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Allen Bratton's Henry Henry is a retelling of Shakespeare's "Henriad," a term used in Shakespearean scholarship to refer to the four plays chronicling the rise of Henry V, or Prince Hal, to the throne.
These four plays begin, chronologically, with Richard II, based on the life of King Richard II, who ruled from 1377 to 1399. Richard, a feckless, egotistical leader, is deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, who then becomes King Henry IV (Hal's father, Henry, Duke of Lancaster in Bratton's novel).
Hal, the basis for Bratton's protagonist, isn't introduced on stage until the following play: Henry IV Part 1. When we meet the heir to the throne in Shakespeare's play, he's anything but noble: he spends his days in taverns, getting drunk with his friend Ned Poins and verbally sparring with John Falstaff, a disorderly, drunken knight who provides the play's comic relief. Hal is forced to return to the royal court and make...
