ABSTRACT
The great tavern scene of I Henry IV is the longest of the play and the most elaborate, ranging over five hundred lines from the gulling of Francis and the attempted showing-up of Sir John Falstaff to the Sheriff's sudden entry and Prince Hal's imminent departure for court. William Shakespeare's strategy in the play is to hide the inevitable fulfillment of Hal's character from Hal's contemporaries while revealing it to people. The soliloquy is mere statement, completely hidden from all other characters in the play, and represents Hal's potential at its most latent. The importance of this episode has already been underlined in Richard L. McGuire's 'The Play-within-the-Play in I Henry IV' where it is treated, as the crisis in Hal's development as hero. Therefore, I Henry IV is a play without a normal climax. Shrewsbury is at once its moment of crisis and its moment of resolution.
