King Henry IV, Part II Trivia Quiz

Answer: Rumor

The whole play is characterized by rumor, gossip, self-deceit, dishonesty, betrayal, false reputation, inaccurate memory, and other misinformation and misunderstanding. "Rumor" seeks to revise history at the beginning of "Henry IV, Part II" so that the results of the Battle of Shrewsbury (depicted in "Henry IV, Part I") seem the opposite of what has happened.

Answer: Percy

Both Northumberland and Hotspur are named Henry Percy. (Prince Hal, soon to be Henry V, is called Harry of Monmouth and is the Prince of Wales. The Mortimer family, from the Welsh border, aren't in this play.) The Percys were a powerful family in the north of England from the arrival of William de Percy from France in the retinue of William the Conqueror in 1067.

The distraught father in the play, the first Earl of Northumberland (1341-1408), puns on his son's nickname as he asks, "Said he young Harry Percy's spur was cold? Of Hotspur, Coldspur? That rebellion has met ill luck?" (1.1.48-50). The failure of the rebellion may be Northumberland's fault, since he has faked illness and failed to lead his troops into the battle. (He hides out in Scotland during this play.)

Another Henry Percy, the ninth Earl of Northumberland (called the "Wizard Earl" because of his scientific knowledge), was the head of this wealthy, influential family at the time Shakespeare's plays were written and was considered so dangerous to the crown that James I sent him to the Tower of London for 17 years after a member of the Percy family was involved in the Gunpowder Plot in 1605.

Answer: Sir John Falstaff

The Lord Chief Justice reads the situation correctly when he says to Falstaff, "You have, as it appears to me, practiced upon the easy-yielding spirit of this woman and made her serve your uses both in purse and in person" (2.1.112-114). Before the end of the scene, however, Falstaff has charmed his way back into Mistress Quickly's good graces and is encouraging her to pawn her serving plates and the drapery off her walls, literally stripping her "house and home" for his benefit.

While the audience is charmed by Sir John Falstaff, as well, we see him take cruel advantage of people of all social classes throughout both "King Henry IV" plays.

Answer: Doll Tearsheet

Doll Tearsheet is introduced to the audience when she enters with Mistress Quickly in Act 2, scene 4, but it is obvious that Falstaff knows her well. Hal is being ironic when he calls Doll "honest, virtuous, [and] civil": she is just the opposite. The implication is that Mistress Quickly (identified throughout the play as "Hostess") procures the services of Doll, a prostitute, for the use of her patrons at the tavern. The other three names are mentioned in passing, but the women do not appear in the play.

There is a great deal of bawdy talk in this scene, in which Prince Hal and Ned Poins eavesdrop on Falstaff, "disguised as drawers" who are serving the drinks. The most honest statement of the play might be Falstaff's words to Doll as they are kissing: "I am old, I am old" (2.4.269). Poins asks as he and Prince Hal voyeuristically view the scene, "Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?" (2.4.259-60).

Answer: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

King Henry IV is very ill, has endured a long civil war, and believes that the crown prince is a wastrel, but he is also troubled with guilt over the manner in which he gained the crown, overthrowing the rightful but incompetent heir to the throne, King Richard II.

Therefore, the crown weighs heavy on Henry's head. He cries out, "O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee...?" (3.1.5-6) and imagines that his lowest subjects are enjoying a better night's sleep than he, the king, is getting.

The incorrect responses listed are from Shakespeare's plays: "Hamlet" ("perchance to dream"); "Macbeth" ("Sleep no more"); and "Cymbeline" ("feels not the toothache").

Answer: Bullcalf and Moldy pay a bribe.

Shakespeare scholars point out that the two scenes that take place in Gloucestershire are not found in any of Shakespeare's usual sources, and they disagree about their import. Do these scenes provide a gentle respite from the tavern brawls and the political maneuverings that predominate in "Henry IV, Part II"? Or do they expose the morals of the country people to be just as base as those of the denizens of the taverns and as devious as those of the courts? Falstaff feels that it is unfair that Justice Shallow, whom he sees as an inferior, has become rich, and he seeks ways to get some of that money. That Moldy and Bullcalf are able to buy their way out of military service reveals the mercenary nature of Falstaff and Bardolph.

A allusion famously used by Orson Welles as a movie title appears at 3.2.215: "We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow"; the old men are remembering the nights they have stayed awake late having wild adventures.

Answer: They arrest the leaders for treason and send them off to be executed.

Prince John equivocates (or lies outright) when he promises to "redress the grievances" of the rebels then arrests the nobles and orders his troops to track down and kill stragglers from the retreating rebel army. We learn explicitly about the impending execution of the leaders when, prepared to laugh about Falstaff's "capture" of Coleville of the Dale, we hear Prince John command, "Send Coleville with his confederates to York, to present execution" (4.3.72-73). An indifferent Falstaff ends the scene with a soliloquy praising strong wine.

Answer: wit and courage

Falstaff swears that if he "had a thousand sons," the most important thing he would teach them would be "to addict themselves to sack" (4.3.123) because the two qualities sack produces are wit and courage.

