Type of Work
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.......Henry IV Part I is a history play with episodes of both comedy and tragedy. Although the play is based on the facts of history, it presents fictional characters, such as Sir John Falstaff and his plebeian friends, as well as fictionalized episodes involving them. Shakespeare is believed to have written the play in 1597 or earlier. It was first performed between 1597 and 1600

Sources

.......Shakespeare based Henry IV Part I primarily on accounts in The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (Holinshed’s Chronicles), by Raphael Holinshed (?-1580?), who began work on this history under the royal printer Reginald Wolfe. The first edition of the chronicles was published in 1577 in two volumes. Shakespeare also used the following sources: The Union of Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancastre and York, by Edward Hall (?-1547); The Civil Wars (about the Wars of the Roses), by Samuel Daniel (1563-1619); and a play, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth. Shakespeare may have based the character Falstaff, in part, on a boastful but cowardly soldier named Pyrgopolynices in Miles Gloriosus, a play by the Roman dramatist Plautus (254?-184 BC).
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Setting
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The action takes place in England between 1401 and 1403 at the following sites: London, Rochester (east of London), Warkworth Castle (in northern England), Bangor (a military camp near Shrewsbury on the English-Welsh border), a public road near Coventry (in the English midlands northwest of London), and York (about halfway between London and Edinburgh, Scotland). The London locales present striking opposites—for example, the palace of the king in one scene and a slummy byway or tavern in the next.

Characters
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Protagonist: King Henry IV (It can be argued, however, that Prince Hal is the Protagonist)
Antagonists: The Enemies of the King and His Son
Comic Figure: Falstaff
Tragic Figure: Hotspur

King Henry IV: Skilled politician who, as Henry Bolingbroke, forced Richard II's abdication and usurped the throne. The oldest son of the Duke of Lancaster (John of Gaunt), Henry was the first English king in the House of Lancaster, reigning from 1399 to 1413. During this play, he battles uprisings by British nobles. 
Henry (Hal), Prince of Wales: Older son of the king. Known as Prince Hal (or simply Hal) to his friends, he keeps company with a band of drinkers and robbers in the slums of London. But when the time comes to fight the rebel forces, he distinguishes himself in battle and wins the respect of all. It cannot be determined whether the historical Prince Henry was a carousing mischief-maker, although unverifiable stories characterize him as such. 
Sir John Falstaff: Bosom pal of Prince Henry and one of the great comic characters in English literature. He is a fat, good-for-nothing knight who spends his time bragging, wenching, sleeping, robbing, drinking sack (a dry white wine), and sparring verbally with anyone. He pronounces one of Shakespeare's most famous lines: "The better part of valour is discretion" (often misquoted as "Discretion is the better part of valour").
John of Lancaster: Younger son of the king.
Henry Percy (the Younger): Son of the Earl of Northumberland (the elder Henry Percy). Young Henry, a fierce warrior, fights first on the side of the king but changes his allegiance to become a rebel leader. He is often called Hotspur, a name that symbolizes his pluck and temperament as a warrior and opponent of Prince Henry.
Henry Percy (the Elder): Earl of Northumberland. He opposes the king after first supporting him and forms an alliance with a Welsh leader, Owen Glendower.
Thomas Percy: Earl of Worcester and Hotspur's uncle.
Lady Percy: Wife of Hotspur.
Edmund Mortimer: Earl of March. He believes he has a claim on the throne. 
Owen Glendower: Welsh rebel leader.
Lady Mortimer: Wife of Edmund Mortimer and daughter of Glendower.
Archibald: Earl of Douglas. He leads the Scottish army as an ally of the Earl of Northumberland.
Richard Scroop: Archbishop of York and ally of Northumberland.
Earl of Westmoreland: Nobleman in the king's army.
Sir Walter Blunt: Nobleman in the king's army.
Sir Michael: Supporter of the archbishop.
Sir Richard Vernon: rebel.
Poins: Drinking companion of Prince Henry.
Gadshill, Peto, Bardolph: Drinking companions of Falstaff.
Mistress Quickly: Hostess of the Boar's-Head Tavern in London's Eastcheap section. Prince Henry, Falstaff, and their drinking friends are among the tavern's best customers.
Francis: Waiter.
Minor Characters: Lords, officers, sheriff, vintner (wine merchant), chamberlain, drawers (tapsters or bartenders), carriers, travelers, attendants, ostler (hostler, a person at an inn or a stable who keeps charge of horses). 

