Henry IV: Part One

Shakespeare, William. Henry IV, Part One.  New York: New American Library, 1963. 

Audience:  12+

Genre: Drama

Topics of Focus:  War, Kingship, Chivalry, Intergenerational Conflict, Duty, Honor, Taverns.

Red Flags:  Violence, Bawdy Humor, Sack Consumption, Falstaff.

William Shakespeare is known primarily as the world’s greatest playwright and poet. Henry IV. Pt. One is a wonderful example of this virtuoso’s history plays, a sequence primarily representing the period of English History from Richard II to Richard III, with the exceptions of King John and King Henry VIII. One of the cardinal virtues of this play is Shakespeare’s outstanding juxtaposition of the life of the taverns, centered around the debauched knight Sir John Falstaff, literature’s greatest comic character, the man the incomparable Dr. Johnson called “[U]imitated, inimitable Falstaff…”  with the chivalry, honor, and military prowess of the Northern Rebels, led by the choleric Hotspur, and to a lesser extent with the austere, formal dignity of the court, with the embattled Henry IV at its apex.

The play begins with the postponement of Henry’s planned crusade to Palestine due to current political conditions in England, represented shortly after by the King’s argument with Worcester and Hotspur, setting the inevitable military confrontation, consummated at the end of the play, in motion. Shakespeare does not linger at court, however, and we are quickly introduced to the Prince Hal and Sir Jack, along with an assortment of other bottom-feeding fish, as they plan to rob pilgrims and travelers. After some glorious scenes in the taverns, Price Hal’s promise to his father to reform honorably fight, and other political intrigue with the rebels, we come to the final battle, the point where the different realms come together. Falstaff is, quite unsurprisingly, cowardly; Hotspur is both valiant and killed; and Prince Harry surpasses the general expectation by killing the Northern Rebel, foreshadowing his abandonment of low-living and eventual semi-apotheosis to the status of England’s hero king. The play ends with a decision to continue the struggle against the Rebels. This play should be read, or preferably, seen, by everyone, as it is both enlightening and spectacularly entertaining. 

Annotation by Jacob Logan-Baer