave the London house. Bratton is going on my list of authors I will immediately preorder any future books he writes.
To be honest, Henry Henry feels a little bit like a fever dream for me. To have a queer retelling of my favourite plays, focusing on the characters and relationships that intrigue me the most, for Bratton to take the story where he does and to do such confidence and skill? It’s a dream come true, except I would have never dared dream it. I suppose it helps that I’m not particularly invested in or tied to any one interpretation or production of the Henriad (apart from Hal being a young, hot mess (the hot is negotiable) that is - and Bratton certainly delivers on that front). Bratton’s interpretation is far more audacious and astute that I could have ever imagined on my own. If you’re looking for a “wholesome” queer retelling of the Henriad, though, this isn’t the book for you – Henry Henry is intense, witty, brutal, funny, tragic, beautiful, sexy, and heartbreaking. It also deals with a father’s sexual abuse of his son.
*
There have been a few comparisons made between Henry Henry and Edward St Aubyn’s [b:Patrick Melrose Novels|11717571|The Patrick Melrose Novels|Edward St. Aubyn|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1408822626l/11717571._SX50_.jpg|16665636]. This is true on a number of levels: both are concerned with class, both have a tragicomic tone, both are written by incredibly talented authors, and both deal with drug addiction and a son dealing with the trauma of being sexually abused by his father. This last one, I fear, will be the book’s most controversial aspect.
Being an avid historical fiction reader, I’ve seen enough finger-wagging rants about “defaming the dead” to imagine the same sort of reaction greeting Henry Henry. To which I would say: get a grip. This is obviously not a thesis about the real Henry IV and the real Henry V, it’s a retelling of a Shakespeare play. Bratton is doing what countless other authors have done before: he is using a classic piece of literature as a way to talk about sexual violence (the most famous recent example is probably Pat Barker’s [b:The Silence of the Girls|37969723|The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy, #1)|Pat Barker|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519448688l/37969723._SY75_.jpg|59693763], but I’m also reminded of Jane Smiley’s [b:A Thousand Acres|41193|A Thousand Acres|Jane Smiley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388197504l/41193._SY75_.jpg|2234336]).
An extension of this criticism may be to question whether the plays themselves “support” this reading. I would say that they lend themselves well to a narrative about a father’s abuse of his son. A number of recent productions have shown Henry to be violent towards his son (who, after all, could forget Jeremy Irons backhanding Tom Hiddleston?). Looking at the plays, we might also ask: why has Hal alienated himself from his father? Why does he spend all his time drinking and partying? Why does he look to Falstaff and later to the Lord Chief Justice for a replacement father? But why does he always come back to Henry, seemingly wanting his love and approval? Why can Hal’s reformation seem like a trap instead of a triumph? I don’t say this to go “well, obviously, the plays are about Henry abusing Hal” or for someone to jump in with a history lesson (I’ve read the history books, thanks). My point is more that this is literature, this is the inherently adaptable, transformable Shakespeare. The plays do not answer these questions overtly so why can’t an author find different answers that show the plays in a different light?
But my main fear is the discourse about victimhood. I cannot forget the scandal around [b:My Dark Vanessa|44890081|My Dark Vanessa|Kate Elizabeth Russell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1583447793l/44890081._SY75_.jpg|67044583], where Kate Elizabeth Russell was forced to out herself as a survivor of CSA to be “allowed” to write about the complicated, messy ways abuse victims react to trauma (and even after that, was accused of being too explicit, of making her victim is too “complicit” in her abuse – a similar kind of outrage has also been directed at memoirs of sexual abuse written by victims). Hal’s responses to his abuse are undeniably messy. He makes for a “bad victim”, unable to divorce himself from the fact that he still craves his abuser’s approval and love, refusing to disown or openly accuse his abuser. His heavy drug use, his tendency to lie and be disingenuous have made him an unreliable witness. He is not a kind or good person, in fact he’s rather horrible. He blames himself, he wants to be punished for the abuse, he keeps coming back.