Earlier in the play, Falstaff tells the Lord Chief Justice that Prince Hal has repented of boxing the justice's ears, but he whispers in an aside that "the young lion repents - marry, not in ashes and sack-cloth, but in new silk and old sack" (1.2.195-96); thus, he ironically connects sack with repentance, but he means it as a joke and a mockery of repentance.

He also complains when alone, "A pox of this gout! Or, a gout of this pox! For the one or the other plays the rogue with my great toe" (1.2.243-44); he probably does have gout from overindulgence and venereal disease from promiscuous sex, but he is less concerned with his own health than he is with the health of his purse. He doesn't connect gout, pox, or his lack of money with his indulgence in strong drink. As for "male greensickness" and having only female children, Falstaff maintains that weak drinks (not strong "sherris sack") make men less manly, so that they are sickly, effeminate, and impotent as far as having male heirs is concerned.

Answer: Thinking his father is dead, Prince Hal places the crown on his own head.

In Act 4, scene 5, as he is sitting with his dying father, Prince Hal sees the crown on the pillow and calls it "so troublesome a bedfellow" before noticing that a "downy feather" in front of the king's lips and nose ("his gates of breath") is not moving. Thinking his father is dead, Prince Hal puts on the crown and leaves the room.

After Henry IV wakes up and sees the crown is gone, it takes some doing (with Warwick's help) to convince Henry IV that his son does not wish him dead. They finally reconcile, with the hope that Henry V will wear the crown with more rightful, easier claim than did Henry IV.

Answer: Yes. "Jerusalem" is the name of the chamber where he dies of his illness.

Puns such as this one are important in Shakespeare's plays, as readers might recall from "Macbeth" in particular. It is the belief of Henry IV that bringing his subjects together in a war outside of England would be beneficial to the nation, and this is one reason behind his desire to go on a Crusade to Jerusalem.

His son, Henry V, achieves this unity, leading his "band of brothers" into battle in the war with France that we will see in the following play.

Answer: The Lord Chief Justice

Given their past relationship, one might expect Sir John Falstaff to be the adoptive father of young King Henry V, as he seemed to be when the king was still called Prince Hal. However, the king needs the counsel of men who have true integrity, and the Lord Chief Justice has shown himself to be such a man.

The new king hopes that the older man will still be around to correct his own sons. Furthermore, Henry V needs to mend his reputation so that it will "flow henceforth in formal majesty" (5.2.133), and he cannot do this without rejecting his wild past.

Answer: The play doesn't explain, so we can't know.

The murder in question is not explained, and the only hint given is that "the man is dead that you and Pistol beat amongst you" (5.4.16-17). We have seen one tavern brawl involving these three, when Falstaff was getting ready to go to war, back in Act 2, but there was no indication that someone was injured to the point of later dying. Pistol has last been seen in Gloucestershire, taking the news to Falstaff that Prince Hal is now Henry V, and we will glimpse him again in the crowd with Falstaff in the final Act 5.5, which is coming up next. Perhaps, Shakespeare wants to remind his audience that these are people with whom the king can never again be associated.

When he hears about Doll's arrest, Falstaff promises that he will "deliver her" (5.5.39), but he will be in no position to do so.

Answer: "I know thee not, old man."

The incorrect responses are quotations from "Henry IV, Part II" but are spoken by other characters. Although the audience must understand by now that Falstaff can never be trusted with power, the young king's cruel rejection of the old man who is calling out his love is one of the most heartbreaking scenes in all of literature, especially when we recall that Prince Hal claimed to have been using Falstaff for his own purposes all along.

The newly-crowned Henry V warns Falstaff, "Presume not that I am the thing I was" (5.5.56). King Henry V declares what amounts to a restraining order against Falstaff's approaching him closer than ten miles but also provides financial support for the old man. Falstaff thinks he will be called for in private, but he is arrested and sent to Fleet prison instead.

Answer: He "heard a bird so sing."

In the last speech of a real character before the "Epilogue" of the play, Prince John essentially says that a little bird told him there would be war: "Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the King" (5.5.109). The line sets the scene for the next (and last) play of Shakespeare's tetralogy - "Henry V" - which will begin with images of war and climax with the dramatic Battle of Agincourt in France. Two of the incorrect responses are made up, while the quotation by "Rumor" appears in the "Induction" at the beginning of the play.

Answer: "Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man."

Sir John Falstaff was originally named Sir John Oldcastle. It is a mystery why William Shakespeare chose this name of a revered Lollard martyr for a character who is Oldcastle's antithesis, unless he was baiting the Puritans. The name "Falstaff" is more fitting, with its bawdy possibilities. Two of the incorrect responses are my inventions, but "Ascribe it to the fault of my ignorance..." is from Geoffrey Chaucer's "Retraction" at the end of "The Canterbury Tales" - an apology which was probably written during the reign of Henry IV, just before Chaucer's death in 1400. Shakespeare was writing the plays of the "Henriad" almost 200 years later.

The majority of those who attended Shakespeare's plays couldn't get enough of Falstaff, and Shakespeare promises in the "Epilogue" to include him in another play. This doesn't happen in "Henry V" - where we learn from other characters that Falstaff has died - but he makes his return in a "prequel" comedy with no connection to the history plays - "The Merry Wives of Windsor" - supposedly at the request of Queen Elizabeth I, who was so delighted with Falstaff she wanted to see him in love: itself a story probably too good to be true.