Prince Hal: The King in Training

Hal opens the play with a plan. In Act 1, Scene 2, alone onstage after Falstaff and Poins leave, he addresses the audience directly ('I know you all') and explains exactly what he is doing in the taverns. He is performing idleness. The reformation will land harder because the fall was so public.

This soliloquy changes how you watch everything that follows. Hal is not a wastrel who accidentally becomes a king. He is always a king in training, using Falstaff's world as raw material. Whether that makes his eventual rejection of Falstaff fair or cruel is the question that the Henry IV plays spend two full plays building toward.

At Shrewsbury, he saves his father's life and kills Hotspur, the military feat the play has been building toward. He also drapes his cloak over Falstaff's fake body before leaving the battlefield, a small act of generosity he does not advertise.