Bratton’s depiction of Hal’s responses to his abuse ring very true and sad. But there is a tendency to want narratives about abuse and trauma to be simple and comforting, as if by promoting this narrative we can fix the problem of victimhood. Victims should know they’re victims and be trying to save themselves (or be waiting for the right person to save them – a more predictable novel would have Percy saving Hal from his father) and they must never, ever have ambiguous feelings towards their abuser. They must never, ever want to go back (if they do back, they are not really characters but passive, empty dolls who never could be saved). Any story about sexual abuse and violence must end with realisation, catharsis and healing, or at least the hope of these things. They – and more importantly, the reader – should be reassured that it’s not their fault, that they have done nothing wrong, and this should be made patently obvious in every scene. They – and more importantly, the reader – should be told that this is not love and the narrative make it patently obvious, in case we might have to think complicated thoughts about abusers and their victims. Yet I wonder how helpful these “rules” are. Abuse does not really allow for, to misquote Mary Gaitskill, “a clear-cut hygienic way” of thinking. Abuse victims will always find some way to blame themselves; abusers often try to ensure it. They can even love their abusers and believe their abusers love them, and they will always doubt the stranger who tells them it isn’t love because what do they know? There may be value in telling these sorts of stories but there is no value in restricting all stories about abuse to these rules. Bratton, wisely, eschews all of these “rules”. Hal doesn’t come to realise that it isn’t his fault, that it wasn’t love, and he can be whole. He doesn’t get realisation, catharsis or healing. He gets to go on, living with this thing that happened to him.
And God, I wish Hal did get catharsis. I wished Hal could have heard Patrick Melrose’s “nobody should do that to anybody else” and taken it to heart. I wished Hal had told someone and that the one person he half-told had actually helped him come to terms with it instead of being a complete twat about it. I wished that Bratton had taken the novel through to the climax of Henry IV, Part Two
This is not the only trauma in the novel. Henry is a controlling, parasitical and abusive father to all of his children, who all are screwed up in various ways. As Hotspur says enumerates at one point: Hal's mother died when he was young, then his gay cousin died from AIDs, then Hal realised he was gay in a conservative and homophobic family, he’s been at boarding school since he was eight – and he’s Catholic, feeling intense shame for having a body in the first place, let alone everything else.
*
I said above that Hal is a horrible person in Henry Henry; that is true for nearly every character in this book. The most likeable figure might well be Falstaff – rather a surprising turn given the recent tendency to render him a more sinister figure. But this doesn’t mean that the characters themselves are wholly unsympathetic. If it’s not already clear, I felt a lot for Hal. Bratton doesn’t shy away from his nastiness but simultaneously allows us to see the vulnerable, hurting person beneath – I couldn’t help but imagine the child Hal, trapped inside him, crying “unloved! unloved! unloved!”
Nor is he the only character that you couldn’t help love even as you were repelled by them. Percy was a very interesting figure – he’s idealised by Hal (even in the earlier sections, where Hal finds him insufferable) and yet I would go so far as to say that out of all the characters bar Henry, Percy harms Hal the most, albeit unintentionally. His earnest, do-gooder personality doesn’t necessarily negate the harm he does. Edward Langley’s (Richard II’s Duke of Aumerle) cameo was heartbreaking, a particular standout in an excellent book. Although dead and only a memory, Bratton's take on Richard II made me remember what I found so fascinating about him.
Shakespeare did not write about the real Henry V’s female relatives; Bratton evens the playing field by writing back in his mother, Mary Bohun (though, like Richard, dead and only a memory), his stepmother Jeanne (Joan of Navarre) and his sisters, Blanche and Philippa, and by letting his maternal aunt, Eleanor (Richard II’s Duchess of Gloucester), survive. All of five characters are intriguing and I wished we saw more of them – this is probably the only depiction of Eleanor de Bohun I’ve seen outside of Shakespeare’s that doesn’t treat her as completely heinous. Philippa gets a lot of focus (beating Hal’s three brothers, who do appear in the plays, by a longshot) and, given how little attention has been given to her by Anglo historians, she’s effectively Bratton’s own creation and she’s incredible. I’d love to see more of her.
