2 Henry IV – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s History Plays

Shakespeare, William. The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, Continuing to His Death, and Coronation of Henry the Fifth. Quarto. (The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 710-78.)

ACT 1

Induction (711-12, after the battle of Shrewsbury, in which the Crown defeats the Percy-led rebels, “Rumor” spreads untruths that the opposite happened and that King Henry and Hal are dead.)

The Induction to II Henry IV is among Shakespeare’s most interesting introductions. It’s a stroke of genius to begin a sequel in this way, with an untrustworthy personification, “Rumor,” who in the First Quarto edition of 1600 is described as “painted full of Tongues.” This character opens on a boastful, menacing note towards the audience, asking “which of you will stop / The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?” (711, Induction 1-2). Rumor will spread talk of peace while some party meditates war, and it will spread lies about war when peace might have been secured. Contrariness and chaos appear to be the goals.

Of course, Rumor isn’t an isolated god, it’s a product of the human imagination, human fears and desires, and malicious or ill-informed tongues. Almost everyone has seen Norman Rockwell’s 1948 print “The Gossips,” where a woman relays something titillating (and possibly true) to another woman, and fourteen people’s altered retellings later, it comes back aimed at her. [1] The power of Rumor is so irresistible that even if we start with factual information, we will introduce deviations from truth, so strong is the impulse to inject something of our own and thereby change the impact of information.

Rumor expresses pride in its ability to make gullible humans—including the theater audience, as it avers at line 22—do its dirty work. What happens regarding the news about the Battle of Shrewsbury, [2] then, is standard operating procedure for Rumor. Even though King Henry, Prince Hal and their forces are victorious, quite a few people in nearby “peasant towns” (712, Induction 33) think exactly the opposite happened—namely, that Hotspur’s rebel forces won the day, and Hal and his father were killed in the fighting. Even official couriers seem to be involved in disseminating inaccurate information. [3]

We notice something else about Rumor’s Induction—this character asserts brazenly that Northumberland, Hotspur’s father, “Lies crafty-sick” (712, Induction 37). In other words, goes the claim, he stayed away from Shrewsbury for political expediency, not because he was really sick. In Act 2, Scene 3, both Northumberland’s wife and his daughter-in-law Kate (Hotspur’s widow) accuse him of this lethally dishonest dealing.

Shakespeare’s text may be playing us here since the historical chronicles he uses to source the play’s events generally say that Northumberland was, in fact, too ill to be present at Shrewsbury. So the reason for the introduction of this possibility—by “Rumor,” no less—may be that the playwright means to emphasize the fear of betrayal that runs through his history plays, from the major tetralogy to his six other histories.

Act 1, Scene 1 (712-16, Hotspur’s father Northumberland, who claimed he was too unwell to participate in the battle of Shrewsbury, is informed that Hotspur is dead and King Henry’s forces are coming after him; Northumberland casts aside his excuse and prepares for battle.)

Lord Bardolph visits Northumberland, saying that he brings “certain news from Shrewsbury” (712, 1.1.12). The trouble is, he’s one of the “thousand tongues” painted on the costume of Rumor, so to speak—when Northumberland questions him about the provenance of his news, he says, “I spake with one, my lord, that came from thence” (712, 1.1.25). In other words, he’s peddling a rumor. But Northumberland’s servant Travers has heard a rumor that runs to the opposite conclusion. A man racing north on horseback told him, he says, that “Harry Percy’s spur was cold” (713, 1.1.42).

Enter the messenger Morton, who has surveyed the scene at Shrewsbury. Unfortunately, the news he brings proves devastating. Lord Bardolph is loathe to believe Morton’s eyewitness account, but Northumberland’s worst fears, his prophecy that Hotspur is dead, are confirmed by it: Morton says of “Harry Monmouth” (Prince Hal) that his “swift wrath beat down / The never-daunted Percy to the earth, / From whence with life he never more sprung up” (715, 1.1.109-11). With Hotspur’s death, says Morton, most of his soldiers lost all their enthusiasm for the fight, and a rout ensued. Worcester (Northumberland’s brother, Thomas Percy) and Douglas have been captured.

Northumberland is strangely invigorated by this terrible report, declaring, “In poison there is physic, and these news, / Having been well, that would have made me sick, / Being sick, have in some measure made me well …” (715, 1.1.137-39). He tosses aside the crutch he has been using, and seems to embrace violent chaos, crying out, “Let order die” and “let one spirit of the first-born Cain / Reign in all bosoms that, each heart being set / On bloody courses, the rude scene may end, / And darkness be the burier of the dead” (716, 1.1.155-60).

Morton and Lord Bardolph both talk Northumberland away from this despair. The First Folio edition construes the scene’s end more coherently than the Quarto version since Morton’s “’Tis more than time …” is followed by “The gentle Arch-bishop of Yorke is up / With well appointed Powres: he is a man / Who with a double Surety bindes his Followers” (1.1, pg. 76 / electronic pg. 398). The Archbishop can transform the rebellion into a material and spiritual cause. This text makes sense of Northumberland’s concluding sentence: “I knew of this before but … / This present grief had wiped it from my mind” (716, 1.1.175-76).

Act 1, Scene 2 (716-22, the Lord Chief Justice confronts Falstaff, who is busy adorning his person; Sir John’s lie about killing Hotspur has bettered his reputation and he is about to join forces with Prince John at York, so the magistrate decides not to arrest him for the crime he committed at Gadshill, but he still tries to secure the knight’s future good conduct.)

The scene opens with Falstaff waxing eloquent about the effects of his new-born celebrity since he falsely claimed to have killed Hotspur in battle and Prince Hal backed him on it. He marvels to his page—who has just made a joke about the doctor’s comments concerning Sir John’s urine—that, as he says, “I am not only witty in myself but the / cause that wit is in other men” (717, 1.2.8-9).

Falstaff is busy gussying himself up with satin breeches and cloak to suit his improved reputation, [4] when who should come knocking but the Lord Chief Justice? [5] His Honor has quite a deal of trouble getting through to the talkative, snarky Sir John, but he finally succeeds with, “I sent for you, when there were matters / against you for your life, to come speak with me” (719, 1.2.121-22).

It soon becomes clear that the Lord Chief Justice’s main concern is not, however, to punish Falstaff for the Gadshill robbery, but rather to bring to the fore the corrupting influence Falstaff has over Hal: “You have misled the youthful Prince” (719, 1.1.132), he scolds the wayward knight. Incredibly, Falstaff tries to transform this scolding into a dispute between youth and age, saying to the Lord Chief Justice, “You that are old consider not the / capacities of us that are young …” (720, 1.2.159-60).

His Honor has no intention of allowing Sir John to get away with such a ridiculous claim, and needles him with, “Is not your / voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit / single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity?” (720, 1.2.166-68) Stripped of this gambit, and reminded that he is slated to fight soon along with Prince John [6] against the Archbishop of York and the Earl of Northumberland, Falstaff resorts to saucily trying to borrow a thousand pounds from the Lord Chief Justice, who of course refuses to lend him a sixpence.

It’s thought that The Merry Wives of Windsor was composed around the same time as Henry IV, Pt. 2, or perhaps a little before it, so this introduction of Sir John’s escalating money troubles accords well with the version of him we encounter in Merry Wives, where he is a far less carefree and jovial man than he is in Henry IV, Pt. 1 especially, but also in much of Pt. 2.

