The contrasting characters of Hal and Hotspur in King Henry IV Essay Example for Free

The melodic phraseing characters of Hal and Hotspur in fag henry IV EssayExamine closely the contrasting characters of Hal and Hotspur in King Henry IV, Part One, chargeing how the course is built around their actions and distinct destinies, and how this contrast is reflected in the manner of speaking associated with them.This mash is showing the point of history when Henry IV (Bolingbroke) disposesses Ric severely II from the throne in 1399. It shows the problems Henry faces after he has changed and tampered with the divine rights of kings and and wherefore dishoned only the people who helped him overthrow Richard II. This creates a salient principal(prenominal) point to the story which shows a contrast between two characters, one creation Hal, the kings son, and the opposite be Hotspur a laurelsable warrior.A contrast between Hal and Hotspur is established very early on in the twist. Hotspur is portrayed as a extensive warrior who is brave and accoladeable, loyal to the king and an accomplished leader. Hal on the other hand is shown as someone who should be helping the king as he is his son just is not. He insteed is being dishourable and is showing the negative qualitites of being foolish and cowardly.In the kings speech in go 1, Scene 1, the king says that he wishes Hotspur was his son and that Hal was not. This is a very strong and very important helping of the play as this shows just how a big(p) deal higher Hotspur is than Hal in the kings eyes that he would want to shell out his son. He describes Hotspur as theme of puritys tongue and as the straightest plant which shows how important and how often follow the king has for Hotspur in using this personification.The word theme shows that Hotspur is a main take time off of the word honour and without Hotspur and all his honour there is not much honour left(p) as Hotspur h gray-headeds a great deal of it. He is described as the straightest plant by the king as the word str aighest shows that hotspur is in his prime and that he is the strongest, most full and most wanted. The word plant is as well as significant as plants and trees atomic number 18 needed for the survival of manity as they take in the carbon dioxide that humans pop off which is useless to humans and exchange it for oxygen which is a much needed and essential ingredient to human life and with him being the straighest and most full he is the main source of the knowledge domains oxygen along with his associate friends. This shows that without him the rest of the world would not be the same as it is now and the world of honour could wholesome be lost if it wasnt for him.In this same speech of the king, Hal is described as riot and dishour stain the eyebrow which shows the complete opposite of Hotspur and says that Hal is looked down upon and a disgrace to his family name.This contrast is shown clearly with the alternating shots having every picture show being set on either Hal in Eastcheap and then the succeeding(a) with Hotspur in a proud place. This helps with the development and change of the two characters as you can see clearly the fancy up of Hal throughout the play and then the opposite decline of Hotspur in parallel. This helps to show the clear crossover of Hal and Hotspur in terms of honour in the midpoint of the play, spiel 3.Straight away you can tell that Hotspur is going to be a great warrior and a well respected man through his name. The Hot part makes him seem as though he is fired up and ready for anything which could come along. It likewise shows he could be hot-headed and a slight brute in battle leaving no-one with any honour merely himself. The spur part makes him seem as though he lives in the past like a cowboy. It also as was the point of cowboys makes him seem as though his main gol in life was to get as much honour and respect and the only way to do this would be as the cowboys would put it the quickest gunslinger in the wes t. Hotspur has many other positive traits which argon shown towards the beginning of the play to signal how much of a strong and honourable character he is. He is portrayed as being a great warrior and a leader who would be great in battle all praised knight. This shows how honourable he is and how everyone acnologise this fact.This is a straightforward contrast between Hal as people dont see Hal as a warrior with honour but as a devious politician who cant seem to ever gain honour though his current lifestyle. Hotspur being honourable is one of his main strengths as this shows that he can always be counted on and being a good warrior aswell means hes the first choice for a man in battle to pluck bright honour from the pale faced moon.The words used in this mention are very significant as it is short and to the point, compact into one strong and pith time which enables it to stick in your mind and be remembered. The words pale-faced moon make it seem as though the honour is very high and almost unreachable to any human being but not Hotspur as the words pale-faced and pluck make it seem as if getting the honour for Hotspur was very abstemious and even the moon was shocked and pale. Also the word bright makes it seem as if it is heaven like, saintly and