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Act 1, Scene 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Henry IV Part 1, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Appearances
Honor
The Right to be King
Language
Warfare
Summary
Analysis
At an inn-yard in Rochester, Carrier 1 and Carrier 2 gripe about packing up and caring for horses and about getting flea-bitten. They discuss the goods they’re packing up for their masters journeys: bacon, ginger, turkeys.
As with the scenes at Boarshead Tavern, Shakespeare’s choice to give lines to the two carriers introduces another type of speech—the English of servants—into the play.
Themes
Gadshill enters and asks the two carriers to lend him a lantern to check on his horse, but the carriers are suspicious of Gadshill and refuse. They exit to go wake up their masters, who will want to travel together for safety since they are carrying riches.
The carriers rightly see through Gadshill’s appearance of innocence and don’t trust his claims to be harmless.
Themes
Gadshill calls for the chamberlain and they joke about being thieves. The chamberlain repeats the message he told Gadshill the night before: one of the men staying at the inn will be traveling this morning with 300 gold marks. Gadshill swears to rob the man and he and the chamberlain joke about being hung. Gadshill pretends to be a noble man, one with those who “pray continually to…the Commonwealth; or, rather,…prey on her, for they ride up and down on her, and make her their boots.” The two part genially, Gadshill promising to give the chamberlain a share of the loot he plans to steal.
As with Falstaff and Prince Hal’s conversation, Gadshill’s banter with the chamberlain uses witty, punning language to upend conventional values and invert an image of honorability: by punning on the word “pray,” Gadshill’s sentence turns a description of honorable upright citizens into corrupt criminals.
Themes