Plot Summary
By Michael J. Cummings...© 2003

Yet herein will I imitate the sun, 
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds 
To smother up his beauty from the world, 
That, when he please again to be himself, 
Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d at, 
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists 
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. 
If all the year were playing holidays, 
To sport would be as tedious as to work; 
But when they seldom come, they wish’d for come, 
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. 
So, when this loose behavior I throw off 
And pay the debt I never promised, 
By how much better than my word I am, 
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes; 
And like bright metal on a sullen ground, 
My reformation, glittering o’er my fault, 
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes 
Than that which hath no foil to set it off. 
I’ll so offend, to make offence a skill; 
Redeeming time when men think least I will. (1. 2. 67-87) 

.......While Hotspur returns home to Warkworth Castle to make his traitorous plans, Hal and Poins play their trick on Falstaff, wearing disguises as they rob Falstaff of the money he robbed from travelers. Falstaff runs off without putting up a fight. Later, at the Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap, Falstaff bemoans his loss to Hal and Poins, unaware that they were the ones who robbed him of his booty. He claims he fought with a dozen robbers for two hours before yielding his prize and escaping miraculously. “I am eight times thrust through the doublet,” he says, “four through the hose; my buckler cut through and through; my sword hacked like a hand-saw” (2. 4. 66).When Hal reveals himself and Poins as the trick-playing villains who robbed Falstaff, the fat knight says he knew all along that it was Hal who had set upon him. But, he says, he did not resist because he did not wish to injure the future king. 

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.......While befriending Falstaff and his rowdies, Prince Hal is a carouser, robber, womanizer, and practical joker. And his father is not at all pleased. However, what King Henry IV does not realize is that young Hal is deliberately masking his true worth and talent by participating in these base activities. His goal is to educate himself in the ways of the common people. After building a reputation as a wastrel and ne’er-do-well, he will shock and confound everyone when he turns out to be a savvy, highly skilled leader of men. The sow's ear will have become a silk purse. 

Battlefield Valor as a Shaper of Leaders

.......Prince Hal’s courageous deeds in war help mold him into a leader esteemed ny those who previously thought he was a ne'er-do-well. This motif recurs throughout literature and history, as demonstrated in ancient times by Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar and in modern times by Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. 

Carpe Diem, or Eat, Drink, and Be merry

.......Falstaff lives for the moment—for wine, women, song, and making mischief. “I live out of all order, out of all compass” (3. 3. 5), Falstaff says of his carpe diem philosophy. Although he appears to have ensnared Prince Hal in his happy-go-lucky lifestyle, the young prince knows well his responsibilities as heir to the throne and, when the time comes, he doffs his veneer of devil-may-care merrymaker to reveal himself as a brave and wily king-to-be.

Guilt From Ill-Gotten Gain

.......Henry IV experiences deep guilt for the manner in which he came to power: overthrowing the previous king, Richard II. (Shakespeare says he did not merely overthrow him; he murdered him. This guilt consumes him and remains with him (as the reader learns in Henry IV Part II) until he draw his last breath.

Internal Strife

.......Henry IV uses his army to fight citizens of his own country. In modern times, governments have often done the same, rightly or wrongly, in Russia, Northern Ireland, Vietnam, and other countries. 

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.......Shakespeare wrote Henry IV partly in prose and partly in verse. 
.......Verse is a collection of lines that follow a regular, rhythmic pattern—in Shakespeare, usually iambic pentameter, a metric scheme in which each line has ten syllables consisting of five unaccented and accented syllable pairs. In its highest form—when the language is lyrical and the content sublime—verse can become poetry, either rhymed or unrhymed. Prose, on the other hand, is the everyday language of conversation, letters, lectures, sermons, newspaper articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia articles. Prose has no rhyme or metric scheme.
......Why did Shakespeare mix verse (including poetry) and prose in his plays? That is a question that inevitably occupies anyone studying Shakespeare’s writing techniques. Before considering that question, the Shakespeare analyst first needs to learn how to identify the verse and prose passages in a play. That task is easy. Here’s why: 
......In most modern editions of the plays, each line in multi-line verse passages begins with a capital letter, and each line in multi-line prose passages begins with a small letter except the first line or a line beginning with the opening word of a sentence. In addition, verse passages have a shortened right margin, but prose passages have a full right margin. Following are examples of these visual cues in verse and prose passages from Henry IV Part I:

