Henry IV, Part 2

Summary

The Second Part of King Henry IV is a play of aftermath. It opens with Rumour, a figure 'painted full of tongues', who boasts of spreading false reports that Hotspur won at Shrewsbury. At Warkworth the old Earl of Northumberland, who stayed away from that battle pleading illness, learns the truth from Morton: his son is dead and the King's forces are moving north. He throws away his crutch and vows revenge, but after his widowed daughter-in-law Lady Percy reproaches him for abandoning Hotspur, he retreats to Scotland and leaves the new rebellion, led by the Archbishop of York with Mowbray and Hastings, to fend for itself. In London Sir John Falstaff, now older, gouty and in debt, parries the Lord Chief Justice, who knows of the Gad's Hill robbery and warns him away from the Prince. Mistress Quickly tries to have him arrested for debt and a broken promise of marriage, then lends him more money. Prince Hal, weary and out of love with his greatness, visits the Boar's Head in disguise with Poins and overhears Falstaff slandering him to Doll Tearsheet, before being summoned to court. The King himself appears only in the third act, sleepless at midnight, envying the ship-boy who sleeps on the mast and brooding with Warwick on how the friends who helped him to the throne have become enemies. Falstaff goes recruiting in Gloucestershire, where his old acquaintance Justice Shallow reminisces about their youth at the Inns of Court; Falstaff takes bribes to release the able recruits Mouldy and Bullcalf and keeps the feeble ones. At Gaultree Forest Prince John of Lancaster persuades the rebels to disband by promising redress of their grievances, then arrests their leaders for treason, insisting he pledged nothing to their persons. At Westminster the King collapses on hearing of the victory. Thinking him dead, Hal lifts the crown from his pillow; the King wakes, accuses him of hungering for his death, and is answered with a speech of grief that reconciles them. Dying in the chamber called Jerusalem, Henry advises his son to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels and asks God's forgiveness for the means by which he gained the crown. As Henry V, Hal confirms the Chief Justice who once imprisoned him and declares that his wildness is buried with his father. Falstaff rides from Gloucestershire expecting favour, but at the coronation procession the new King answers, 'I know thee not, old man', banishes him on pain of death from coming within ten miles, and the Chief Justice sends him to the Fleet. An epilogue promises more of Sir John, with Katharine of France, and disclaims any portrait of Oldcastle.

Top Lessons

• The Prince who must disappoint expectation

  Everyone in the play has written Hal down according to his tavern reputation, and his father dies half believing it. Hal's vow in Act V to 'mock the expectation of the world' and his choice of the Chief Justice show reform as a public act that must be proved by deeds. Students can weigh whether the change is conversion, policy or the fulfilment of a long-held plan announced in Part 1.

• Falstaff's rejection and the cost of a public office

  The coronation rebuke is one of the most debated moments in Shakespeare. Henry V tells Falstaff to make less his body and more his grace and to fall to his prayers, yet he also provides him a competence and promises advancement if he reforms. The scene forces students to hold together justice, mercy and the cost of turning from old companions.

• Uneasy lies the head: kingship and a troubled conscience

  Henry IV cannot sleep, sickens in body as his realm sickens in rebellion, and confesses on his deathbed that he came to the crown by crooked ways. His advice to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels is shrewd and morally ambiguous. The play invites reflection on how unrepented means shadow a ruler's ends.

• A promise kept to the letter at Gaultree

  Prince John promises redress of grievances, the rebels dismiss their army, and he then arrests their leaders, claiming he pledged nothing to their persons. Shakespeare stages the episode without comment, leaving the audience to judge whether this is prudence ending a civil war or a betrayal of good faith.

• Old men remembering in a Gloucestershire orchard

  Shallow and Silence talk about the price of bullocks and the deaths of old friends in the same breath, and Falstaff privately mocks Shallow's invented wild youth. Yet 'We have heard the chimes at midnight' carries real feeling. These scenes show time, aging and self-deception with comic tenderness rather than satire alone.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Sickness is the play's governing metaphor and a literal condition of its characters. Falstaff's doctor inspects his urine; he lectures on apoplexy citing Galen, suffers gout and pox, and gives a humoral account of how sherry heats the blood and quickens the brain. The King is sleepless and then suffers fits that his sons call apoplexy before dying; Clarence attributes his decline to 'incessant care and labour of his mind'. Northumberland's feigned sickness, the Archbishop's language of fever, surfeit and bleeding for the commonwealth, and the King's cry of a kingdom 'sick with civil blows' turn humoral medicine into political analysis. Historically Henry IV suffered a serious illness in his last years that chroniclers described in various ways; the play's apoplexy is a dramatic diagnosis, and any modern identification is a reading, not a fact.

• Act 1, Scene 1

  Northumberland, who stayed from Shrewsbury 'crafty-sick', hears of his son's death and throws away his crutch and sickly coif, comparing himself to a feverish patient breaking from his keeper.

• Act 1, Scene 2

  Falstaff asks what the doctor said of his water (uroscopy), discusses the King's apoplexy as 'a kind of sleeping in the blood' with a reference to Galen, and curses his gout and pox.

• Act 3, Scene 1

  Henry IV's sleepless night and his address to sleep; Warwick speaks of the kingdom's body as 'distemper'd' but curable with good advice and little medicine.

• Act 3, Scene 2

  Shallow and Silence recall dead contemporaries and consider death certain; Falstaff mocks Shallow's withered body while recruiting the unfit.

• Act 4, Scene 1

  The Archbishop describes the realm as diseased by surfeit and in a burning fever that must be bled, disclaiming the role of physician while adopting its language.

• Act 4, Scene 3

  Falstaff's soliloquy on sherris-sack: wine dries cold vapours in the brain, warms the blood and liver, and musters the vital spirits to the heart.

• Act 4, Scenes 4-5

  The King falls ill at news of victory; his sons call it apoplexy and attribute it to care, observe omens, call for music and quiet, and he dies after his last counsel to Hal.

• Epilogue

  The speaker jokes that Falstaff may 'die of a sweat' in the promised sequel, a phrase that can allude to sweating sickness or to the sweating treatment for venereal disease.