Summary 
A black-and-white episode in a made-for-television production of a cycle of Shakespeare's the War of the Roses history plays. Like previous installments, the second part of the Henry IV plays is a straight-forward and traditional telling, well-spoken and acted with speed and clarity. More a filmed stage play than a cinematic endeavor, but with multiple cameras and musical scoring. Interesting and dramatic but lacking in visual excitement.
Production
Directed by Michael Hayes. An Age of Kings Episode 4. 1:11. BBC Television. Original Air Date June 9th, 1960.
Cast
David Andrews (Mortimer), Sean Connery (Hotspur), William Squire (Glendower), Geoffrey Bayldon (Worcester), Valerie Gearon (Lady Mortimer), Patricia Heneghan (Lady Percy), Tom Fleming (Henry IV), Robert Hardy (Hal), Frank Windsor (Blunt), Frank Pettingell (Falstaff), Gordon Gostelow (Bardolph), Angela Beddeley (Mistress Quickly). Andrew Faulds (Douglas), Alan Rowe (Vernon), Julian Glover (Westmoreland), Edgar Wreford (Archbishop), Patrick Garland (John).
Analysis
Michael Hayes begins the second half of Henry IV Part One - subtitled The Road to Shrewsbury - with an astute comparison of the conflicting sides: the squabbling rebels of 3.1 and the King's displeasure with the Prince in 3.2. Sean Connery's petulant Hotspur begins the fourth episode of the BBC's An Age of Kings with eye rolls and groans at the bombastic exclamations from the Welshman Glendower ("the earth did tremble when I was born"). In flickering firelight, Glendower snaps a map of England with a flourish, then presents an inequitable distribution to Hotspur and an effeminate Mortimer. After Hotspur's insults - "he is as tedious as a tired horse" - and mockery of Glendower's speech, he and Mortimer are joined by their wives, Hayes' camera capturing Glendower nodding approval and translating in the background between Mortimer and his Welsh-speaking wife. Kate chides Connery's Hotspur - "you giddy goose" - as a harp plays and Lady Mortimer sings, but the success of the rebellion seems doubtful when Mortimer lies with his head in his wife's lap, demurely claiming his support "with all my heart" to a slow fade.
Hayes contrasts the rebels with Hal's appearance in 3.2, whistling as he unexpectedly interrupts the King's war council. Robert Hardy's smirking Hal seems as disinterested as Mortimer, but plans a dramatic turnaround. He endures the glaring silence from his stern-faced father, Tom Fleming's Henry now gray-haired and wearing a veiled head-dress. Hardy's Hal endures the King's rebukes like a recalcitrant child, looking away as his father condemns the "rude society" of Falstaff and describes how Richard II "was the cuckoo as in June, heard but not regarded." Insulted as "the shadow of succession," Hal rises in anger, quite the opposite of the mellow Mortimer, whom the rebels intend for the throne, and he swears vengeance upon the Percy clan with a menacing growl: "I will tear the reckoning from his heart." Fleming's Henry seems gratified - "a hundred thousand rebels die in this" - and as the King receives news of the rebels amassing at Shrewsbury, Hardy's Hal lifts the crown from a pillow in a slow close-up.
Hayes provides a clever matching cut, cutting from Henry's crown to a cleaning bucket used by Hostess Quickly as she wrings a rag while washing the floors 3.3 at the Boar's Head tavern. Frank Pettingell's burly Falstaff jokes with Bardolph about his obesity - "do I not dwindle?" - and Bardolph measures his breadth with a broom and sings a little, but Falstaff's spirit is not only gleefully unrepentant but mean and insulting. Bardolph, big-nosed and with a pustuled face, one eye closed shut, looks stricken at the gibes and pretends to laugh, but unconvincingly. When Hardy's Hal enters with Poins, pounding a barrel of wine as if a drum, it is only for a brief joke - and a gratingly self-entitled remark from Falstaff: "rob me the exchequer the first thing thou does" - before he shows his Princely side, barking orders, sending messengers, and calling for horses: "the land is burning!" Pettingell's Falstaff also pounds a barrel, but when the men have dispersed, he calls for his breakfast.