above any normal human being but again zip is too hard for Hotspur.Hal however has a very dishonourable lifestyle and rejects his purplish duties and instead drinks, whores and robs people of their money. The way Hals conniptions are written in prose with alot of common tongue and swearing shows he is not acting like that of a prince, heir to the throne. The king has already right at the sustain of the play in the first scene told that Hal has Stain the brow of the royal family and the word stain makes it seems as though it is permenant and so can neer been got out or redeemed.Hal while with Falstaff and the rest of the lads down Eastcheap is very lazy, conductless and dishonourable and seems to not care at all for anything except from sleeping with prostitutes and drinking beer which he gets the money from through robbing others for their money which is shown in Act 2, Scene 2 where Hal and the rest of the gang at Eastcheap plan to rob tax men. This robbing scene though also shows more traits of Hals as Hal plans with Poins to not rob the tax men but to abide until Falstaff does it and then rob the stolen money off of Falstaff. This shows that he is a planner and has a semipolitical and trick mind as he then says that robbing a robber isnt a crime and so he is only acting and playing a robber and is not rattling a true lowlife. Robbing from Falstaff is also significant as it shows Hal cares little of Falstaff and is showing that Falstaff means nada to him nd that this life may also be an act and not be true of Hal.Although Hotspur is expressed as an honourable warrior who is not at fault for anything and is on top of the world he also has his weak traits which on close a nalysis indicate a downfall of him at the time of the riot. Many of the sentences which are used when Hotspur is speaking are simple, short and exclamatary which shows he is hotheaded and has a bad temper Hang him which would also lead to him being rude and unable to accept people different from his great warrior type which bequeath end up to him losing allies unlike that of Hal who can get on with anyone And you in hell, as oft as he hears Owen Glendower spoke of. But his main weaknesses are his lack of planning which will harbour great effect on the rebellon he is running I forgot the map and also the way he allienates his allies which will also lead to the same downfall and failure to the rebellion. A lack of planning shows a old trait of a warrior and not that of a politician which as shown by Hal is a new and efficacious way to shape lifeand succeed in life. The way he allienates his allies also shows how egolistic he is as he thinks he doesnt need anyone else as he on his own can do anything he wants and succeed in anything in life no discipline what the chances of failure are good fight tonight Act IV, Scene III, where the other members of the rebellion say to fight tomorrow when they have more men and a greater chance but Hotspur is not interested in be and planning but only himself and fighting.All the time Hotspur is on the downfall coming up to the rebellion Hal is on the spread out thanks to his calculating and futuristic mind which he uses to plan the future to his return. This political and machievellian side shows his planning ability which will help him to defend his father, king Henry, in the rebellion and drive home him from a complete dishonourable life. The machievellian side indicates how good he is at acting and indicates tht he is actually acting to be part of the rough lowlife community when actually he is using it to his advantage as when he becomes honourable and a good king the contrast between the two different Hal and Pri nce set upon sides will be so drastic that everyone will see him as a much better king than he actually is I will redeem all this on Percys head, which is utter in Act 3, Scene 2 which shows his Machievellian side and how all of his life has been an act which is outlined in the soliloquy in Act 1, Scene 2.Hals calculating side is shown clearly as the further the play goes on the more financial and mathematical language is used the debt I never promised from the soliloquy in Act 1, Scene 2. This describes Hal as a prince which he sees as a debt as it wasnt up to him to be a prince he was just born into it. Also Hal pays Falstaffs tavern debt which gives the indication that he pays all debts and so will most probably pay the debt of being a good prince and finally king.In Act 3, Scene 2 Hal has a speech with the king which opens up the change of Hal. This is noticeable from the very stupefy of the act as it is written in verse as that of the royals and not in prose like he used to talk in Eastcheap. In the speech the king starts by axiom that God is ponderous him for the way he overthrowed Richard II by giving him a lazy and ignorant son. Hal responds to this by pass judgment his faults but by aso saying that much of the news heard by the king was exagerated as Hal is prince. Bolingbroke then lies to his son and says that he himself kept out of the limelight unlike Richard and Hal and this is why he is king at the moment. But in Richard II, Bolingbroke is shown to be very much in the limelight unlike he has say and this this maybe suggests that Hal has got his skill of a politician from