Indeed, there is something mean,something downright predatory, about the Falstaff we encounter in Merry Wives—Shakespeare seems determined to bring out Sir John’s dark side more consistently than the two Henry IV plays do, even though the knight’s admission of his shocking irresponsibility as a military recruiter and leader is hard to top. At times, in Merry Wives it’s hard to see anything in Sir John but a con artist and sexual predator out to ruin the virtue of two very respectable women, Mistresses Ford and Page of Windsor.

Alone with his young page, Falstaff makes some startlingly intimate confessions, saying, “I can get no remedy against this consumption of / the purse. Borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the / disease is incurable” (215-18). He bids the page to deliver letters to the great lords of his acquaintance (Prince John and Westmorland) and, tellingly, to “old Mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn / to marry since I perceived the first white hair of my chin” (722, 1.2.220-21).

Sir John has gout, too, which causes him to limp, but that, he schemes, will only make his pension seem the more justifiable. A touch of predatory intelligence makes itself known here: “A good wit,” he says, “will make use of anything: I will turn / diseases to commodity” (722, 1.2.226-27). The old knight is painfully aware that he isn’t what he used to be, and realizes that he will need to become more and more of a grifter as age gets the better of him. This sounds very much like the Falstaff of Merry Wives.

Act 1, Scene 3 (722-23, at York, the Archbishop of York and fellow rebels Mowbray, Hastings, and Lord Bardolph discuss their chances of defeating King Henry’s army if Northumberland’s strong contingent fails to show; they observe that Henry’s forces are divided in three, so their best course will be to win over the common people to the rebel cause and take advantage of Henry’s divided military power.)

In a meeting of some of the chief rebels still alive after Shrewsbury, Lord Bardolph puts the key question to Hastings and the others: it’s “Whether our present five-and-twenty thousand / May hold up head without Northumberland” (722, 1.3.16-17). Bardolph also accuses Hotspur of recklessness in being so eager to fight an enemy of superior numbers. He says that Hotspur “with great imagination, / Proper to madmen, led his powers to death / And, winking, leaped into destruction” (722, 1.3.27-29).

Hastings, however, thinks the rebels’ strength of 25,000 may be enough. His reasoning is that King Henry’s forces are presently divided into three contingents: “one power against the French, / And one against Glyndŵr; perforce a third / Must take up us” (723, 1.3.47-49). The King is also running short of money, says Hastings. The rebels’ decision is to move forward with attack plans. Says Hastings, “We are Time’s subjects, and Time bids be gone” (723, 1.3.63).

ACT 2

Act 2, Scene 1 (723-27, officers arrest Falstaff for debt he still owes Mistress Quickly; he convinces her to let the charges go and even to lend him more money.)

Officer Fang comes to the tavern in Eastcheap to execute the Hostess’s suit against Falstaff for debt, and arrests him. [7] The problem runs deeper than debt, though, as we hear from the Hostess (Mistress Quickly) herself. She complains to Sir John that he promised to marry her some time ago (on the memorable occasion of being hit over the head by Prince Hal for insulting the King). Obviously, he has broken that promise, though he continues to deny it, insisting instead that the Hostess has been driven to distraction by her sinking finances.

We know that Falstaff himself is facing this prospect—he seems to have a strong case of what today we would call “middle-class anxiety” about falling into a socioeconomic rung below one’s present place. The Lord Chief Justice tries to get Falstaff to observe proper decorum for a man of his station, telling him, “answer in the effect of your reputation, and satisfy the / poor woman” (726, 2.1.114-15). Falstaff chooses another course, though, and taking the Hostess aside, he sweet-talks her not only into dropping her suit but lending him more money. Trading upon his rank—“As I am a gentleman!” he says (726, 2.1.120)—Sir John borrows a tidy sum.

The scene ends with the Lord Chief Justice and Falstaff engaging in some verbal parrying in which his Honor tells him to stop loitering and keeps refusing to answer the knight’s questions. There is recruiting work to be done. But in the end, all he can say is, “Now the Lord lighten thee; thou art a / great fool” (726, 2.1.171-72). The Lord Chief Justice doesn’t know quite what to do with Sir John Falstaff, a man of respectable station who continually (and successfully) confounds the expectations that come with that station.

Act 2, Scene 2 (728-31, Prince Hal and Poins agree to disguise themselves as servers and watch Falstaff carrying on at dinner.)

Much of what Prince Hal says to his companions in II Henry IV has an air of pending withdrawal, in spite of its often jovial surface quality. At the beginning of Scene 2, Hal says to Poins, “What a disgrace is it to me to remem- / ber thy name! Or to know thy face tomorrow!” (728, 2.2.12-13). As the Norton editor’s footnote 3 implies, this is a class-saturated utterance on the Prince’s part. He is becoming more and more aware of how discordant his preoccupations and friends are to his great status and increasing responsibilities.

Hal even connects this issue with the King, saying, “my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick; and keeping such vile company as / thou art hath in reason taken from me all ostentation of / sorrow” (729, 2.2.41-44). Still, the Prince’s growing self-consciousness doesn’t prevent him from plotting against Falstaff: dressed as waiters, he and Poins will observe Sir John’s antics with the Hostess and the prostitute Doll Tearsheet at the Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap. [8] The Prince is abashed at disguising himself, but as he says, “in everything the purpose must weigh with the folly” (731, 2.2.152-53).

Act 2, Scene 3 (731-32, Hotspur’s widow Kate prevails upon Northumberland to abandon the rebel cause.)

Northumberland seems ready to head out for the wars against King Henry again, after having been absent from the rebels’ disastrous loss at the Battle of Shrewsbury. Kate, Hotspur’s widow, scornfully opposes this move, tossing that very absence in his face now to keep him at home: “Oh, yet, for God’s sake, go not to these wars! / The time was, father, that you broke your word, / When you were more endeaded to it than now …” (732, 2.3.9-11). She means that at Shrewsbury, there was the added draw of protecting Hotspur, but now he’ s dead.

Northumberland protests, saying, “Fair, daughter, you do draw my spirits from me / With new lamenting ancient oversights” (732, 2.3.24-25). [9] But in the end, he is talked into heading north to Scotland for the time being.

Act 2, Scene 4 (732-41, at the Tavern in Eastcheap, Pistol insults Doll Tearsheet, and a fight breaks out; in disguise, Hal and Poins take in Falstaff’s derogatory comments about them, and Hal embarrasses the knight afterwards; Prince Hal and Sir John are called away to the wars; Doll and the Hostess both express their affection for Falstaff.)

Prince Hal and Poins execute their plan to observe Falstaff in his native habitat, and they get quite a show. It begins with Falstaff teasing the prostitute Doll Tearsheet about pregnancies and spreading STIs, to which first charge she responds with feisty words: “A pox damn you, you muddy rascal …” (733, 2.4.35). The Norton editor glosses the phrase “muddy rascal” as an out-of-shape, fat deer. From this interaction, we get a strong sense of the seamy underbelly of London life—the subterranean economy of vice that existed in Shakespeare’s own time and before it, too.

