In the Library
Henry IV, Part 1
William Shakespeare, 1597
- Form
- Form Play
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Moderate
- Reading time
- Reading time 2 hours
- Chapters
- Chapters 19
- Length
- Length 25k words
£1.99
Read in the app, yours for good. Not yet by post.
The book unlocks on your account as soon as you buy it, so the 14-day right to cancel ends once it is unlocked.
What is honour? A word. What is in that word, “honour”? What is that “honour”? Air.
What buying means
- Yours for good, on every iPhone you sign in to.
- Read in the app’s own reader, with the original beside the translation where there is one.
- Downloaded, so it reads with no signal.
- The same price as in the app. Folio already opens every book on this shelf; buying keeps this one after Folio ends. A refund takes it back.
If you like this, try
The Good Soldier Švejk
Jaroslav Hašek
Falstaff decides honour is only a word and air, and Švejk is his heir: another soldier whose cheerful dodging makes the whole business of war look absurd.
£1.99
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote does the same thing, but stretches the argument over a whole novel, setting a knight chasing pale-faced honour against a squire who only wants his supper.
£1.99
About the book
The Boar's Head tavern in Eastcheap, and the heir to the throne of England is drinking with a fat, lying, magnificent old knight who robs travellers for pocket money and calls it his vocation. Hal knows precisely what he is doing: he tells us in the first act that he means to throw these people over, to let his reformation glitter the brighter against the misspent nights, and the awful thing is that he is telling the truth. At court the King hears about Hotspur, all fire and no patience, incapable of getting through a sentence without picking a fight with it, and wishes aloud that a fairy had swapped the two boys in their cradles. Both sons are being carried toward the same field at Shrewsbury, and Falstaff goes with them, asking what honour is worth to a dead man and answering himself. Falstaff will win you completely, which is the trap: underneath every joke you can hear a young man quietly practising how to leave him.