his father Bolingbroke. Then the king goes on to say what great qualities Hotspur has and how he is a warrior and a leader unlike Hal. He then goes on to say that he thinks his son is sodishonourable that if the rebels paid him he would fight for them against his father to fight against me under Percys pay. This commentary gets to Hal and so he reveals to his father, Bol ingbroke, his plan of using Percy to gain all the glory and honour for him, which shows he is political and that of a Machievellian mind Percy is but my factor. He then goes on to say that once Percy has gained the honour he will kill Hotspur and take all the Honour of Hotspur which will rid him of his bad life and render him to make a good, princely new start Stain my favours in a bloody disguise/which, washd away, shall scour my shame.Hals change to a full new prince is shown clearly with evidence of this change being, the way he acts courteusly and kindly and doesnt tell a single lie. He also says that he is friends with his father which shows he has left behind the friends from Eastcheap and is now friends with the royals which he should be. He also pays back debt literally to the landlady in Eastcheap and also pays his royal metaphoric debt by giving commands and taking charge and acting like a prince in humanity for the first time. Hals rise is so great that it is even noti ced by Vernon, one of Hotspurs rebels when he tells Hotspur of Hals rise by decsribing him as gorgeous as sun at midsummer. The word sun is used to typify new hope and power from within Prince desolate and midsummer is used to tell Hotspur that th Prince is wage hike and peaking and so stronger than ever. The reference to sun also links to the soliloquy in which the Prince outlines his rise. Vernon also uses the quoterise from the ground like feathered mercury to decsribe Prince Harry. The word rise shows that Harry is moving up in the world and Mercury to make he seem God-like.In Act 4, Scene 2, Falstaff sells his footsoldiers so he gets money and then just replaces them with the lowlifes of society and so he ends up with money and footsoldiers. Falstaff has an attitude that it doesnt matter hat footsoldiers you have they are all going to die and so who he has picked means nothing as he sees war as a blood bath which is a dramatic contrast to the idea of war to Hal and Hotspur a s they both see it as honourable.Later on in the play in Act 5, Scene 1, Hal makes an offer to the king of single-handed combat with a Percy as he wants to re-inact what Bolingbroke did after he went from the drain to fame. To this proposal the king denies which shows he is know in the modern, political world and that the old medieval honour age is in the past. Falstaff later on in this scene dismisses honour and war again by saying it is useless and has no purpose as it cant constrain you alive or save you from suffering and so he will have nothing to do with it. This speech by Falstaff signals the downfall of Hotspur as it shows that his whole life chasing honour is worthless as all it is is just a simple word which has no significance to our destinies.Hotspurs downfall is shown again in the next scene when he replies Cousin, I think thou art enamoured on his follies to Vernon when he praises the Prince and tels of his change. In saying this Hotspur is showing that he can not ace pt Hals change and so when it comes to battle Hotspur will be to compulsory and unestimate Hal which could and does lead to his death.Hal shows two last and most important traits of a true prince before killing Hotspur by refusing to leave the battlefield despite being wounded and told to by his father and then by redemptive his father, the King, from Douglas. The King tells of his forgiveness to Hal after he saves his life by saying that Hal has redeemd thy lost opinion. The king uses the financial word of redeemd to show of the change to the new world and to show that Prince Harry is a political wedge in the eyes of the king. Also, in saying this the king is forgiving him and allowing him to have a new start at being a Prince. Hal finally replies to the king by closing the soliloquy of that of princely debt by accepting that it was his debt and even if he never pomised it he still had to pay it to be a good Prince never promiseth but he means to payHal then finishes his transfor mation into a Prince by defeating Hotspur in single-compact. But during the time in which Hotspur is finally dying and has lost his honour he relises it means nothing to you once your dead but still can only accept the lose of his life to Prince Harry over the lose of his honour. Once Hotspur is dead the Prince regains the traits of a true prince and pays respect to Hotspur after he dies and then covers his face as a final show of respect But let my favours, hids thy mangles face. Hal then refers to himself as the Prince for the first time and this symbolised a complete change I am the Prince of Wales.A truely transformed Prince Harry then backs up a total transformation by releasing and showing remorse on Douglas who fought against him and the king as part of the rebels in the rebellion and then finally rides of to fight Glendower with the king to show him and his father as true political royals side by side as they should be.