In Our Time: Henry IV Part 1

Misha Glenny and guests discuss Shakespeare's Henry IV Part One, and its ideas about who can be a legitimate ruler and why, and how anyone can rightly succeed to the throne. This was an especially pressing question for Shakespeare's Tudor audience, as Elizabeth I had named no successor. Banned from openly discussing the jeopardy her subjects faced, writers of the time turned to these themes of power, legitimacy and succession in distant and recent history