SHAKESPEARE was not a king nor even a man in power. He was a jobbing playwright whose itinerant lifestyle allowed him to observe life in high and low places and to use the fads and foibles of the world at large as fodder for his incomparable talents.

His history plays, timeless favourites on the British stage, sometimes appear as immutable period pieces and often they are brandished like the Union Jack to incite nationalism.

But, always, they explore the fragility of the crown and its quest for power.  

Henry IV is a man who has acquired the throne by dubious means and in so doing has split the nation.  Power hangs not only on his military might but on the loyalty of his supporters who look to him for delivery on promises made on the campaign trail.

Popularity is a must. Meanwhile, treachery is ever present, opposition formidable and fake news forever plaguing the strategists and scuppering plans.

It’s a familiar story, exacerbated predictably as trouble in Europe grows to crisis point. Henry, it seems, demands sovereignty over France and against this backdrop he — and later his son Henry V — are prepared to fight to the death, so much so that power, victory and chauvinism might seem all the plays are about.  

But something else is at stake. The plays are famous not only for their profound study of leadership and dominance — and for their almost swashbuckling chutzpah — but also for their comic presentation of the common people.  

Falstaff and his crew, however, are more than just a comic interlude. They are not quaint little people who exist, with no consequence, upon the great fields of history. They represent the powerless majority in a world that requires them to succumb to dominance.

The ultimate cynic, Falstaff has seen it all. The powerful, he knows, are concerned only with their own agenda and others must survive as best they can through anarchic behaviour and duplicity.

And here is the great joke — the powerful think they control the masses but the masses in fact outwit them mercilessly. And that is why these characters in all eras are favourites with the cheap-seat audience.

In Falstaff and his cronies, Shakespeare is showing us ourselves in the ascendancy. And we love it.

Great battles on the European stage, Shakespeare implies, are always fought for the benefit of the haves and not for the betterment of the have-nots. Either way, the ordinary folk are shafted.

Add to this the fun that is had in the Henry plays with the Welsh and the Scots and the Irish and suddenly the 100 Years War and the Brexit debacle are all of a piece and all still about the universal struggle to break the power of the few and share it with the many.

In the productions of Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V at Shakespeare’s Globe, artistic director Michelle Terry not only excels as a memorably explosive and testosterone-driven Hotspur but also asserts an artistic policy designed to connect directly with a modern audience.

The plays are performed by what feels like an almost Brechtian troupe of actors. Avoiding stereotypes, the casting is gender, age and race-blind and the theatrical style is as easy and accessible as it might have been in Shakespeare’s time.

The productions present us not with a traditional glorification of the ruling class but instead with a brilliant and subversive portrayal of what we are.  

You can see the three plays individually or all in a one-day marathon. Either way, they’re staggeringly contemporary.  And a wake-up call.  

Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V run in repertoire until October 11,  box office: shakespearesglobe.com