ABSTRACT
The first time that Shakespeare gives a play its basic form and defines the action of the principal characters by reference to the idea of honour is in i Henry IV. Indeed, the idea that Shakespeare arranges the three principals of Henry IV in a quasi-Aristotelian paradigm of the theme of honour has been so often iterated and has so dominated the teaching of the play that it has become a virtual truism. But in Henry IV, for the first time, the structure of the play depends not so much on a narrative development of military reversals, as in Henry VI, nor so much on the unfortunate fall of one character and attendant rise of another, as in Richard II, as it does on the quite distinct responses Shakespeare has the principal characters make to honour, the nominal ethic of the play.
