Originally published in 1986. This volume points to the rich variety of critical responses to the Henry IV plays and their complexity. Organised chronologically, the collection then ends with two pieces of theatrical criticism.

General Editor's Preface, Joseph Price; Editor's Preface, David Bevington; Introduction, David Bevington; Chapter 1 An Essay Towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humor, Raillery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744), Corbyn Morris; Chapter 2 Notes from The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765), Samuel Johnson; Chapter 3 An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare, Compared with the Greek and French Dramatic Poets (1769), Elizabeth Montagu; Chapter 4 An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff (1777), Maurice Morgann; Chapter 5 Remarks on the Character of Falstaff (1786), Henry MacKenzie; Chapter 6 Remarks Upon the Characters of Falstaff and His Group (1786), Richard Cumberland; Chapter 7 Henry IV: The Character of Falstaff (1811), Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Chapter 8 Henry IV in Two Part s (1817), William Hazlitt; Chapter 9 The English Historical Plays (1875), Edward Dowden; Chapter 10 Dramatic Opinions and Essays (1907), George Bernard Shaw; Chapter 11 The Rejection of Falstaff (1902), A. C. Bradley; Chapter 12 Henry IV (1939), Mark Van Doren; Chapter 13 The Falstaff Myth (1943), John Dover Wilson; Chapter 14 Henry IV (1944), E. M. W. Tillyard; Chapter 15 The Prince's Dog (1948), W. H. Auden; Chapter 16 The Argument of Comedy (1949), Northrop Frye; Chapter 17 Gadshill Revisited (1953), Arthur Colby Sprague; Chapter 18 Character versus Action in Shakespeare (1957), Robert Langbaum; Chapter 19 Moral Metaphor and Dramatic Image (1958), Bernard Spivack; Chapter 20 Rule and Misrule in Henry IV (1959), C. L. Barber; Chapter 21 Shakespeare's Politics and the Rejection of Falstaff (1959), G. K. Hunter; Chapter 22 A Little More than a Little (1960), R. J. Dorius; Chapter 23 The Turning Away of Prince Hal (1965), Jonas A. Barish; Chapter 24 "Swoll'n with Some Other Grief": Shakespeare's Prince Hal Trilogy (1968), Sigurd Burckhardt; Chapter 25 Casting off the Old Man: History and St. Paul in Henry IV (1970), D. J. Palmer; Chapter 26 Hal and the "Play Extempore" in I Henry IV (1974), Paul A. Gottschalk; Chapter 27 Shakespeare's Comic Sense As It Strikes Us Today: Falstaff and the Protestant Ethic (1978), Robert G. Hunter; Chapter 28 Uneasy Lies: Language and History in Shakespeare's Lancastrian Tetralogy (1984), Ronald R. Macdonald; Chapter 29 The Henry IV Plays (1984), Robert N. Watson; Chapter 30 Henry IV, Part s 1 and 2 at the Barbican Theatre (1982), R. L. Smallwood; Chapter 31 Henry the Fourth Part s I and II: Text and Performance (1983), T. F. Wharton;