importance of both reputation and honor and who achieves an honorable position by the end of the play. By way of contrast, the figure of Hotspur is one who has earned a reputation and has achieved great honor at the outset of the play; but then that character dynamically and tragically falls to a position of traitor, a figure who loses all honor and who becomes destined to receive an ignoble name in the annals of history.
Ironically and untypical of Renaissance dramatic convention, Shakespeare assigns the final speech concerning honor to neither Prince Hal nor Hotspur. Instead, Falstaff is given the honor of speaking about honor (V, i: 127-41). Of course, Falstaff is hardly an honorable figure in the play, and his words contradict everything that the Prince has learned about this particular virtue. Although Falstaff’s speech here is linguistically clever, the audience may not find the rotund rogue so charming either here or anywhere else in the final act of the play. Perhaps Shakespeare, at this point, was then foreshadowing what would then become of this rascal as he would later appear in two other plays. Perhaps Shakespeare was then giving his audience warning that they should not expect the same kind of comic figure when he would appear on another occasion.