In a comedic scene, the cowardly Falstaff engages in hyperbole, greatly exaggerating the scale, severity, and length of the battle in which he was robbed of the gold that he himself stole from traveling Christian pilgrims. Recounting his version of events to Prince Hal and Poins, Falstaff states:
I am a rogue if I were not at half-sword
with a dozen of them two hours together. I have
’scaped by miracle. I am eight times thrust through
the doublet, four through the hose, my buckler
cut through and through, my sword hacked like
a handsaw. Ecce signum! I never dealt better since
I was a man. All would not do. A plague of
all cowards! Let them speak.
Falstaff hyperbolically states that he fought no fewer than 12 men at once over a span of “two hours,” insisting that he escaped only “by miracle.” He further claims that he was stabbed “eight times” through the clothing covering his torso, four times through his trousers, and that by the end of this lengthy battle his sword was (in a simile) “hacked like a handsaw.” Here, Falstaff presents a greatly exaggerated version of the truth: in fact, he was confronted by two men (a disguised Prince Hal and Poins), and he ran away without attempting to put up a fight.
In a key scene in the tavern, Prince Hal comments directly upon the differences between his temperament and that of Hotspur, emphasizing the extent to which these two young men serve as foils for each other throughout the play. Drinking alongside his companion Poins, the young prince reflects upon the upcoming military conflict and his inevitable showdown with Hotspur:
I am not yet of Percy’s
mind, the Hotspur of the north, he that kills me
some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast,
washes his hands, and says to his wife “Fie upon
this quiet life! I want work.” “O my sweet Harry,”
says she, “how many hast thou killed today?”
“Give my roan horse a drench,” says he, and answers
“Some fourteen,” an hour after. “A trifle, a
trifle.”
Here, he satirizes Percy in a hyperbolic speech that imagines a conversation between Percy and his wife on an ordinary day. After killing “some six or dozen of Scots at a breakfast,” he “washes his hands” and then complains to his wife of boredom. Within an hour, that number has increased to “[s]ome fourteen,” which the (satirical) Percy characterizes as nothing but “a trifle.” Hal, then, imagines Hotspur in a somewhat exaggerated fashion as an unthinking killing-machine for whom combat is a way of life. He acknowledges that he is “not yet of Percy’s mind,” and, indeed, his speech in this scene lays bare the key differences between their personalities and values.
