Henry IV, King, Parts 1

Henry IV, King, Parts 1 and 2, historical plays by Shakespeare, written and performed about 1597. Part 1 was printed in quarto 1598, Part 2 1600. The chief sources are the chronicles of Hall and Holinshed, and Daniel's historical poem The Civil Wars.

The subject of Pt 1 is the rebellion of the Percys, assisted by Douglas and in concert with Mortimer and Glendower; and its defeat by the king and Prince Hal, the prince of Wales, at Shrewsbury (1403). Falstaff first appears in this play. The prince of Wales associates with him and his boon companions, Poins, Bardolph, and Peto, in their riotous life. Poins and the prince contrive that the others shall set on some travellers at Gadshill and rob them, and be robbed in their turn by themselves. The plot succeeds, and leads to Falstaff's well-known fabrication to explain the loss of the booty, and his exposure. At the battle of Shrewsbury, Prince Hall kills Hotspur in a heroic single combat, and then discovers Falstaff feigning death, whom he mourns with the words, ‘I could have better spar'd a better man.’

Pt 2 deals with the rebellion of Archbishop Scroop, Mowbray, and Hastings; while in the comic under-plot the story of Falstaff's doings is continued, with those of the prince, Pistol, Poins, Mistress Quickly, and Doll Tearsheet. Falstaff, summoned to the army for the repression of the rebellion, falls in with Justices Shallow and Silence in the course of his recruiting, makes a butt of them, and extracts £1,000 from the former. Henry IV dies, reconciled to his son, and Falstaff hastens from Gloucestershire to London to greet the newly crowned king, who rejects him in the speech beginning ‘I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers’, banishing him from his presence but allowing him ‘competence of life’.