Prose Passage

CHAMBERLAIN.  Good morrow, Master Gadshill. It holds current that I told you yesternight: there’s a franklin in the wild of Kent hath brought three hundred marks with him in gold: I heard him tell it to one of his company last night at supper; a kind of auditor; one that hath abundance of charge too, God knows what. They are up already and call for eggs and butter: they will away presently. 
GADSHILL.  Sirrah, if they meet not with Saint Nicholas’ clerks, I’ll give thee this neck. 
CHAMBERLAIN.  No, I’ll none of it: I prithee, keep that for the hangman; for I know thou worship’st Saint Nicholas as truly as a man of falsehood may. (2.1-28-31)

Verse Passage

LADY PERCY.  O, my good lord! why are you thus alone? 
For what offence have I this fortnight been 
A banish’d woman from my Harry’s bed? 
Tell me, sweet lord, what is’t that takes from thee 
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep? 
Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,
And start so often when thou sitt’st alone? 
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks, 
And given my treasures and my rights of thee 
To thick-eyed musing and curst melancholy? (2.3.10-20)

HOTSPUR.  We’ll fight with him to-night. 
WORCESTER.  It may not be. 
DOUGLAS.  You give him then advantage. 
VERNON.  Not a whit. 
HOTSPUR.  Why say you so? looks he not for supply? 
VERNON.  So do we. 
HOTSPUR.  His is certain, ours is doubtful. (4.3.1-7)

One: Express deep emotion requiring elevated language. Because nobles and commoners were both capable of experiencing profound emotion, both expressed their emotions in verse from time to time.
Two: Make wise, penetrating, and reflective observations that require lofty language. Such a passage is a famous one recited by the outlaw Jaques in Act II, Scene VII, of As You Like It. The passage—which begins with the often-quoted line “All the world’s a stage”—philosophizes about the “seven ages” of man, from infancy to senility. 
Three: Present a lyrical poem as a separate entity, like the famous song in Act V, Scene III, of As You Like It. The first stanza of that poem follows:
............It was a lover and his lass,
............With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
............That o’er the green corn-field did pass
............In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
............When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding:
............Sweet lovers love the spring.
Four: Inject irony. When the highborn speak humble prose and the hoi polloi speak elegant verse, as is sometimes the case in The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare may be saying up can be down, and down can be up. In The Merchant, the noble characters are just as reprehensible as—or perhaps even more reprehensible than—the workaday, unsophisticated characters. Portia is often depicted in critical analyses of the play as its noblest character. But a close reading of the play reveals her as a racist and a self-seeking conniver. Thus, Shakespeare makes her tongue wag in prose and verse, revealing her Janus personality.
Five: Suggest order and exactitude. A character who speaks in precise rhythms and patterns is a character with a tidy brain that plans ahead and executes actions on schedule.

One: Express ordinary, undistinguished observations coming from the surface of the mind rather than its active, ruminating interior.
Two: Make quick, one-line replies such as “Ay, my lord” that are the stuff of day-to-day conversations.
Three: Present auditory relief for audiences (or visual relief for readers) from the intellectual and connotative density of the verse passages.
Four: Suggest madness or senility. In King Lear, Lear speaks almost exclusively in verse in the first half of the play. Then suddenly, he lurches back and forth between verse and prose, perhaps to suggest the frenzied state of his aging mind. Hamlet sometimes shifts to prose in front of observers, perhaps in hopes of presenting his feigned madness as real.
Five: Depict the rambling, desultory path of conversation from a tongue loosened by alcohol, as in Henry IV Part I and Henry IV Part II.
Six: Poke fun at characters who lack the wit to versify their lines.
Seven: Demonstrate that prose has merits as a literary medium. In Shakespeare’s day, verse (and its elegant cousin, poetry) was the sine qua non of successful writing. As an innovator, Shakespeare may have wanted to tout the merits of prose. Thus, on occasion, he infused his plays with prose passages so graceful and thought-provoking that they equalled, and sometimes even surpassed, the majesty of verse or poetry passages.

