Fenton

Fenton.  What a sap.

Fenton says himself that he first wooed Anne to get at her father's money.  But then he fell in love with her.  And oh, how he fell.


He carries most of the verse in the play.  In fact, other than his first scene all of his lines are in iambic pentameter.  He sits and waxes poetical about her on end.  To the point that near the end of the play he almost has to pay the Host to listen to him.  I'd love to see this go very broad:  a Romeo parody.

I am intrigued by his bad boy past.  He squandered his wealth (of course he keeps paying Quickly huge amounts of money to do his biding--the sap), got into fights and ran around with bad company.  This is so diametrically opposed to how he is presented in the play:  a lovestruck schoolboy.  Obviously that love sickness is within all men, but how do we see hints of the other?  Tricky to say the least.

Anne and Fenton

George Page says that Fenton is unsuitable to marry Anne because:

he kept company with the wild prince and Poins; he is of too high a region; he knows too
much. No, he shall not knit a knot in his fortunes with the finger of my substance

The "wild prince and Poins" are Prince Hal  and Edward Poins from Henry IV Parts 1 and 2.  The Prince will later become Henry V.  In Henry IV Parts1 and 2, they are certainly wild and mischievous characters, but Fenton is not in either of the plays.  This is his first and only appearance.  If I were staging all of the Henriad, then I would be very tempted to include him in the group.

Costume Notes:

--Pants, colored shirt, vest (double-breasted?), hat