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Falstaff: My king, my Jove, I speak to thee, my heart!
King Henry V: I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.
How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester.
I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swelled, so old, and so profane;
But being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing. Know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest.
Presume not that I am the thing I was,
For God doth know—so shall the world perceive—
That I have turned away my former self.
(Act 5, scene 5, lines 46–58)
Henry IV, Part 2 culminates in act 5, scene 5, where this exchange takes place between Falstaff and Harry, who has recently been crowned as King Henry V. Having learned that his beloved Harry has ascended to the throne, Falstaff rushes to London to greet the new king. Falstaff’s eagerness to see Harry comes from a genuine fondness for him as well as a selfish desire to benefit from having a friend in a high place. However, when Falstaff manages to fight through the crowds on the street and approach Harry, the new king forcefully rejects his former mentor. Harry likens his memories of Falstaff to a bad dream where there appeared an aging fat man with a filthy mouth. Harry claims to have woken from this hateful dream, which he now despises. This claim fulfills the prediction the Earl of Warwick made in act 4, scene 3, where he promised King Henry that Harry’s tavern friends would soon come “to no further use / But to be known and hated” (4.3.77–78).
More significantly, this exchange also fulfills an ominous prediction that Harry himself made in act 2, scene 4 of Henry IV, Part 1. In that scene, Harry has been summoned to court to meet with his father, whom he hasn’t seen in a long time. Falstaff suggests that Harry prepare for the encounter by role-playing: Falstaff will play the king, while Harry will play himself. Soon, however, they swap roles. Falstaff, now playing the prince, begs the “king” not to banish his good friend Falstaff. To this plea, Harry, as the king, says: “I do, I will” (2.4.499). And indeed, Harry does banish Falstaff in this culminating moment of Part 2. The banishment of Falstaff represents the final act in Harry’s self-transformation from reprobate to prince to king. Hence why he warns Falstaff not to mistake him for someone he used to be: “I have turned away from my former self.” In rejecting his old friend and mentor, Harry also symbolically rejects unlawfulness and disorderly conduct. In their stead, he courts the law and order associated with his new mentor: the Lord Chief Justice.
