SOURCE: “Shakespeare's Poor Relation: 2 Henry IV,” in Berryman's Shakespeare, edited by John Haffenden, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, pp. 335-39.

In the following unfinished essay, originally composed in 1970, Berryman presents a comparison between the two parts of Henry IV, stressing that he does not agree with those who see the two plays as a whole.

Producers, critics, and mere readers have not been kind to Part II, Henry IV. In thirty-five years of playgoing I have seen it performed only once. The single quarto of 1600 was never reprinted, so far as we know, and one may doubt whether one in fifty readers of Part I go on to Part II. As for critics, they have mostly considered the two plays together, with very little said about the second. But it happens that in recent years half a dozen of them have bestirred themselves on its behalf, some on the...