SOURCE: Peat, Derek. “Falstaff Gets the Sack.” Shakespeare Quarterly 53, no. 3 (2002): 379-83.

In the following essay, Peat considers contemporary stage interpretations of Act V, scene iii of Henry IV, Part 1 in which Hal is to throw a bottle of sack at Falstaff, arguing that postwar productions have tended to dispose of this action and in so doing have diminished Falstaff's overall comic potential.

Toward the end of 1 Henry IV, the actor playing Hal is required to throw a bottle in anger at Falstaff. The stage direction “[He throws the bottle at him.] Exit” (5.3.56 s.d.) looks benign enough on the page, but throwing any object always poses staging problems and these multiply on an open stage.¹ As well as being problematic, the moment is also significant: how the bottle-throwing is played can change the balance of the scene, redefine the relationship between Falstaff and Hal, and perhaps even alter...