The Hostess tries to please Sir John by talking like a traditional wife. She tells the riled-up Doll Tearsheet, “One must bear, and that must be you: you are the weaker vessel, / as they say, the emptier vessel” (735, 2.4.54-56). Doll herself admits to feeling genuine affection for Falstaff, saying, “I’ll be friends with thee, Jack: thou art / going to the wars, and whether I shall ever see thee again or / no, there is nobody cares” (734, 2.4.59-61). This is a poignant moment for Doll, who, though held in low esteem by those around her, shows real passion, not just transactional sense.

When a drawer announces that Ensign Pistol (a known “swaggerer”) wants to speak with Falstaff, the Hostess winces with concern for her reputation as a modest woman and tavern-keeper: “If he swagger, let him not come here. No, by my faith, / I must live among my neighbors; I’ll no swaggerers; I am in / good name and fame with the very best” (734, 2.4.65-67).

Falstaff proceeds to bait Pistol with sexual innuendo, and since the Hostess is too abashed to speak for herself in reply, Doll Tearsheet lights into Pistol with expressions such as, “Away, you cutpurse rascal, you filthy bung, / away. By this wine, I’ll thrust my knife in your moldy chaps / an you play the saucy cuttle with me” (735, 2.4.110-12). Doll is not someone to be trifled with—she knows how to defend herself and other women.

Things go from bad to worse, and when Bardolph gets into a swordfight with Pistol, Falstaff joins in and drives the rogue out of the tavern. For his valiant effort, he is rewarded by Doll with, “Ah, you whoreson little valiant villain, you!” (737, 2.4.185) Doll soon takes a spiritual turn, asking Sir John, “when wilt thou leave fighting o’days, and foining o’nights, / and begin to patch up thine old body for heaven?” (737, 2.4.205-06) Of course, she also calls him a “whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig” (737, 2.4.204), but that’s no doubt an affectionate gesture, not a real dig.

Sir John isn’t pleased with Doll’s searching question, and replies, “Peace, good Doll, do not speak like a death’s-head, / do not bid me remember mine end” (737, 2.4.207-08). This reaction is suggestive of the unease (or as we would say existential angst) that may be underwriting Falstaff’s usually boisterous, playful words and actions. We should never underestimate the power of the medieval memento mori, whether it be an image or an utterance. [10]

But soon, Sir John moves on to something that is sure to get him into a fix, as he turns to “dissing” his illustrious and supposedly absent companion, Prince Hal. Falstaff says of him that he’s “A good shallow young fellow: ’a would have made a / good pantler; ’a would ha’ chipped bread well” (737, 2.4.210-11). He also says Hal’s friend Poins has “no more conceit in him / than is in a mallet” (737, 2.4.214-15).

But Falstaff’s biggest faux pas in this regard is what he says when Doll asks why Hal so loves Poins. Sir John’s answer is that the two of them are essentially the same: Poins’s behavior shows “a weak / mind and an able body; for the which the Prince admits him” (738, 2.4.224-25). This is to place Hal on the same level as a rascally commoner. We have already listened in to Hal’s concerns about what his conduct up to the present may have done to his reputation, so he will not take kindly to Falstaff’s comments.

Doll expresses more of her genuine affection for Falstaff, and then Hal, abandoning his waiter’s disguise, chides him for his disrespectful remarks. Sir John is reduced to saying to Poins and the Prince, “No abuse, Ned, i’th’ world, honest Ned, none. I / dispraised him before the wicked, that the wicked might not / fall in love with thee” (739, 2.4.289-91). This is patent nonsense, of course, and the knight goes on to abuse his companions roundly—Bardolph, Doll, and the Hostess are most unfairly dealt with here.

Soon, though, Prince Hal feels the call of duty towards his father since hostilities are brewing, and Falstaff is also beckoned by many messengers to get to his duty of raising troops for the King. Falstaff says his goodbyes, the Hostess expresses her affection for him, and Bardolph follows after Doll Tearsheet to bid her “come to my master” (741, 2.4.353) one last time before he must go.

Scene 4 is in part surely intended as a bit of comic relief among the weightier scenes surrounding it, ones involving the play’s great royal actors on the national stage. At the same time, however, Shakespeare uses this scene to expose the uncertainty, the anxieties, that link many of the play’s characters, be they silly (like Falstaff and his tavern companions) or serious, such as the guilt-ridden Henry IV, the oft-absent Northumberland, or the prince who’s determined to “redeem” his time and image, when those around think least he will.

ACT 3

Act 3, Scene 1 (741-43, a sleep-deprived King Henry, insecure and unwell, muses on time and human treachery, fate and free will; Henry takes Warwick’s counsel about circumstances past and present.)

King Henry tries to catch some rest as battle looms, but finds it impossible: “O sleep, O gentle Sleep, / Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, / That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down / And steep my senses in forgetfulness?” (741, 3.1.5-8). This expression of the unhappiness, the melancholy, anxious care, that taking the crown has cost this king is a constant in the Henry IV plays, and he ends his soliloquy with a line known round the world, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” (741, 3.1.31).

But it isn’t only lack of sleep that burdens Henry—it’s the sad, defeated thoughts that his circumstances (and sleeplessness, no doubt) bring, as is clear when he says to Warwick, [11] “O God, that one might read the book of fate, / And see the revolution of the times / Make mountains level …” (742, 3.1.45-46). A youth who could truly “read” such epochal change, says the King, “Would shut the book and sit him down and die” (742, 3.1.56). He goes on to consider the way today’s dearest friend or confederate, with time, will become one’s most inveterate enemy—as with Northumberland.

Warwick, too, is in a philosophical mode, and replies, “There is a history in all men’s lives, / Figuring the natures of the times deceased …” (742, 3.1.80-81). Once someone has seen this personal history, he says, it becomes possible to predict with remarkable accuracy what will happen in times to come. As Antonio says in Act 2, Scene 1 of The Tempest, “what’s past is prologue.” But further consideration of both characters’ words here (Antonio’s and Warwick’s, that is), exposes a certain ambiguity regarding the central idea that each addresses, which is the notion of “necessity” or “fate” as opposed to free will.

Antonio says to Sebastian that, while what’s past is prologue (i.e., it sets the stage), “what to come” is “In yours and my discharge.” [12] This could be read to imply that people are the puppets of the past, and merely act out what the past makes them do, but it could also mean that the past only creates a set of circumstances within which one must make one’s own free, vital choices.

Warwick’s language seems to license the same radically incommensurable interpretations, since he speaks of “main chance” (glossed by the Norton editor as “general probability”) and “necessary form” (which would seem to indicate an iron law of fate). So was Northumberland, having betrayed Richard, compelled, in “the hatch and brood of time” (742, 3.1.86),to betray Bolingbroke as well?

The King, it appears, takes Warwick’s formulation as indicating the latter interpretation. He says, “Are these things, then, necessities? / Then let us meet them like necessities” (743, 3.1.92-93). But then, Henry immediately resorts to what has come to him by the untrustworthy prologue, Rumor, to the effect that the enemy are 50,000 strong, a thought that Warwick quickly knocks down with another rumor, which is that Owen Glendŵr is dead. That rumor, as Shakespeare’s audience and we ourselves may know, is untrue—the mercurial Welsh leader’s death-date is uncertain, but he outlived Henry IV, who died in March 1413.

Whatever the case may be, Henry longs to get these civil broils over with, for his uneasy, sleep-deprived thoughts are turning again to his longed-for crusade to retake the Holy Land for Christianity. In his near-desperation and desperate guilt over Richard’s death, this is the happy life-arc he sees and clutches at for himself, his son, and England. By this stage of our acquaintance with King Henry, we can say with some confidence that his usurpation of the crown has not been personally “worth it.” But would he do it all over again? That is less easy to pronounce upon.

