Henry IV Part 1 Lesson Plan

Discuss the significance this aphoristic statement from Falstaff: "Can Honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is Honour? A word. What is that word ‘honour’? Air" (Act V, Scene I, Lines 134-137)?

This is another one of Falstaff's cutting criticisms of war and the pursuit of power. Though a drunkard and a thief and an unpleasant man to be around, he proves himself to be a rather cogent interpreter of the practices and methods of the political, religious, and marshal elite of the time. He mocks the idea of "honor," which he identifies as being a "word," or philosophical/theological...