Honour in King Henry the Fourth

Indeed, the notion of honour in King Henry IV is portrayed through multiple characters within the play. It is understood that Falstaff and hotspur’s interpretations of honour act as a character foil to validate Hal’s modern and compassionate form of honour, although, in Shakespeare’s world of deceit and blind ambition, he suggests that extreme forms of honour without the ability to adapt to the climate around them will ultimately fail. Falstaff proclaims that honour itself is just “a word” - “air”; this brings forth the audiences capacity to validate what he says and ultimately contextualize with him which further brings forth the question “what is honour?”
Falstaff delivers this diatribe against honour during the battle at Shrewsbury, just before the climax of the play. Linking honour to violence, Falstaff, who is about to go into battle, says that honour “pricks him on” to fight, meaning that honour motivates him; he then asks what he will do if honour “pricks him off,” that is, kills or injures him. He says that honour is useless when one is wounded: it cannot set an arm or a leg, or take away the “grief of a wound,” and it has “no skill in surgery.” In fact, being merely a word, honour is nothing but thin air—that is, the breath that one exhales in saying a word. He says that the only people who have honour are the dead, and it does them no good, for they cannot feel or hear it. Furthermore, honour doesn’t “live with the living” because honour is gained through death. Falstaff therefore concludes that honour is worthless, “a mere scutcheon,” and that he wants nothing to do with it. Henceforth it is realized that the polar opposite of Falstaff is Hotspur, who’s concept of honour comes in the form of praise from the king himself, declaring Hotspur to be "the theme of honour's tongue". Indeed, Hotspur is committed to honour. The pursuit of this grand ideal consumes all his energy and shapes his every thought. But throughout the course of the play we see that this