Act 3, Scene 2 (743-49, Justice Shallow reminisces about his alleged romantic exploits as a youth; Falstaff, on his way through Gloucestershire, chooses recruits for the King’s army in a manner that involves bribes; he decides that if he returns, he will con Justice Shallow out of some money.)

Here we get a good look at Justice Robert Shallow, a character who also appears in The Merry Wives of Windsor. The first thing we learn about Shallow is that he is proud of what he alleges to be the heady days of his youth, as when he says, “I was / once of Clement’s Inn, where I think they will talk of mad Shallow yet” (743, 3.2.11-13).

Shallow, he tells Justice Silence, was also a friend of Sir John Falstaff—then plain “Jack”—who, we hear, was at the time a young page of the illustrious Thomas Mowbray, First Duke of Norfolk. That’s the same Mowbray who was exiled by Richard II in the first play of the major tetralogy, Richard II, to settle his quarrel with none other than Henry Bolingbroke, now Henry IV. [13]

Shallow continues reminiscing about his supposedly wild youth, saying, “Jesu, Jesu, the mad / days that I have spent! And to see how many of my old acquain- / tance are dead” (744, 3.2.29-31). This focus on the past is hardly unusual in elderly people, whose personal reference points are often strongly tied to a past that stretches back many decades and offers the benefits of recollected (and sometimes—ahem—imagination-assisted) vigor and adventure.

Bardolph and Falstaff soon arrive, and after an affectionate greeting by Justice Shallow, they get down to the business of choosing among several potential army recruits whom the Justice has lined up for them. Here, we get to see the all-too-common fraud involved in such conscription practices: Falstaff makes his choices from the unlikely bunch, and the two least pathetic choices bribe Bardolph on the sidelines to “unchoose” them, which he does without batting an eyelash. Falstaff is apprised of this hustle, and adjusts his final choices accordingly to include only the poorest, least capable men, at whom he tosses cheerfully derogatory remarks.

When Shallow remonstrates with him over his poor recruiting choices, Falstaff is a little offended, and says, “Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a / man? Care I for the limb, the thews, the stature, bulk, and / big assemblance of a man? Give me the spirit …” (748, 3.2.232-34). No, he says, Bullcalf and Moldy can stay undrafted—he’ll take Messrs. Wart, Shadow, and Feeble any day, and march them off to war.

At intervals during this sorry process, Shallow reminisces in Sir John’s presence about what he assumes to be their own shared memories and perspective as young men. He asks him, “O Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in the Windmill in Saint George’s Field?” (747, 3.2.175-76) [14] Falstaff seems reluctant to say much, but he does offer the lovely sentence, “We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow” (747, 3.2.193-94), presumably meaning that they were lusty enough to stay awake until that hour, and thereby heard the bells of the town clock chime.

Falstaff’s poetical, almost mystical phrasing contrasts with Shallow’s fittingly more shallow way of remarking on his own “party hard” exploits of yesteryear. But alone, Falstaff muses, “Lord, how subject we old men are to / this vice of lying!” (749, 3.2.271-72) and he goes on to offer an unforgettable portrait of the young, preternaturally scrawny Robert Shallow. Most notably, he says, “When ’a was naked, he was for all the world like / a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife” (749, 3.2.277-79).

All this fine and funny imagery aside, Sir John’s use for Justice Shallow is as practical as can be: if he is lucky enough to make it home from the wars, he says, he will take Shallow up on his offer of a visit to his place, and give free reign to his most predatory, money-grubbing self: “If / the young dace be a bait for the old pike, I see no reason in / the law of nature but I may snap at him, till time shape, and / there an end” (749, 3.2.294-97). Item: little fish to be snapped up by big fish. We get it , Sir John.

It’s interesting to compare the ways of “doing history” we can discover in II Henry IV. We have just witnessed Justice Robert Shallow’s self-aggrandizing approach to his personal history, in which distorted recollection helps him to a better version of himself than anyone else ever knew. Falstaff puts this down to conscious lying, and uses that to justify his intention to fleece Shallow on the way home. But to us, Shallow’s nostalgic effusions may read as partly deliberate fiction, and partly sincere, if faulty, remembrance.

Falstaff’s brief, “mystic” response to Shallow’s representation of their shared past is most likely ironic and possibly even to be issued with a surreptitious eye-roll. Still, the words maybe spoken with relative sincerity. Few of us are entirely immune, after all, to a bit of nostalgia (accurate or otherwise) now and then.

In the previous scene (Act 3, Scene 1), we heard both Henry IV and Warwick trying to come to terms with the relation between the past, the present, and the future. Henry in particular has a mostly honest, if bitter, relation to his own remembered past. He is at times startlingly open about the sins he committed in coming by the crown. His guilt is mainly the purpose, as he admits, for his abiding, aching desire to return to the Holy Land. [15]

Finally, there is Shakespeare’s multifaceted relation to the historical chronicles and other materials out of which he partly weaves his history plays. He feels free to telescope and rearrange historical timelines, and to change the ages of his characters or even to conflate them. [16]

Percy Shelley’s friend Thomas Love Peacock wasn’t being entirely frivolous when he wrote that “Shakespeare and his contemporaries … used time and locality merely because they could not do without them, because every action must have its when and where ….” [17] Still, Shakespeare keeps a sort of faith with his country’s history that is no less deep for its sometimes compromised and confusing quality.

The playwright dramatizes that history in a manner that fixes it in our imagination: we sense the shock of strong personalities, recognize the traps into which selfish or incompetent rulers were apt to fall, and come to know the cruelty, the alienation, that so often existed between rulers and ruled, between rulers and others of the governing class.

Shakespeare was surely aware that even in the Middle Ages, not all of the characters he brings to life for us were easily, or completely, reducible to the requirements of their era or of their exalted rank, their royal or aristocratic tribe. [18] In fact, he revels in dramatizing the moments when they are least reducible to creatures of their class, or executors of their pre-established function—moments (happy or otherwise) when they seem most individuated and alive to us.

The author of Richard II, I & II Henry IV, Henry V and other history plays is a dramatist, not an “historian,” but he is supremely capable of presenting what is most memorable and most useful about the historical events and personages he covers. Most historians today would agree that all history-writing involves interpretation. That’s true even of varieties that aim to be as objective as possible in their presentation of people and events. Shakespeare’s offenses against “pure” history, then, may the more readily be accommodated, so long as we do so in a self-aware, honest manner. [19]

ACT 4

Act 4, Scene 1 (749-56, the rebel leaders arrive at Galtres Forest, where they meet with Westmorland and deliver their complaints to through him to the King’s deputy, Prince John; John promises to deal with their complaints, and the rebel army disbands; John promptly seizes the Archbishop of York, Mowbray, and Hastings and sentences them to death.)

The rebels are dealt a blow when the Archbishop informs them that Northumberland and his forces will not be available to fight against the King’s forces, which are expected to be about 30,000 strong. Westmorland arrives and speaks at some length with the rebel leaders (the Archbishop, Mowbray, and Hastings), then accepts a document detailing their grievances.

