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Summary: Act 5: Scene 5
Near Westminster Abbey, just outside of London, the newly crowned King Henry V and his attendants are coming from the king’s coronation. Falstaff and his companions—Shallow, Pistol, Bardolph, and Falstaff’s page—have ridden hard from Gloucestershire to arrive in time, and they place themselves along the street down which the king must walk so they can greet him. Falstaff is full of happy anticipation of the warm welcome he will receive from the new king.
However, when he hails King Henry V (whom he still calls “Harry”), the king at first ignores him and then tells him that he does not know him. He goes on to say to the bewildered Falstaff that he remembers dreaming about a foolish old man like Falstaff—fat, obscene, ridiculous—but he has now woken up and despises his former dream. The king says he has changed from the wild days when he was Prince Harry; he has put that identity behind him, and he will similarly put away from him the people he knew in those days. For that reason, he is banishing Falstaff and the rest from his presence, such that none of them will ever be allowed within ten miles of him. He concludes by saying that Falstaff and his friends will be well provided for. He will give them an adequate income so that poverty does not drive them back into crime, but none of them may ever come near him again, until and unless they reform themselves into virtuous, respectable people.
The king finishes his speech and sweeps onward without a backward look. Falstaff, astonished and confused, still retains some hope. He suggests to the others that Harry was forced to put on a public show of disavowal, but that the new king will call for his old friend to visit him later, in private. But Falstaff’s final hope is dashed when the Lord Chief Justice returns, accompanied by Prince John and several police officers. They have orders to take Falstaff and the others away to a prison, where they will be held until they can be sent away from London. Falstaff has no chance to get out more than a few words before he is silenced and taken to prison.
Left alone onstage with the Lord Chief Justice, Prince John comments admiringly on the way in which his older brother, the new King Henry V, handled his former friends: offering them an income but keeping them far away from him. Prince John adds that he hears the king has summoned his parliament, and he expects that they will be discussing the possibility of an upcoming invasion of France. The Lord Chief Justice agrees, and the two set off together for the court.
Read a translation of Act 5: Scene 5.
Summary: Act 5: Epilogue
The play concludes with a short epilogue, which is a typical feature of Elizabethan drama. Presumably meant to be spoken by the author or by a dancer (or to have only one part spoken at a time, by one or the other), it offers an exaggeratedly humble apology for the “badness” of the play and requests applause from the audience. This particular epilogue also includes a prayer for Queen Elizabeth and promises the audience a sequel to the play they have just seen—one that will feature Falstaff as well as the lovely Katherine of France.
Analysis: Act 5: Scene 5 & Epilogue
Harry’s rejection of Falstaff is both predictable and necessary. We know that Prince Harry has long been planning to turn himself into a responsible king. We can see this transformation taking place in passages like Harry’s vows to his dying father in act 4, scene 4, and in his adoption of the Lord Chief Justice as a role model in act 5, scene 2. It’s important to note that the groundwork for this metamorphosis is laid as early as act 1, scene 2, in Henry IV, Part 1. There, Harry delivers a soliloquy in which he details his plan to give up his friends and his wild life in order to become a responsible king. Harry also prophesied his banishment of Falstaff in the earlier play. In act 2, scene 4, Falstaff pretended to be Prince Harry and addressed Prince Harry, who himself was pretending to be his father, the king. Falstaff pleas, “Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world,” to which Harry responds, ominously: “I do, I will” (Henry IV, Part 1, 2.4.497–99). Now that he has ascended the throne, King Henry V makes good on his earlier promise.
However, it is difficult not to have mixed feelings about Harry’s “miraculous” transformation. Even if Falstaff may be a reprobate in search of wealth and power, it’s equally clear that he genuinely cares for Harry. When preparing to greet the new king on the street, he remarks on how disheveled he looks after riding hard across the countryside to reach London. He reasons that, though not the proper state in which to greet a king, it will nonetheless demonstrate “the zeal I had to see him” and “my earnestness of affection” (5.5.14, 16). Then, when he greets the new king, he cries, “King Harry, my royal Hal! . . . God save thee, my sweet boy! . . . My King! My Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!” (5.5.39, 42, 46). Falstaff’s sense of betrayal is palpable when the king utters his cold and silencing reply: “I know thee not, old man” (5.5.47).
In these scenes, it also becomes evident that Harry has taken the Lord Chief Justice as a model for his speech as well as his character. Harry now talks in more regal and powerful language, shows less of a sense of humor, and he appears to have given up punning entirely. Harry clearly wants to reject all the trappings of his former identity: “Presume not that I am the thing I was,” he says to Falstaff, “For God doth know . . . That I have turned away my former self” (5.5.56–58). As the former “tutor and the feeder of my riots” (5.5.62), Falstaff no longer has a place in Harry’s life. In the end, for better or worse, Harry feels that he has traded chaos for order, and freedom for responsibility. As a result, he has become a good king.
Prince John’s closing comments about France indicate that the new king has taken his father’s dying words to heart. Now that England is no longer wracked by civil war, he hopes to “busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels” (4.3.372–73). Hence, England will go to war with France. With this conclusion, Shakespeare prepares the way for the final play in the “Henry” tetralogy—Henry V, which deals with the invasion of France by the new king.