Hayes uses a brief 4.2 as comic relief, with Falstaff in chain-mail and armor, to separate long scenes with Connery's Hotspur and the waning rebellion. Bardolph bears a trunk strapped to his back that Falstaff uses as a table and is told to "shog off" when he asks for money to fund his travels. Pettingell's Falstaff, as soldiers march past him, chortles as he speaks directly to Hayes' camera, telling the audience how he misuses his standing in the army. The scene is bookended by sequences with Connery's earnest Hotspur, in 4.1 at Shrewsbury receiving the news that "inward sickness" keeps other rebel armies from joining his. He attempts a Henry V-like "we happy few" speech to his colleagues, urging that the lack of support from his own father "lends a larger dare to our great enterprise." Connery's Hotspur welcomes news of the King's massing armies and insults Hal - "the nimble-footed madcap" - but grows worried and looks concerned at Vernon's descriptions of the newly majestic Prince of Wales. When he hears Glendower will be delayed, he murmurs "that bears a frosty sound" but again like the later Henry V, cries out, "doomsday is near, die all, die merrily!" although Worcester dejectedly tears a document in half. And in 4.3 Connery's Hotspur is joined by Douglas in urging a quick battle against the royal armies because both sides lack supplies, and after Sir Walter Blunt arrives as messenger to assure them their griefs will be heard, Hayes moves in for a close-up of Connery's Hotspur as he dryly remarks that "the King knows at what time to promise, when to pay" then works himself into a rage and an accusation of the murder of Richard II.
After a brief 4.4 that shows the beginnings of a new conspiracy - the Archbishop of York, standing next to a large crucifix, sends his messengers against Henry and reveals his confederacy with the rebels, despite the probability they will be slaughtered - Hayes cuts to the 5.1 parley between Fleming's Henry and the rebellious Worcester. Fleming's Henry, crowned and wearing armor, Hal at his left hand and Falstaff on the steps below, eating, receives Worcester to a trumpet flourish. After Henry dismisses the charges of the "fickle changelings," Hal moves in front of the King ("I have a truant been to chivalry") and offers single-combat against Hotspur. When he brushes past Falstaff - "honour is a mere scutcheon" - in a foreshadowing of his later rejection, Pettingell's Falstaff again turns to the camera for a monologue, ending with "so ends my catechism" and a wink. Falstaff's dishonor is followed by the treachery from Vernon and Worcester in 5.2, who for self-serving reasons ("all his offences live on my head and upon his father's") deceive Connery's Hotspur with false word of Henry's ire: "there is no seeming mercy in the King." Hotspur swats away a messenger's letters - "I cannot read them now!" - and draws his sword to rush outside and lead the cheers of the rebel soldiers: "if we live, we live to tread on kings." Hayes' camera closes in on Connery's face, then a series of double exposures - soldiers and horses in the field - before showing Hal's serious countenance. 5.3 begins with Douglas killing Blunt, disguised as Henry, as Pettingell's Falstaff buries himself in a pile of hay. He rises as an explosion brings dirt and hay down upon his head, and after he gestures toward the fallen Blunt - "there's honour for you" - he crudely brags about his intentionally rag-tag band of soldiers: "but three out of a hundred and fifty left alive" within his troop. When the breathless Prince arrives, Falstaff pulls a container of sack from his pistol pouch, but Hal flings it against the wall ("is it a time to jest and dally now?") and storms off.
Hayes provides a static and narrow shot of the Shrewsbury battlefield for 5.4, showing a soldier slumped over a fence, smoke billowing in the background. Hayes' battle scenes then pass by this tableaux, including one soldier crying out in close-up, and another falling upside down. To a howling wind sound effect, Fleming's Henry falls before an onslaught from Douglas, but Hardy's courageous Hal chases the Scot away and helps his father ("thou hast redeemed thy lost opinion") stand and recover. Hayes then cuts to a confused shot of a mass of soldiers pushing at each other and fighting atop a bridge. Connery's Hotspur approaches Hal from behind but pointedly does not strike the unaware Prince, instead getting his attention for an honorable ("esperance!") face-to-face duel. The two exchange slow sword blows and move down the stone steps of the bridge, Hal making a medieval version of a this-town-ain't-big-enough-for-both-of-us remark as if from a modern western movie: "two stars keep not their motion in one sphere." After Falstaff feigns death in a face-off against Douglas, Hardy's bloody-templed Hal gets the upper hand and stabs Hotspur in the belly. Connery's Hotspur, blood across his mouth, mutters to himself, "thou art dust," but stutters his final words, "food for..." so Hardy's Hal breaks his fall and supplies the closing, "worms."
Hardy's victorious Hal has high praise for Hotspur but not so much for the supposedly fallen Falstaff - "Poor Jack, farewell!" - but of course Falstaff rises ("the better part of valour is discretion") and in worry Hotspur may also be playing possum, gives Connery's Hotspur a tentative stab ("oh!") in the leg. After Pettingell's Falstaff laughs off Hal's claim to have killed Hotspur himself, Hal seems unaffected ("the day is ours") and Falstaff again addresses Hayes' camera. Hayes concludes the episode with Henry's 5.5 rebuke of the rebels, after which he staggers and must be helped by Hal. Hayes concluding shot is the battlefield dead again at Shrewsbury, though for this final image, within the slow fall of snow.