When Westmorland is gone, the rebels debate the best course of action. Mowbray takes the view that even if peace is achieved for the present, rebels like them will never really be trusted: he argues that “every slight and false-derivèd cause— / Yea, every idle, nice, and wanton reason— / Shall to the King taste of this action …” (752, 4.1.129-31). By contrast, the Archbishop insists—perhaps naively—that Henry IV will find it in his interest to practice a kind of calculated forgetting of past injuries so as to keep the peace: he says the King will “keep no telltale to his memory / That may repeat and history his loss / To new remembrance” (752, 4.1.141-43).

That’s the case, thinks the Archbishop, mainly because Henry knows he can never disentangle the complicated web of friends and enemies in his realm, and the cost of constant fighting is unsustainable. Every time he puts down a foe, the King must understand, he makes another enemy in doing so. [20] Still, Mowbray’s view is probably a better predictor of what an anxious ruler is likely to do: such a ruler is above all afraid of losing control, so he will accept constant fighting rather than following any policy that makes him look and feel weak.

Prince John meets with the rebels and accepts their conditions without batting an eyelash, saying, “I like them all, and do allow them well, / And swear here by the honor of my blood, / My father’s purposes have been mistook …” (754, 4.1.221-23). In other words, as he goes on to suggest, the King’s wicked advisors and executors are mostly to blame if there is any bad feeling among his subjects. This is a very common rhetorical strategy on the part of wayward monarchs and their supporters.

Well, the rebels are overjoyed to hear such news, and stupidly agree to disband their forces on the spot. The moment they do so, Hastings, Mowbray, and the Archbishop of York are arrested at the command of Westmorland. Prince John says, “I promised you redress of these same grievances / Whereof you did complain; which, by mine honor, / I will perform with a most Christian care” (755, 4.1.280-82). He will faithfully redress all grievances as listed, and he will execute the major rebels for treason. Prince John never said otherwise, so he is not, as the Archbishop claims, breaking faith. [21]

Act 4, Scene 2 (756-58, Falstaff accepts the surrender of a rebel knight named Coleville; Prince John upbraids Falstaff for his tardiness and mocks him in the manner of Prince Hal, but humors him all the same; Coleville will be led to his execution; Falstaff asks permission to return to London through Gloucestershire.)

Falstaff shows up belatedly on the field of battle, after the action is done. A knight named Coleville of the Dale promptly surrenders to him because, apparently, Sir John now has a modicum of name recognition among the enemy. Prince John happens by, and makes Falstaff the butt of his jokes. John taunts Sir John, “When everything is ended, then you come. / These tardy tricks of yours will, on my life, / One time or other break some gallows’ back” (756, 4.2.24-26). To this rebuke, Falstaff retorts by comparing himself to no less a warrior than Julius Caesar: “There, cousin, I came, saw, and overcame” (756, 4.2.37).

Prince John’s interaction with Falstaff may well remind us of any number of Prince Hal’s interactions with the same rascal. Structurally, this probably happens because Shakespeare sees the need to let Hal, who is about to become king, begin withdrawing in earnest from his now-inappropriate and unacceptable mentor and companion.

The next thing we hear, Falstaff’s prize, Coleville, is to be executed forthwith, and Prince John informs those around him that the King is alarmingly sick. When the Prince exits, Falstaff grumbles about the young man, deprecating his stature and masculinity. But in the main, Sir John’s complaint is, as he says, that, “this same young sober-blooded boy / doth not love me, nor a man cannot make him laugh—but / that’s no marvel: he drinks no wine” (757, 4.2.80-82).

The mention of wine leads Falstaff to a soliloquy full of remarkable thoughts on the source of wit. As we might have guessed, it comes down to alcohol—specifically, it comes down to “A good sherry-sack …,” which “hath a twofold operation in it …” (758, 4.2.88ff). The first is that it rises, he says, to brain and dries up all the bad “vapors” and whatnot, and so quickens that organ. The second operation is that it heats the blood, which results in courage and skill in fighting.

Why is Prince Hall valiant? It’s all due to his “endeavor of drinking good and good store of fertile / sherry …” (758, 4.2.109-10). Who can argue with Dr. Falstaff on a thing like that? Bardolph informs Sir John that “The army is dischargèd all and gone” (758, 4.2.115), by which he may mean their own company, or what’s left of it. As he has asked Prince John permission to do, he means to return home via Gloucestershire and visit Justice Shallow in that town.

Prince John, by the way, has also taken Hal’s place in covering for Falstaff’s deficiencies, telling him that he would give him a better report at the court than he has any business asking for (757, 4.2.77-78).

Act 4, Scene 3 (758-66, Henry gives Clarence some advice about keeping on Hal’s good side, and worries that bad friends are still influencing his eldest son; after he hears the news that the rebels have been vanquished, Henry faints from his illness; thinking him dead, Prince Hal takes the crown from the King’s bed; Henry awakens and rebukes Hal for taking the crown so hastily; Hal apologizes, and good feeling is restored; servants carry the King to a palace room named “Jerusalem” to die.)

King Henry, now gravely ill at Westminster Abbey, gives Thomas of Clarence some good advice on how to manage his relationship with his older brother Hal, who is soon to be king. Above all, says the King, Thomas must be wary of crossing Hal when he is in one of his bad moods.

When Clarence tells him that Hal is probably hanging around with Poins, the King has another wave of anxiety about his wayward son’s character: he says, “The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape / In forms imaginary th’unguided days / And rotten times that you shall look upon / When I am sleeping with my ancestors” (759-60, 4.3.58-61). Whatever will become of “Henry V,” the King wonders, when he is no longer there to guide the headstrong youth now invested with so much power?

Warwick expresses his own optimism about Hal, telling Henry that “The Prince but studies his companions / Like a strange tongue, wherein, to gain the language, / ’Tis needful that the most immodest word / Be looked upon and learnt …” (760, 4.3.68-71). In other words, he takes the view that Hal himself takes: his consorting with low-born men and women, some of them rogues, is all to be recuperated and redeemed in the Providential arc that the young man is tracing on his way to power. King Henry finds it hard to subscribe to such a sanguine view of his eldest son’s career.

Soon, Harcourt brings wonderful news, which is that “The Earl Northumberland and the Lord Bardolph, / With a great power of English and of Scots, / Are by the Shrieve of Yorkshire overthrown” (760, 4.3.97-99). Unfortunately, upon receiving this news, the dying King Henry falls into a swoon, saying, “now my sight fails, and my brain is giddy. / Oh, me! Come near me now; I am much ill” (761, 4.3.110-11). He sleeps, and the crown is placed upon the pillow next to his head.

Hal arrives and sits next to his stricken, sleeping father, and muses on the crown as “polished perturbation, golden care, / That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide / To many a watchful night!” (762, 4.3.154-56). This is in keeping with what Henry IV himself has already said about his crown and the “uneasy” head that wears it. [22] Thinking his father gone forever, Hal gently picks up the crown and walks away from the chamber with it, saying, “My due from thee is this imperial crown / Which, as immediate from thy place and blood, / Derives itself to me” (762, 4.3.172-74).

No sooner has Hal departed the scene than King Henry awakens as if from the sleep of death, and cries out for his chief ministers: “Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!” (762, 4.3.179) This is a near disaster for Prince Hal, who now looks at the least like an impatient ingrate. How does one answer a plaintive question from a dying man? “Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair / That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honors / Before thy hour be ripe?” asks Henry (763, 4.3.224-26).

