Friday 13 July 2012

Hairstyles in BBC adaption of Henry IV part 1

After reading this article, I decided to watch the recent BBC adaption of Henry IV part 1 myself. I had never seen it before and I did not even know the plot. If anyone else had tried to watch Shakespeare without knowing the plot beforehand, you'll know how easy it is to suddenly get lost in the middle with no idea who anyone is or what the hell is happening. I'll admit I'm probably worse than most people as I can manage to get lost while watching James Bond films. So the first 20minutes I didn't know what was going on as per usual, however once I got a grip of the characters I really got into it. Henry IV part 1 is basically a medieval coming of age story. The main character Prince Hal spends the first part of the play playing immature jokes on his friends however by the end we see Prince Hal step up and become a leader.
 The best part was that Alan a Dale from the BBC robin hood series popped up as Hotspur (the rebelling Lord).  If you ever watched that series, you should watch this because It's like having Alan back..! I still love him so much.
I'm going to see a performance of Henry IV part 1 later this year so Its great that I will actually know the plot for once when I go to see Shakespeare. haha.

Anyway, Here are some of the memorable hairstyles that were in the show:

 This is Hotspur's wife, in this scene she wears an elaborate hairstyle with braids and an expensive looking hair piece as well which I really liked. I guess this scene shows well Hotspur's wealth and status as his wife is wearing expensive, fancy clothes as well as this complex hairstyle. So from what I can tell, the hair at the back of her head has been used to make a small bun. Then the hair left over at the back of the head is split into two pieces and each is braided down. These braids are then looped round the front of the head. The hair at the front of the head is then braided all the way down and then looped round to the top of the head and back to the bun. I'm guessing the actress used extensions because this style looks like it required a load of hair.


This is Falstaff, his character provides much of the comedy of the play. He is massively fat with his face surrounded by a mass of curly white hair. He does sort of look like a grubby, medieval Father Christmas with his massive white beard and long hair. I guess this makes him look sort of 'jolly' and it does back up the humorous side to this character.

Ah I love this two. Prince Hal (left) and his partner in crime Poins. His hair is longish, wavy and messy and a dark blonde colour. This photo shows how great Prince Hal still looks with wet hair. Poins has a smater hairstyle. He has a centre parting and then the sides are smoothed down.

This character was the welsh wife of Mortimer - one of the rebels. All she really did was sing for a bit and that's all we saw of her. She has a hair taping style with a hair piece woven in across the front of her head which goes all the way round the edge.The hair in the middle makes a small bun which also has a hair piece woven in. Here is a video about how to do hair taping

5 comments:

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    1. Thankyou! I love your blog, definitely will follow! I will have to try out some of your hair tutorials, they look amazing :)

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  2. Thanks! Where can I follow your blog? I cant see the button for following :) xD

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    1. I usually follow blogs by adding the blog url into the 'add' button bit on my blogger homepage. But I will try and add the follow button on here as well =)

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    2. Okay then :) I will tryto follow it on your way :)

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