Henry IV, Part 2

Henry IV, Part 2, chronicle play in five acts by William Shakespeare, written in 1597–99 and published in a corrupt text based in part on memorial reconstruction in a quarto edition in 1600. A better text, printed in the main from an authorial manuscript, appeared in the First Folio of 1623 and is generally the more reliable version. Henry IV, Part 2 is the third in a sequence of four history plays (the others being Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry V). Known collectively as the “second tetralogy,” the plays depict major events of English history in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. The group of plays is often referred to as “the Henriad.”

As in Henry IV, Part 1 it is Prince Hal rather than his father, the titular king, who is the focus of the narrative in the sequel. At the end of Henry IV, Part 2 Hal ascends the English throne and becomes the titular protagonist of the final play in the sequence, Henry V. The historical facts of Henry IV, Part 2 were taken primarily from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577), but Sir John Falstaff and the other comic secondary characters are original. In Henry IV, Part 2 these figures in Eastcheap (an area in London) dominate the action even more than they do in Part 1.