King Henry further remonstrates with Hal, saying “O foolish youth! / Thou seek’st the greatness that will overwhelm thee” (763, 4.3.226-27). At this moment, Henry is convinced that Hal took the crown knowing he was still alive. Henry again voices his lament about Hal’s and England’s future: with such a wastrel on the throne, he fears, addressing England itself, “thou wilt be a wilderness again, / Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants” (764, 4.2.266-67). [23]

Henry’s explanation is that, thinking his father dead, he “spake unto this crown as having sense” (764, 4.3.287), accusing it of contributing to that death. The King is satisfied with this reasoning, and at once forgives Hal for his offense against royal decorum. Henry goes on to outline first the means by which he got the crown, and then the pattern of the reign that ensued: “God knows, my son, / By what bypaths and indirect crooked ways / I met this crown; and I myself know well / How troublesome it sat upon my head” (765, 4.3.312-15).

Henry expresses the hope that the crown will sit easier on the head of his heir than on his own, and describes the pattern of his reign in stark terms: “I had many living to upbraid / My gain of it by their assistances, / Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed …” (765, 4.3.321-23). Again and again, he found himself having to respond boldly to the dreadful acts of rebellion launched against him, and, he says, “all my reign hath been but as a scene / Acting that argument” (765, 4.3.326-27).

The King again expresses his belief that “Henry V” will find more acceptance perched at one remove from the original taking of the crown. Both times he utters this hope, it sounds like the fond hope of a dying man, which it is. Before Henry V even manages to leave the English coast for France at the beginning of his reign, he will have to defang a conspiracy against his life.

Henry IV also portrays his longtime plans to retake the Holy Land for Christianity in more political terms than has done before: fearing the unrest of the rebellious subjects, he says, who helped to put him on the throne (the Percy clan in particular), he “cut them off, and had a purpose now / To lead out many to the Holy Land, / Lest rest and lying still might make them look / Too near unto my state” (765, 4.3.338-41). So while Henry seems to have sincerely wanted to go on that crusade, it was also a skillful exercise in “people management” (proleptically) after the manner of Machiavelli.

The dying King confesses to Hal, “How I came by the crown, O God forgive, / And grant it may with thee in true peace live” (766, 4.3.347-48). Then, calling Warwick to him, Henry asks which room in Westminster Abbey he swooned in a while ago. The answer is, “Jerusalem” (766, 4.3.362). Hearing that, Henry says that many years ago, he heard a prophecy that he would die in Jerusalem, and thought that by the term was meant the actual holy city. Now he knows better, and says, “bear me to that chamber; there I’ll lie: / In that Jerusalem shall Harry die” (766, 4.3.367-68). [24]

ACT 5

Act 5, Scene 1 (766-68, Falstaff watches Shallow interacting with his servants so that he will be able to regale Prince Hal with funny stories, but this leads him in soliloquy to make some remarkably ungenerous comments about his old friend.)

Invited to dinner at Justice Robert Shallow’s home, Falstaff watches how his old friend interacts with Davy, the servant, and when Shallow leaves, the knight ponders why people act as they do, how they pick up their character, their habits, and so forth.

In an era that leans on the “four humors” [25] to explain a great many things about human behavior, it’s refreshing to see our resident proto-sociologist, Sir John, ascribing much human behavior to something like an Aristotelian notion of imitation: [26] he says of Shallow and his servingmen’s mutual actions and interactions that “Their spirits are so married in / conjunction, with the participation of society, that they flock / together in consent like so many wild geese” (767, 5.1.58-60). Falstaff continues more generally, “It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant car- / riage is caught, as men take diseases one of another” (767, 5.1.64-65).

The point of this musing is less sociological, however, than self-serving, as Sir John proposes to use the sights and sounds of Shallow & Co. to make Prince Hal laugh. He seems to think Hal is an easy mark when it comes to humor, saying, “Oh, it is much that a lie with a slight oath, and / a jest with a sad brow, will do with a fellow that never had / the ache in his shoulders” (768, 5.1.70-72). The references here are a little obscure, but the idea seems to be that young and inexperienced people are easily impressed when it comes to wit and humor.

Act 5, Scene 2 (768-71, fear hangs about the Court as the nobility and ministers await the new King Henry V’s dispensation and humor; Prince Hal sets the Lord Chief Justice’s mind at ease—he won’t be a scofflaw king, but one who appreciates honesty and courage in his ministers.)

No one knows quite what to expect from the onetime “wild child” who is now King Henry V. Will he be disposed to settle old grudges in the meanest way, or will he surprise them all, and, as he said long ago, set about “Redeeming time when men think least” he will? [27] The Lord Chief Justice is the most long-faced among the great men in the court since he once committee Prince Hal to custody briefly for striking him. [28] It doesn’t sound good for the “LCJ,” does it!

All the same, nobody need have worried—King Henry V is the model of patience now, and when the Lord Chief Justice [29] explains why he did as he did, the new monarch approves altogether and reappoints him to his office. Whether this really happened or not, it would be hard to come up with a better illustration of the principle of impartial justice.

Henry V also reassures the princes and others present that he is no longer the “child” that he was, saying, “The tide of blood in me / Hath proudly flowed in vanity till now; / Now doth it turn and ebb back to the sea, / Where it shall mingle with the state of floods, / And flow henceforth in formal majesty”(770, 5.2.128-32). This use of an oceanic metaphor is a notable way of applying the Renaissance notion that there are almost infinite correspondences between things of various orders, including humanity. [30]

In sum, in his own reign, Henry V means to avoid falling into the pattern that gave his father so much trouble and that he described for his son shortly before his death. As the new King Henry says, “No prince nor peer shall have just cause to say, / ‘God shorten Harry’s happy life one day’” (771, 5.2.143-44). There will be no more wars, if he can help it, with proud members of the nobility who—understandably in his father’s case—feel that he owes them his very life and crown.

Act 5, Scene 3 (771-74, when they hear that King Henry IV has died, Falstaff and Shallow travel to London in a celebratory mood.)

With Falstaff still visiting Justice Shallow in Gloucestershire, Pistol brings court news, and, as is his wont, nearly gets into an altercation with Falstaff over the manner of his delivery. The news itself, however, is cause for celebration, as far as Sir John is concerned. He apparently supposes that now, with “Hal” as king, he himself will have free reign to do as he likes, and declares, “the laws of England are at my commandment” (774, 5.3.124). As we know already, Sir John is wrong about this, and as we will shortly see, the consequences of his mistake will prove personally devastating.

Act 5, Scene 4 (774, officers arrest the Hostess and Doll Tearsheet on a somewhat vaguely backed charge.)

A pair of officers or beadles are in process of arresting the Hostess and Doll Tearsheet. Sincklo describes the rather vague justification as follows: “There hath / been a man or two killed about her” (774, 5.4.5-6). This seems to apply to both the Hostess and Doll, the latter of whom turns the air blue with her cursing. This brief scene amounts to a step-down moment in terms of the play’s lower-class characters’ expectations of leniency under the rule of Henry V, to say the least, and it contrasts markedly with the jubilation Falstaff expresses when he hears that Henry IV is dead and dear “Hal” is now king.

Act 5, Scene 5 (775-77, King Henry V undergoes his coronation; when Falstaff tries to get his attention during the outside procession afterwards, Henry V delegates the stern talking-to this merits to the Lord Chief Justice, who has Falstaff and his whole party sent to prison; Prince John expresses his approval of this way of proceeding.)

