Language and Power in Henry IV, Part 1

Hotspur says he can call spirits from the vasty deep, and when Hotspur replies with “Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?” he is not really talking about spirits. He is talking about the difference between speaking something and making it true. Glendower claims to command the supernatural world through language alone. Hotspur knows that language without the power to back it up is just noise. Throughout the play, what a character can make others believe depends entirely on what they have the power to enforce. Words are only words until they become actions.

Hal spends much of the first half of the play learning the languages of his future kingdom. He studies how the common people speak, how the tavern-keepers and drawers and thieves talk to each other. He learns that different people speak in different registers, that the language of power is the ability to move between these registers fluently, to speak to anyone in their own words and make them hear you. When he mockingly asks the drawer Francis questions that confuse him, or when he speaks the language of thieves with Falstaff, he is not just playing—he is gathering power. A king who can speak only one language will always be limited to one kind of subject. Hal is learning to speak to all of them.

Falstaff is a master of language, and this is almost all the power he has. He lies with such confidence that people believe him, or want to believe him, or simply enjoy being lied to. He names himself and names others with such wit that he bends reality around his words. When Hal calls him a coward, Falstaff can talk his way out of it by redefining what courage is and what cowardice is until up becomes down. His power over others comes entirely from his ability to speak, to shape how they understand the world through the sheer force of his words.

The play’s final argument is that language and power are not separate things—language is power, or at least it is the tool that power uses to make itself felt. Henry IV maintains his throne partly because he can speak the language of monarchy, because he can make people believe in his authority. Hal will become a great king because he knows how to speak to everyone—he can use the language of chivalry with his father, the language of thieves with Falstaff, the language of honor with Hotspur. The play suggests that the future belongs not to the man who can swing the heaviest sword, but to the man who can speak in such a way that others will pick up swords for him. Language is the instrument through which power moves in the world.