The scene opens with Richard (known as Gloucester in the text) addressing the audience directly. He explains how the civil war of the previous play has ended, and his brother is now King Edward IV: “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York.”

Yet all is not well in Richard’s mind. Being deformed, he feels he can’t keep up with Edward as a lover and is not cut out for the pleasures of peacetime. Instead, he’s “determined to prove a villain”.

Richard mentions a prophecy that’s been in the rumor mill, which states that someone beginning with the letter “G” will murder Edward’s heirs; he hopes Edward will think it’s George, Duke of Clarence. Sure enough, Clarence arrives, having just been arrested for plotting against Edward’s children.

He blames Queen Elizabeth (whom he refers to by her first married name, Lady Grey), and also blames her for Hastings' imprisonment, saying she’s controlling the King. Clarence’s guard Brackenbury asks Richard for help getting him out soon, and Richard agrees. He tells us how he wants to send his brother to heaven, before Hastings, fresh out of jail, turns up, and says he’s off to visit the sick King. Richard says he’ll catch up.

He then tells the audience that he’ll fan the flames of King Edward’s suspicions of Clarence, so the latter will be executed and leave Richard higher up the ascendancy. He also plans to marry the grieving widow Lady Anne, but he’ll kill his brothers first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDxnXgYPnKg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjJEXkbeL-o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_WJSHy_szE

“I Go Back to May 1937” was first published in 1987’s The Gold Cell, and has been widely anthologized since.

The poem’s direct title hints at its strident subject matter: the speaker, presumably Olds herself, plunges back in time to imagine having the opportunity of stopping her parents from getting together. There is a frank and uncomfortable discussion of the way she feels her parents are going to “suffer”, before a final affirmation of life, if a very delicate one: “Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.”

A phrase from the poem, “strike sparks” would go on to form the title of Olds’s Selected Poems, 1980-2002.

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The preparations are being made for Henry V’s procession. Falstaff has brought all the old gang (Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph and his Page), and brags that the King will give him a special “countenance”, regrets his decision not to buy new clothes (though he feels his attendance is enough), and, when Pistol informs him that Quickly and Tearsheet have been arrested for murder (in the previous scene), claims he’ll be able to get them off.

King Henry V’s procession enters, his retinue consisting of Lancaster, Clarence, Gloucester and the Lord Chief Justice, among others. Falstaff calls twice to “Hal”, and is ignored. The King asks the Lord Chief Justice to deal with him, prompting Falstaff to get desperate: “I speak to thee my heart!”.

The King then delivers the brutal line, “I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers”. He elaborates, claiming that as King, he must no longer associate with Falstaff, “feeder of my riots”. He then banishes Sir John. Falstaff tries some damage limitation, claiming he’ll be “sent for in private”.

Falstaff has borrowed money from Shallow who, seeing the King’s dismissal of him, asks for it back– it isn’t forthcoming. The Lord Chief Justice arrives, with a warrant to take Falstaff and his “company” to the jail in Fleet.

Lancaster and the Lord Chief Justice are left alone on stage. Lancaster explains that Falstaff and his crew will be “well provided for”, but they’re banished until their “conversations become more wise”, which doesn’t seem likely. Finally, Lancaster predicts that next year, “We bear our civil swords and native fire / As far as France".

There follows an epilogue, quite possibly spoken by the actor who played Falstaff. The quality of the play is modestly undermined, as was the style in the sixteenth century, before we’re promised that the story will continue, “with Sir John in it”, in the next play. He finally distances Falstaff from the historical character of Sir John Oldcastle, claiming “for Oldcastle died a martyr and this is not the man”.