.......To vivify his writing, Shakespeare frequently uses similes in Henry VI Part I, as in the following passages:

The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife,
No more shall cut his master. (King Henry, 1.1.19-20)
Comparison of the edge of war to the cutting edge of a knife

When I was dry with rage and extreme toil, 
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, 
Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress’d,   36
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new reap’d, 
Show’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home: 
He was perfumed like a milliner. (Hotspur, 1.3.34-39)
Comparison of the lord to a bridegroom and his child to a harvested field

                        At my nativity   16
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, 
Of burning cressets; and at my birth 
The frame and huge foundation of the earth 
Shak’d like a coward. (Glendower, 3.1.16-20)
Comparison of the movement of the earth to the shaking of a coward

All [are] furnish’d, all in arms, 
All plum’d like estridges that wing the wind,  108
Baited like eagles having lately bath’d, 
Glittering in golden coats, like images, 
As full of spirit as the month of May, 
And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer,  112
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls. (Vernon, 4.1.107-113)
Comparison of soldiers to ostriches, eagles, the spirit of May, the midsummer sun, goats, and bulls

.......Examples of other figures of speech in the play are the following

Alliteration
Repetition of a consonant sound

Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here, 
In quantity equals not one of yours  (Hotspur, 3.1.99-100)

In his behalf I’ll empty all these veins, 
And shed my dear blood drop by drop i’ the dust (Hotspur, 1.3.138-139

And thou hast talk’d 
Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, 
Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets, 
Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin, 
Of prisoners’ ransom, and of soldiers slain, 
And all the currents of a heady fight. (Lady Percy, 2.3.24-28)

By heaven methinks it were an easy leap 
To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac’d moon, 
Or dive into the bottom of the deep, 
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, 
And pluck up drowned honour by the locks; (Hotspur 1.3.208-212)

And for whose death we in the world’s wide mouth 
Live scandaliz’d and foully spoken of. (Worcester, 1.3.158-159)
Comparison of gossip (implied) to the world's wide mouth

The hour before the heavenly-harness’d team 
Begins his golden progress in the east. (Glendower, 3.1.225-226)
An allusion that compares the sun to the team of horses that draws the chariot of Apollo, the Greek sun god

            Will you again unknit 
This churlish knot of all-abhorred war. . . ? (King Henry, 5.1.19-20)
Comparison of war to a knot

               The southern wind 
Doth play the trumpet to his purposes, 
And by his hollow whistling in the leaves 
Foretells a tempest and a blustering day. (Prince Hal, 5.1.6-9)

Prince Hal: Crafty Dissembler

.......Early in Henry IV, Shakespeare depicts Prince Hal as a fun-loving, hard-drinking, womanizing rascal who enjoys the company of commoners, a characterization that gives him a certain romantic appeal. However, in a soliloquy in Act I, Scene II (a soliloquy reproduced in the plot summary above), Hal discloses that he is leading a life of dissipation in order to learn about the ways of commoners, including vulgar lowlifes, and thereby prepare himself to become a king who knows the minds of his subjects. In other words, Hal is spying on the common people; he is going to school on them, as it were, pretending to be friends with them when, in reality, he regards them as objects in an experiment designed to serve his aims. 

Falstaff: the 'Supreme Comic Character'

.......Renowned Shakespeare critic G.B. Harrison, impressed with Shakespeare's handling of Falstaff, wrote the falling appraisal of the character: 

The most notable person in [King Henry IV] is the fat knight, Sir John Falstaff, the supreme comic character in all drama. In creating Falstaff, Shakespeare used principally his own eyes and ears. Falstaff is the gross incarnation of a type of soldier found in any army, and there were many such—though on a lower level of greatness—swarming in London when the play was first written, spending the profits of the last campaign in taverns, brothels, and playhouses, while they intrigued for a new command in the next season's campaign.... Many of them were rogues who cheated the government and their own men on all occasions.... Though he [Falstaff] can quote Scripture on occasion, he is a liar, a drunkard, and a cheat; he robs the poor and flouts every civic virtue; but on the stage at least he redeems his vices by his incomparable wit and his skill escaping from every tight corner."—G.B. Harrison, ed. Major British Writers. New York: Harcourt,  1967 (Page 59).

