SOURCE: Blanpied, John W. “Henry IV, Part 2: ‘Unfathered Heirs and Loathly Births of Nature.’” In Modern Critical Interpretations: William Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2, edited by Harold Bloom, pp. 85-103. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.

In the following essay, originally published in 1983, Blanpied contrasts the two parts of Henry IV, finding an “organic unity” in Part I that doesn't exist in Part II.

Open your ears, for which of you will stop The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks? 

So Rumor opens 2 Henry IV, implying that the audience (“my household”), even in consenting to hear the play, thereby consents as well to aid him in his business of spreading “continual slanders,” “false reports.” Like Richard III in his opening monologue, he engages the audience on the premise that the play itself is an act of deception, and as in Richard III this premise eventually fulfills itself upon its...