Outside and near Westminster Abbey after the King’s coronation, Falstaff hears that Doll Tearsheet is now in prison, and vows jauntily, “I will deliver her” (775, 5.5.37). But that is not to be. As Falstaff proudly and enthusiastically shouts terms of endearment to his old friend “Hal,” it is not Hal who responds but Henry V. This intimidating public figure at first says only, “My lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man” (776, 5.5.42), and at last is provoked to offer some speech to Falstaff that the knight surely wishes he hadn’t heard.

That speech begins, “I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers” (776, 5.5.55) and goes downhill from then onwards, as Henry says in purely public and formal vein, “Presume not that I am the thing I was, / For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, / That I have turned away my former self” (776, 5.5.54-56). Henry banishes Falstaff from his presence by a distance of no less than ten miles, though he promises to grant him a minimal pension to keep him from extreme want, and offers to advance him if he truly reforms.

This is definitely notwhat Falstaff had looked for, and to make matters worse, Justice Shallow starts pestering him about that thousand-pound loan he has apparently made. But that’s all one for the moment since the Lord Chief Justice orders Falstaff and his friends off to a prison named the Fleet for the time being, promising only, “I will hear you soon” (777, 5.5.90).

Prince John likes what he sees and hears of this new dispensation created by his brother Henry. “I like this fair proceeding of the King’s” (777, 5.5.93), he says, and adds, “I will lay odds that ere this year expire / We bear our civil swords and native fire / As far as France” (777, 5.5.100-03).

Act 5, Epilogue (777-78, the Epilogue-speaker issues an apology for the present play and promises that another one with Falstaff is yet to come.)

The Epilogue-speaker says he can offer three things to cap off the play. The first is a fear, which is simply, he says, the audience’s disapproval, its “displeasure.” The curtsy is easily done, and he considers it a “duty.” And as for the speech, well, that is, he says, no big production.

Which is the “displeasing play” that the speaker apologizes for? Would that be I Henry IV? Possibly, since the earlier play had initially caused some consternation by using the name “Sir John Oldcastle” for the character we now know as Falstaff. [31] The Epilogue-speaker specifically mentions Oldcastle, mainly to cover his bases with the powerful relative who objected to the use of the name: “For Oldcastle died martyr, and this is not the man” (778, Epilogue 28).

The speaker goes on to remind the audience that he promised a better play, which he hopes has been the function of the present play, 2 Henry IV.

One last consideration is a statement of intent to offer yet another “Henry” play that will continue the saga of Sir John Falstaff, but we know that Henry V (which certainly contains the character “fair Katherine of France” does not actually contain the living Falstaff—only a moving account by the Hostess of his last illness and death. The play with a living Falstaff turns out to be The Merry Wives of Windsor, which many critics believe to have been written sometime between I Henry IV and II Henry IV.

The Epilogue of II Henry IV has long held a certain fascination among critics, it seems. No less renowned a critic of Shakespeare than James Shapiro has argued that Shakespeare himself was the Epilogue-speaker in II Henry IV, and it isn’t hard to see why he has put forth that claim: the Epilogue does “read” like the author himself is speaking directly to us. But ultimately, that must remain conjecture. [32]

Final Reflections on I Henry IV and II Henry IV as a Unit.

Harold Bloom and a number of other critics are surely right that these two “Henry IV” plays are more about Falstaff than any other character. [33] While this savvy but health-challenged and guilt-burdened king certainly emerges as an authentic figure in both plays—one whose thoughts on politics and the wages of sin are always worth listening to—he gets remarkably little air time, so to speak.

Both plays are far more centered on the story arc of Prince Hal’s glorious transformation from a risk-taking, free-spirited youth to a majestic young king, and the story arc of Sir John Falstaff, who doesn’t so much change as suffer the consequences entailed by Hal’s transformation. Hal’s story, we might say, is “comical-historical,” while the funny man Falstaff’s story, ironically, is tragic-tending. By the end of II Henry IV, Falstaff’s spirit is all but crushed, and we can glimpse the final path of psychic devastation and death that the Hostess recounts with so much pathos in Henry V, Act 2, Scene 3.

All through both of the Henry IV plays, we see not only the lighter, more upbeat dimensions of Hal and Falstaff, but also the dark side of both men. Even before Hal transforms into Henry V, there are times when he seems to be merely using everyone and everything around him, and fully steeling himself for the abandonment that must come in due time. Hal/Henry’s time is what we might call royal-providential: he is bent upon redeeming not only himself from charges of irresponsibility and triviality, but also his Lancastrian father, the son of John of Gaunt, from the terrible sin by which he obtained the crown.

Falstaff has no providential framework of any sort, as Hal does. He pursues the pleasure principle for all he can get from it. But like Hal, he is at times a “user” of the people around him. The predatory and mean aspect of Sir John Falstaff that many critics and audiences note in The Merry Wives of Windsor wasn’t something Shakespeare made up whole-cloth for that play. We can find it in the Henry IV plays as well.

This quality is painfully evident in the final act of I Henry IV, wherein Falstaff brazenly and seemingly without remorse tells us that he has allowed his little company of “ragamuffins” to be “peppered” to kingdom come. Worse, he has done it for profit. Still, there is something much more to a character for whom even such a corrupt and cynical act can’t permanently strip us of our affection for him. In this regard, Bloom seems correct when he says that Falstaff, like Hamlet, exceeds the limitations of the play in which he appears. [34]

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Histories + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93859-3.

Document Timestamp: 8/22/2025 1:26 PM

ENDNOTES

*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.

[1] See Norman Rockwell Museum, Custom Prints. Accessed 8/16/2025.

[2] On Shrewsbury, see “Like Apples Fallen In Autumn: The Battle of Shrewsbury.” By Al Hemingway, 2008. Warfarehistorynetwork.com. Accessed 8/16/2025.

[3] In Prince Hal’s time, the absence of quick verification-capable technology (telegraph, radio, television, and now cellphones and the Internet) no doubt meant that a specious rumor was likely to arrive at a given place before the truth could be firmly established. Ironically, today we seem to have a different problem: while we can easily come by a true account by many means, the proliferation of readily available information (now including sometimes wildly inaccurate but plausible-seeming AI-assisted versions of events) poses a grave challenge to the very notion of truth, threatening to devalue it radically and perhaps irretrievably.

[4] On sumptuary laws in Shakespeare’s time, see “Elizabethan Sumptuary Laws ….” James McGeown, 16 April 2019. Shakespeare’s Globe Medieval & Early Modern History Blog. Accessed 8/22/2025.

[5] Henry IV’s Lord Chief Justice was Sir William Gascoigne (1350-1419).

[6] Prince John is Prince Hal’s younger brother John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford (1389-1435), whom Hal, as Henry V, would towards the end of his reign appoint as the Regent of France. Hal’s other two younger brothers were Thomas of Lancaster, Duke of Clarence (1388-1421), and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (1390-1447).

[7] On English taverns and similar establishments (inns, alehouses, etc.), see Medievalist.net’s December 2016 post on “England’s Early Drinking Houses (YouTube Video, Caroline Boswell).” See also Pascal Bonenfant’s “The Boar’s Head Tavern” and the Folger Shakespeare Library Blog’s “Early Modern Tavern Tokens.” All accessed 8/20/2025.