.......In the dialogue of Henry IV Part I and other Shakespeare plays, characters sometimes speak wise or witty sayings, or epigrams, couched in memorable language. Among the more memorable sayings in Henry IV Part I are the following:

The better part of valour is discretion. (5. 4. 118)
Falstaff’s observation expresses a paradox: that prudence and caution are, or should be, components of courage and fearlessness.

Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. (2. 3. 6)
Hotspur here uses metaphors, comparing danger to a nettle (a plant with sharp hairs that can sting the flesh) and safety to a flower.

He was but as the cuckoo is in June, heard, not regarded. (3. 2. 77-78)
King Henry tells his son, Prince Hal, that it is unwise for a monarch to be seen often in public to curry the favor of the people. When a previous king overexposed himself, the people eventually tired of seeing him—and he became like the familiar June cuckoo. It makes its noise, but nobody hears it. This simile, which compares the king to the cuckoo, seems particularly apt for the context.

Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere. (5. 4. 71)
Prince Henry speaks this line when he meets Hotspur on the battlefield. It is a climactic moment; for here are the two lions of the opposing armies set to wield swords against each other. Hal uses a metaphor to compare himself and Hotspur to stars and the battlefield to the sky, noting that the sky is not big enough for two great stars. In other words, one of the men must die. Henry then kills Hotspur.

Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave, 
But not remember’d in thy epitaph! (5. 4. 107-108)
Prince Henry pronounces these words, which personify ignominy, over the dead Hotspur. They express a noble sentiment: that the memory of Hotspur’s opposition to the king’s forces should not stain his reputation but instead should sleep with him in his grave.

No play of Shakespeare is better than Henry IV. Certain subsequent ones may show him more settled in the maturity which he here attains almost at a single bound, but nothing that he wrote is more crowded with life or happier in its imitation of human talk. The pen that moves across these pages is perfectly free of itself. The host of persons assembled for our pleasure can say anything for their author he wants to say. The poetry of Hotspur and the prose of Falstaff have never been surpassed in their respective categories; the History as a dramatic form ripens here to a point past which no further growth is possible; and in Falstaff alone there is sufficient evidence of Shakespeare's mastery in the art of understanding style, and through style of creating men.—Van Doren, Mark. Shakespeare. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1939 (Page 97).

Playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) held an opposing view:

Everything that charm of style, rich humor, and vivid natural characterization can do for a play are badly wanted by Henry IV, which has neither the romantic beauty of Shakespeare's earlier plays nor the tragic greatness of the later ones. . . . The combination of conventional propriety and brute masterfulness in his [Prince Hal's] public capacity with a low-lived blackguardsman in his private tastes is not a pleasant one. No doubt he is rue to nature as a picture of what is by no means uncommon in English society, an able young Philistine inheriting high position and authority, which he holds on to and goes through with by keeping a tight grip on his conventional and legal advantages, but who would have been quite in his place if he had been born a gamekeeper or a farmer."—Shaw, George Bernard. Quoted in Eastman, A.M., and G.B. Harrison, eds. Shakespeare's Critics: From Jonson to Auden. Ann Arbor, Mich.: U of Michigan, 1964 (Page 208).

House of Lancaster: Henry IV ("Bolingbroke," son of the Duke of Lancaster), 1399-1413. Age at death: 47. Henry V (son of Henry IV), 1413-1422. Age at death: 34. Henry VI (son of Henry V, deposed), 1422-1471. Age at death: 49. 
House of York: Edward IV (son of duke of York), 1461-1483. Age at death: 41. Edward V (son of Edward IV), 1483. Age at death: 13. Richard III ("Crookback," brother of Edward IV) 1483-1485. Age at death: 35.

Study Questions and Essay Topics

1. Which character in the play is the most admirable? Which is the least admirable?
2. On this page, under “Great Play—or Mediocre,” Mark Van Doren and George Bernard Shaw present opposing opinions about the literary quality of Henry IV Part I. Do you agree with Van Doren or Shaw? Explain your answer.
3. Write an essay focusing on a theme expressed in the following epigrams: Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere (5. 4. 71).
4. Write an essay that examines the motivations of Prince Hal.
5. Write an essay comparing and contrasting Prince Hal and Hotspur.
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