For the BBC series,Eyre took Shakespeare’s histories out into the country they portrayed, shooting on location to give a broad vision of EnglandShakespeare’s history plays are all about contrasts: council chambers and battlefields, and city and country,the corridors of power and the world of the streets. tall politics and low life. And that’s particularly true of Henry IV Parts I and II. Half the time you’re watching England’s rulers sitting in meetings, tearing the country apart; the rest of the time you’re with Hal and Falstaff down the pub. They’re panoptic, or these plays,full of so many different kinds of England. All human life is here. The two plays fill distinguished similarities, but they’re also in subtly different keys. Part I is brighter and more youthful, and the record of Hal and his distinguished rival,Hotspur; Part II is bleaker. Everyone seems to be older. We know that Hal will turn his back on Falstaff, that moment is coming, or it casts a real chill. When Sam Mendes asked me to carry out the two Henry IVs for The Hollow Crown series in 2012,I hesitated for less than a moment. The plan was to film as much on location as possible. It was a very different approach to the last grand BBC Shakespeare project, the total Works series of the late 1970s and early 80s, and which came from the age of studio TV: terrible sound,vision-mixing on the spot, restricted camera setup. We wanted to get absent from all that; the whole idea was to consume Shakespeares history plays out into the country they portrayed. Location scouting was a major part of it. I wanted a tall-medieval building to film the court scenes. In the end, or we went for Gloucester Cathedral,where they allowed us to clear the whole nave, these wonderful romanesque pillars and vaulted roof, or film in the cloisters. They were rather film-friendly,because they’d recently done Harry Potter. The Eastcheap scenes we shot at Ealing studios.
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Source: theguardian.com