It can be said that Hal, Prince of Wales, underwent a gargantuan transformation throughout 1 Henry IV. As an audience, we are thrown into the middle of a conflict regarding the prince. At the beginning of the play, the King's Son is depicted as an immature wild man, drinking and prostituting himself until his death. The audience sees a man who “plays truant” (5.1.95). However, it is more likely that Hal was ready to become king long before this story began and is simply waiting for the opportunity to right all the wrongs of his father's reign with a perfectly timed return to glory and glory. chivalry. The usurpation of the throne from Richard II did not leave much room for his father's success. So Hal realizes that he must find a way to win the hearts and minds of the English people and create peace under one leader. In his soliloquy, Hal states: Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay So when I reject this cowardly behavior and pay the debt I never promised, How much better than my word I am, So much so that I will I falsify men's hopes; and, like a shiny metal on a gloomy ground, my reform, sparkling through my fault, will appear more beautiful and attract more attention than that which has no leaf to highlight it. (1.2.215-222) Clearly, Hal has already thought about the transformation he must pretend to undergo to gain the favor of the people. At the end of the play, the Prince of Wales becomes the perfect prince, blessed with a greater ability to speak than most others due to his constant battles of wits with Falstaff and appreciation of honor in the war, which he learns from Hotspur, the “theme” of the language of honor” (1.1.80). In other words, Hal must achieve his greatness by doing two things: outwitting his enemies and showing his honor on the battlefield by reuniting England and putting an end to the "civil butchery" causing "intestinal shock" which tears the country apart (1.1.13).During the Battle of Shrewsbury near the end of Act 5, Hal realizes one facet of his rise to greatness when he saves his father, King Bolingbroke, from Douglass. This milestone of achievement is further reinforced when Hal kills the fearsome Hotspur in one-on-one combat. However, in his final statements to Hotspur and Falstaff, Hal shows the one thing that truly sets him apart from all of Shakespeare's characters: his ability to speak and understand the common man["...I can drink with anyone what a tinker in his own language in my lifetime"] and also to speak so well that an army must be raised, unlike his foil Hotspur (2.4.18-19). Like his father in the play's opening scene, Hal does not tell everything he knows, a theme typified by Falstaff when he declares that "discretion is the better part of valor" (5.3.115). Even when Falstaff lies "breathless and bleeding on the ground", Hal continues, even in his final speech to his supposedly dear friend, to remark on his fatness, saying: "I should miss you very much." and so on (5.4. 108 138). Thus, the audience is forced to believe that Hal has established that Falstaff is not dead and that he knows of his plan to steal the glory from him for the murder of the great warrior Hotspur. When Falstaff returns, Hal says something that echoes York ["but is your Grace dead, my lord of Somerset?" (1.1.17)] in 3 Henry V:... Are you alive? Or is it fantasy that affects our eyesight? Please, speak. We won't trust our eyes without our ears. You are not what you seem. (5.4.137-41) The.