Henry IV Part 1 Principles Quotes

When Hotspur personifies "honour" as a "drowned" damsel in distress, he sounds more like a chivalric knight than a man plotting a rebellion against the king. Note: "personification" is just when a non-human thing (like honor) is talked about as though it's human. In this case, Hotspur suggests he can grab "honour" by "her" hair ("locks") and rescue her from the bottom of the ocean ("the deep"). See what we mean when we say he sounds more like a chivalric knight than a rebel? He also sounds a bit like a treasure hunter, one who's more interested in the prize than the principles behind the action.

While Hotspur's attitude and valiant deeds earn him accolades from the king (the very man Hotspur seeks to overthrow) and others, his overconfidence is problematic. His tendency to equate honourable action with impossible tasks (like "plucking" honor from the moon or the depths of the ocean) gets him into trouble on more than one occasion. One could say that Hotspur's overconfidence plays a large role in his downfall – he later ignores the advice and warnings of his peers, believes he can defeat the king's army without his father and Glendower, and rushes headlong into battle. Compare this passage to 4.1 below.

When Hotspur learns his father is (supposedly) too ill to join the rebel army, Hotspur refuses to postpone the impending battle. But why? Hotspur thinks that winning a seemingly impossible victory will give the entire "enterprise" a kind of "luster," which makes victory sound more like a shiny trophy than anything else. Note the way this passage recalls Hotspur's earlier speech about "plucking bright honour" from the moon (1.3 above). For Hotspur, a successful rebellion against the king would be all the more brilliant and glorious because of its degree of difficulty. (So, what happened to the principle of the rebellion? And, what about the outnumbered rebel soldiers who are bound to lose their lives?) We know, of course, that Hotspur's decision to move ahead without Northumberland is one of his fatal errors.

Falstaff's insistence that he was a "coward on instinct" during the second robbery at Gads Hill speaks to his remarkable (and hilarious) ability to think on his feet, don't you think? For our discussion of "Principles," however, Falstaff's antics (his lack of courage at Gads Hill and his fabrication of a preposterous story about what really happened), establish his character as the antithesis of honor. Falstaff's behavior here also anticipates the way he'll perform during the battle at Shrewsbury (playing dead and then stabbing Hotspur's corpse after Hal has killed young Percy). This passage also looks forward to Falstaff's famous speech about the meaninglessness of "honour" in Act 5, Scene 1.