Some of the female characters in Henry IV go missing, namely Kate Mortimer, Doll Tearsheet and Mistress Quickly – though one could argue that they appear or are referenced, just not as centralised or even named figures, and honestly, I get it. There’s a lot to adapt and include. I was a little surprised that Bratton killed off Hal’s maternal grandmother before the novel started – historically, she lived quite late into the reign of Henry V and was, by all accounts, a quite formidable lady, though she never appeared in a Shakespeare play.
The characterisation of Hal’s sister Blanche did not necessarily disappoint but produced mixed feelings. Bratton gives her more focus than any other English author, be they novelist or historian, and she’s certainly a character I would have liked to see more of. However, in a novel that deals so much with the trauma caused by child sexual abuse, I couldn’t help but remember that the historical Blanche would be considered today a victim of child sexual abuse. Blanche, at age 10, married Louis or Ludwig, the future Elector Palatine and son of the King of Germans, He was 14 years her senior and got her pregnant most likely before her 14th birthday (despite popular misconceptions, this wasn’t normal). I don’t consider this a failing of Bratton’s. Rather, I blame the frankly careless and disinterested treatment Blanche has received from Anglo historians, who have tended to rely on the work of Victorian-era historians whose deficiencies are well-known and who got a lot wrong about Blanche and Louis, rather than seeking out the work of modern German historians, even those published in English, to ensure their work is up-to-date.
As I said, I don’t consider it a failure on Bratton’s part and I’m not necessarily disappointed. It is of course his prerogative whether or not to include this and he isn’t, as I said above, writing about the historical Lancastrians but an interpretation of Shakespeare’s version. Nor does Henry Henry exclude the possibility that Blanche has been abused, only that Hal (and presumably their siblings) isn’t aware of it. I do wonder what Hal would think and feel if he knew, though.
*
Henry Henry is not the first queer retelling of the Henriad, but it is one of only a handful. I am excluding Richard II here, a play implicitly concerned with queerness and whose queerness has been emphasised in a vast array of adaptations and productions. Queer readings of Henry IV have largely been consigned to the academic, which have tended to connect Falstaff and the world of the Boar’s Head with queerness and read Hal as a queer figure whose rejection of Falstaff at the climax of Henry IV, Part Two represents him “selling out to heterosexuality”, though there are other readings of the play that focus on his doubling with Hotspur or his relationship with Poins.
There are less theoretical queer readings of Henry IV, the most famous of which are the cult classic My Own Private Idaho, and a fantasy novel with a genderswapped cast, ([b:Lady Hotspur|39863295|Lady Hotspur (Innis Lear, #2)|Tessa Gratton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1533152633l/39863295._SY75_.jpg|50392632]). There are probably obscure productions that have given us a queer Hal, though the only ones I’ve come across any mention of are Ten Oorlog (a Dutch adaptation of the two tetralogies) and the Sydney Theatre Company’s Wars of the Roses (best known for the photos of Cate Blanchett’s Richard II lolling around in gold confetti). Perhaps their scarcity (and My Own Private Idaho’s cleaving to the narrative of Hal selling out to heterosexuality so completely it has him reject queerness well before he rejects Falstaff) reflects a refusal to accept Henry V – the warrior king, the representation of idealised masculinity, manhood and Englishness and frequently memorialised as one of England’s greatest kings, forever inextricably tied to his Shakespeare counterpart – might potentially be queer. The historical Henry V, however, is perhaps not as straight as his reputation might suggest.
Henry Henry may not be the first or only queer retelling of the Henriad, but it is quite possibly the queerest retelling not lost in obscurity, or at least the most explicitly and unapologetically queer. This is a Hal who sucks and fucks and who does not sell out to heterosexuality – at least, not yet.
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This is a tremendous novel. I could keep talking about it. A morning was spent re-reading the last chapters and sobbing. I want to keep talking about it. I may have to come back to this review when I get the published hardback and read it all over again.
But for now, I must end this review. The red ice-breaker has come into port and I, with my copy of Henry Henry under my arm, must embark. I may be some time.