[8] Regarding prostitution, see the article “Brothels and Prostitution in Shakespeare’s England.” Accessed 8/20/2025.

[9] This scene tends to reinforce the assertion that Northumberland was pretending to be sick rather than actually being sick, but the Chronicles and other sources seem to disagree.

[10] The memento mori tradition was very powerful during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. See the Dailystoic.com’s article on this tradition, “History of Memento Mori.” Accessed 8/22/2025.

[11] This is not the famous “Warwick the Kingmaker” (Richard Neville, the 16th Earl of Warwick, 1428-71), but the 13th Earl of Warwick, Richard Beauchamp (1382-1439).

[12] Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems, 3rd ed. 397-448. See 418, 2.1.246-47.

[13] This seems to have been the case with Sir John Oldcastle as well. See Wikisource copy of Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 42, entry on Oldcastle, John. Accessed 8/22/2025. The “Mowbray” in the present play is Thomas de Mowbray, 4th Earl of Norfolk (1385-1405), son of Thomas Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk (1366-99).

[14] The Norton editor’s footnote 3 for pg. 747 says that “The Windmill” was “the name of a brothel or an inn” South of the Thames, near Southwark.

[15] Henry IV’s profound unease and guilt are present from the final scene of Richard II (wherein Sir Piers Exton brings in a coffin containing the body of the slain Richard II) all the way to I & II Henry IV, and obliquely even Henry V, where his son takes on the spiritual burden of his father as the Battle of Agincourt is about to begin. See 4.1.266-82 inclusive, where Henry V prays, “Not today, O Lord, / Oh, not today, think not upon the fault / My father made in compassing the crown.”

[16] For example, in the Henry VI plays, which “Earl of Warwick” are we dealing with—Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick (aka “Warwick the Kingmaker,” 1428-71) or his father-in-law Richard de Beauchamp, the 13th Earl of Warwick (1382-1439)?

[17] Peacock, Thomas Love. “The Four Ages of Poetry,” 1820. Accessed 8/20/2025.

[18] In this regard, we may think of Richard II, whom Shakespeare’s drama presents as very much a creature of his class, and yet also as a “poet-consciousness” more fitted to muse on his sad end than to serve as an active king. Henry VI is among the most saintly of Shakespeare’s characters, and therefore completely unfit to rule. This list could easily be lengthened.

[19] See Hayden White’s study Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Johns Hopkins UP, 2014. (Orig. pub. 1973.)This book was groundbreaking in its advancement of the claim that there is a fiction-like narrative structure in almost all historical writing. There is no simple contrast between “history” (Greek historía) and “story.”

[20] Certainly, modern nations and their military forces have encountered something like this dynamic: fighting terrorists or rebels tends to create new terrorists or rebels.

[21] A good modern contract attorney could have kept this from happening with the judicious addition of a few boilerplate sentences to the agreement. But seriously, the stratagem at least proves Sir Thomas Mowbray right with regard to his earlier claim that the King would never trust or abide rebellious subjects once they attacked him. He never had any intention of letting them off for their treason, which humiliated him before his entire nation and put him in grave physical danger.

[22] “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” (II Henry IV 741, 3.1.31).

[23] In England and other parts of today’s United Kingdom, wolves were for centuries much feared and subject to attempts to exterminate them. Those attempts go back at least as far as King Edward I (r. 1272-1307). To this day, there are no wild wolves in the UK.

[24] On Jerusalem Chamber in the Abbott’s house, which is where Henry IV died, see John Welford’s “The Death of King Henry IV at Jerusalem.” Medium / Short-History.com. Accessed 8/21/2025.

[25] The theory of the humors traces back to the Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BCE): the four humors or bodily fluids are black bile (associated with the element earth), yellow bile (associated with fire), phlegm (associated with water), and blood (associated with air). Balanced amounts of these fluids in the body were thought to maintain health and good temperament. An excess of the first-mentioned (black bile) could make a person depressed or irritable; excess of the second (yellow bile) angry, ill-tempered; excess of the third (phlegm) taciturn, unemotional; excess of the fourth (blood) cheerful, amorous or bold, sometimes to the point of lechery or foolhardiness. See also “Funny Medicine: Hippocrates and the Four Humours” (Vaccines Work), which offers an excellent summary and diagram. Accessed 8/21/2025.

[26] At the beginning of Section IV of The Poetics (Peri tēs poietikēs), Aristotle writes, “Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience.” The Poetics of Aristotle. Trans. S. H. Butcher. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 8/21/2025.

[27] This famous passage runs, “I’ll so offend to make offense a skill, / Redeeming time when men think least I will.” See the Norton Shakespeare 3rd ed., Histories, I Henry IV 636, 1.2.192.

[28] How ill-behaved was “Prince Hal,” in historical truth? It’s hard to be precise, but we can look to Holinshed’s Chronicles and Stow’s Chronicles for some hints about the Prince’s behavior as a young man of 15-16 years of age at the time I Henry IV is set, which is 1402-03. (He was born on August 9, 1387.) See Bullough, Geoffrey, editor. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. IV. Later English History Plays: King John, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIII. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia UP, 1966, first pub. 1962. Pp. 159-60. Bullough lists six things Stow claims the Prince is supposed to have done: “(1) the robbing of the Receivers; (2) the riot in Eastcheap; (3) the striking of the Lord Chief Justice and the committal of the Prince to prison; (4) the Prince’s coming to Court strangely dressed and carrying a dagger; (5) the Prince’s visit to his dying father during which he took away the Crown; (6) his dismissal of his former companions after the Coronation.”

[29] Sir William Gascoigne (1350-1419) was the Lord Chief Justice under Henry IV, though in truth, he didn’t stay on in that role for Henry V. It’s unclear whether the celebrated “committal to prison” episode actually occurred, or if it is apocryphal.

[30] See E. M. W. Tillyard’s standard study, The Elizabethan World Picture: A Study of the Idea of Order in the Age of Shakespeare, Donne and Milton (Vintage, 1959, first pub. 1943; Amazon link), on the most common among the cultural and other assumptions made by Shakespeare’s fellow citizens during the Elizabethan Era. Also available is the present commentator’s guide “Introduction to Tillyard’s Elizabethan World Picture.” Arthur O. Lovejoy’s book The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Harvard UP, 1976. First published 1933) goes into great detail about the “great chain” figure by which so many people figured the boundaries and ultimate nature of the universe. See also Scala Naturae: Great Chain of Being and Great Chain of Being, R. Fludd, 1619 (Wikimedia).

[31] See the Folger Shakespeare Library’s historical background article, “Sir John Falstaff and Sir John Oldcastle.” Accessed 8/21/2025. A nobleman in Elizabeth’s court is said to have insisted, successfully, that Shakespeare change the name from Sir John Oldcastle to something else. The “John Oldcastle” (1378-1417) in question was the proto-Protestant “Lollard” martyr who married into the title of Lord Cobham. In the Holinshed’s Chronicles section on Henry V,Oldcastle is characterized as having been held in high repute by Prince Hal before he became king.

[32] See Shapiro, James. Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2010. 229, 231-34.

[33] Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Riverhead Books, 1999. ISBN-13: 978-1573227513. 272. Bloom writes, “The two parts of Henry IV do not belong to Hal, but to Falstaff ….”

[34] Bloom, ibid. 279.

Commentaries onShakespeare’s History Plays