Remaining onstage at the end of Act V, Scene I of Shakespeare’s The First Part of King
Henry IV, Sir John Falstaff delivers a rumination on the meaning of honor that reduces the noble human ambition to nothing more than an empty symbol of the dead. In doing so, Falstaff resists the aims and motivations of the most influential and powerful characters of the play; Falstaff’s passions—for life, for living, for joy—are undervalued by the courtly culture Prince Hal is joining. In this speech, Shakespeare’s drunken knight at once dismantles a principle motivation of the nobility and also champions the universal nature of existence, locating the emotional center of the play not in the rise and fall of kings but in the lived experiences of individuals. …show more content…
A word. [. . .] What is that
‘honor’? Air. A trim reckoning” (5.1.133-5). Falstaff’s suggestion that a word is nothing more than air immediately implies that words are meaningless, but Falstaff’s love of storytelling, wordplay, puns, and metaphor discourage such a quick assessment. Air is a vital and necessary part of life; it connotes not only survival but also the ability to speak, laugh, and eat. For Falstaff, the word “honor” is no more or less valuable than any other word; it is simply a word, but it is a word nonetheless. To suggest that he should die for a word—to give up his life for something used for the greater enjoyment of life—is not only a poor wager, it is unreasonable; it is a “trim reckoning.” In Falstaff’s logic, such a sacrifice would be empty because the ability to use a word is necessarily contingent upon having the life to use it. In fact, Falstaff cannot find any good in an honorable death; as a word, “honor” …show more content…
And so Falstaff ends where he began: honor is not an idea, an ideal, or a value; honor is a word. To make it anything more is to attempt to give a word the qualities and advantages that belong solely to humans. In this sense, the word “honor” is a symbol—a “scutcheon”—only for the dead, and therefore not for Falstaff, the play’s greatest lover of life (5.1.140). And what has preceded this realization is a “catechism”; in analyzing the significance of honor, Falstaff relies on a particular type of wordplay, a call-and-response often found in faith (5.1.140). Falstaff’s transcendent passion for words places a value on his temporal existence that informs his own position within the play and affects the way he views the actions of others. The battlefield is not a venue for honor, but a playground; the highway is not for traveling, but for thieving; the throne is not for a king, but for a drunk. Thus, the movement of I Henry IV is not Hal’s rise to royalty, but his tragic loss of the most essential human quality, passion for life; in Falstaff, Shakespeare’s play finds not simply comic relief but an antidote to the power and corruption that threaten the fragile conception of what it is to be a living
Henry IV, Sir John Falstaff delivers a rumination on the meaning of honor that reduces the noble human ambition to nothing more than an empty symbol of the dead. In doing so, Falstaff resists the aims and motivations of the most influential and powerful characters of the play; Falstaff’s passions—for life, for living, for joy—are undervalued by the courtly culture Prince Hal is joining. In this speech, Shakespeare’s drunken knight at once dismantles a principle motivation of the nobility and also champions the universal nature of existence, locating the emotional center of the play not in the rise and fall of kings but in the lived experiences of individuals. …show more content…
A word. [. . .] What is that
‘honor’? Air. A trim reckoning” (5.1.133-5). Falstaff’s suggestion that a word is nothing more than air immediately implies that words are meaningless, but Falstaff’s love of storytelling, wordplay, puns, and metaphor discourage such a quick assessment. Air is a vital and necessary part of life; it connotes not only survival but also the ability to speak, laugh, and eat. For Falstaff, the word “honor” is no more or less valuable than any other word; it is simply a word, but it is a word nonetheless. To suggest that he should die for a word—to give up his life for something used for the greater enjoyment of life—is not only a poor wager, it is unreasonable; it is a “trim reckoning.” In Falstaff’s logic, such a sacrifice would be empty because the ability to use a word is necessarily contingent upon having the life to use it. In fact, Falstaff cannot find any good in an honorable death; as a word, “honor” …show more content…
And so Falstaff ends where he began: honor is not an idea, an ideal, or a value; honor is a word. To make it anything more is to attempt to give a word the qualities and advantages that belong solely to humans. In this sense, the word “honor” is a symbol—a “scutcheon”—only for the dead, and therefore not for Falstaff, the play’s greatest lover of life (5.1.140). And what has preceded this realization is a “catechism”; in analyzing the significance of honor, Falstaff relies on a particular type of wordplay, a call-and-response often found in faith (5.1.140). Falstaff’s transcendent passion for words places a value on his temporal existence that informs his own position within the play and affects the way he views the actions of others. The battlefield is not a venue for honor, but a playground; the highway is not for traveling, but for thieving; the throne is not for a king, but for a drunk. Thus, the movement of I Henry IV is not Hal’s rise to royalty, but his tragic loss of the most essential human quality, passion for life; in Falstaff, Shakespeare’s play finds not simply comic relief but an antidote to the power and corruption that threaten the fragile conception of what it is to be a living