Henry IV, Part I

King Henry must postpone his crusade to Jerusalem because of the intensity of civil unrest at home. Suspiciously, one of his best military men, Hotspur, sends a message that he will retain all but one of the prisoners. This flouts standard procedures, since tradition gives the king automatic right to all prisoners. King Henry doesn't know it yet, but many of the nobles are rising against him. Meanwhile, Prince Henry, hereafter referred to as Prince Hal, is frequenting taverns and leading a merry but irresponsible life. His shady friend, Sir John Falstaff, serves as a kind of surrogate father. Falstaff is an anarchic fellow with an admirable gusto for life and play, impressed with none of the upper-class conventions of legality, honor and propriety. On the surface, he appears to operate on chaos, ale, and tall tales. Early in the play, Prince Hal reveals that the unmannered company he keeps is part of his plan to impress the public when he trans forms himself into a responsible man of noble substance fit for a king. The idea is to redeem time when men least think he will. The logic is a bit of a gamble, since it seems like Prince Hal genuinely cares for Falstaff and his friends and may find it difficult making a harsh break from the place where affection grows. At the same time, Prince Hal's evident awareness of grooming a public image and talent for the common touch promises royal potential.
Falstaff's friend, Poins, plans the robbery of some wealthy travelers. In private, Poins explains to Prince Hal that he plans to hide before the robbery occurs, pretending to ditch Falstaff. In Act two, the joke is carried out. It is disconcerting to watch Prince Hal treat his friend so carelessly—his ambivalent behavior will be continually tested throughout the play and the sequel. On a broader scale, the lawlessness and aimless of violence of the whole endeavor hints at the coming rebellion of the Percy family, and foreshadows the disintegration of stability in England.
Act two scene five contains a remarkable piece of theatrical role-playing, when Falstaff plays King Henry as Harry plays himself. The play-within-a-play is revelatory in how the two men see themselves and one another.
The most critical scene in Act three is the second scene in which King Henry confronts Prince Hal of his vagabond ways. Henry tells his son that at this point, he finds Hotspur has more right than Hal to inherit the throne. Hotspur, at least, is courageous on the battlefield, and operates on an openly admirable honor code. To Henry, his son may be yet another Richard II. Henry fails to realize that Hotspur's impulsiveness is what stops him from ever being a great politician, or that Hotspur is a knight without chivalry. Hal is moved by his father's pain. He begs his father's forgiveness, then ardently pledges to defeat Hotspur.
In Act IV scene three, Hotspur lists his family's grievances against King Henry. It essentially details Henry's past, as depicted in "Richard II". Hotspur's family was instrumental in helping Henry overthrow King Richard and ascend the throne. Henry's ingratitude was demonstrated in his refusal to pay the ransom for Mortimer after Mortimer was captured in Wales. Lord Edmund Mortimer, Hotspur's brother-in-law, was named by Richard to be next in line for the throne, before Richard was deposed. Hotspur's accusations reflect a com plicated reality in which all of the characters involved in the party seem to have mixed political motivations.
The battle at Shrewsbury is crucial. The Earl of Douglas, leader of the Scotsman, kills Sir Walter Blunt who is acting as the king's decoy. Ironically, soon after the event, he asks Henry, the real king: "What art thou,/ That counterfeit'st the person of a king?" (V.iii. 27-8). It is a metatheatrical jab at how Henry ascended the throne but it also pricks the guilty conscience of Henry himself. Prince Hal saves his father's life in battle, and kills Hotspur. Falstaff stabs an already dead Hotspur when no one is looking and claims he killed the man. The royal forces win and the characters left alive continue the dangling plot threads into Part Two.
"King Henry IV Part One" was one of Shakespeare's most popular plays in Elizabethan times. It contains a stunning panorama of England, and a colorful experimentation in various social registers. At the play's first printing, which took place between 1597-1598, the title page advertised the presence of Harry "Hotspur" Percy and Sir John Falstaff. Only in the twentieth century did readers and performers find Prince Hal as the starring role. If Prince Hal is to be seen as a man of the future, then his father is a man haunted by the past. Historically, Hotspur was over twenty years Prince Henry's senior, but Shakespeare altered it so that the rivals from the same generation. This heightens the dramatic stakes of two young men on competing quests for honor and filial roles. In Act five, Falstaff will meditate on the hypocrisy of honor, questioning the ideals of the young men and the kind of world their version of honor demands. King Henry compares the worthiness of both Prince Hal and Hotspur as sons in fulfilling the pride of their family.
Orson Welles condensed the two parts of Henry the Fourth into one storyline for his 1965 "Chimes at Midnight". Gus Van Sant's 1991 film "My Private Idaho" is loosely based on the first part of Henry the Fourth.