Henry IV, Part 1

Summary

Henry IV, Part 1 shows King Henry IV, who took the crown from Richard II, troubled by rebellion and by his own son. In Act I the king, hoping to lead a crusade to atone for Richard's fall, hears instead of war on the Welsh and Scottish borders, and envies the Earl of Northumberland his son Harry Percy, called Hotspur, who has won a victory at Holmedon, while his own heir, Prince Hal, wastes his days in the taverns of Eastcheap with the fat old knight Sir John Falstaff. Alone, Hal tells the audience that he is only biding his time and will throw off his loose life when it will most amaze the world. Hotspur refuses to hand over his prisoners unless the king ransoms his brother-in-law Edmund Mortimer, and his uncle Worcester draws him into a conspiracy with Northumberland, the Scottish Earl of Douglas, the Welsh leader Owen Glendower and the Archbishop of York. In Act II Falstaff and his companions rob travellers at Gad's Hill and are themselves robbed by Hal and Poins in disguise; back at the Boar's Head, Falstaff's account of the fight swells from two attackers to eleven men in buckram, until Hal exposes him and Falstaff claims he knew him all along by instinct. The two act out an interview between the king and his son, with Falstaff pleading not to be banished, and Hal answering that he will. Meanwhile Lady Percy begs Hotspur to tell her what troubles his sleep. In Act III the rebels quarrel over the map of the kingdom they mean to divide, Hotspur mocking Glendower's claims to magic. The king rebukes Hal, comparing him to the frivolous Richard and Hotspur to his own younger self, and Hal vows to redeem his name on Percy's head. In Act IV Northumberland falls sick and Glendower fails to come, but Hotspur insists on fighting; Falstaff marches a ragged company he has pressed into service. At Shrewsbury in Act V the king offers pardon, which Worcester hides from Hotspur; Falstaff asks what honour is and concludes it is a word. In the battle Douglas kills Sir Walter Blunt, disguised as the king, Hal saves his father from Douglas, and Hal kills Hotspur in single combat, speaking a generous farewell over him and a farewell to Falstaff, who lies apparently dead nearby. Falstaff rises, having counterfeited death, stabs Hotspur's body and claims the kill, and Hal lets the lie stand. Worcester and Vernon are executed, Douglas is freed for his valour, and the king divides his forces against the rebels who remain. The play was first printed in quarto in 1598 and became one of the most often reprinted plays of the age.

Top Lessons

• Redeeming the time

  Hal's soliloquy in Act 1, Scene 2 tells the audience that he will throw off his idle life when it will shine brightest. The play keeps asking whether this is wisdom, calculation or a young man's excuse, and it lets Hal prove himself only at Shrewsbury. Reformation is promised early and earned late.

• Three views of honour

  Hotspur would leap to the moon for honour; Falstaff calls it a word and air that cannot set a leg; Hal takes Hotspur's honours from him but gives his dead rival a noble farewell. Shakespeare sets the three side by side and lets the audience judge.

• Fathers and sons

  The king wishes Hotspur were his son, and Northumberland fails his son at the decisive hour. In Act 3, Scene 2 father and son speak openly at last, and at Shrewsbury Hal saves his father's life. The play is a family drama inside a civil war.

• Truth and counterfeits

  Falstaff's men in buckram multiply, the rebels quarrel over a map, Douglas kills men dressed as the king, and Falstaff counterfeits death. Against all these false shows Hotspur's plain motto is to tell truth and shame the devil. The play is full of the gap between appearance and reality.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Lady Percy's speech in Act 2, Scene 3 lists loss of appetite, broken sleep, starting when alone, pallor, sweats and battle talk in dreams, and it is often cited by writers on combat stress as an early literary description of a soldier's disturbed sleep; that is a modern reading, since in the play the symptoms belong to a man absorbed in plans for a coming war, and in period terms she blames melancholy. Falstaff's catechism (Act 5, Scene 1) asks whether honour can set a leg or take away the grief of a wound, a soldier's-eye view of what battlefield surgery could and could not do. Hotspur's popinjay lord recommends parmacety (spermaceti) for an inward bruise, a remedy of the period's apothecaries. Falstaff's age, girth and sack, the tavern bill of two gallons of sack, and Bardolph's fiery face are comic portraits of heavy drinking. Falstaff's pressed soldiers, food for powder, and the field of Shrewsbury give the play's casualties. History adds what the play omits: Prince Henry was struck in the face by an arrow at Shrewsbury, and the surgeon John Bradmore later described extracting the arrowhead with an instrument he devised and dressing the wound with honey.

• Act 2, Scene 3

  Lady Percy describes Hotspur's lost appetite and sleep, his starting, sweating and murmuring of battles in his dreams.

• Act 1, Scene 3

  Hotspur mocks the perfumed lord who told him the sovereign remedy for an inward bruise was parmacety and that guns alone kept him from soldiering.

• Act 2, Scene 4 and Act 3, Scene 3

  Falstaff's tavern bill, his age and girth, and his jokes on Bardolph's burning face.

• Act 4, Scene 2

  Falstaff's ragged pressed men, whom he calls food for powder fit to fill a pit.

• Act 5, Scenes 1, 3 and 4

  The catechism on honour and surgery, Blunt's death, Falstaff's ragged men peppered, and Hal wounded but refusing to leave the field.