SOURCE: Davis, Jo Ann. “Henry IV: From Satirist to Satiric Butt.” In Aeolian Harps: Essays in Literature in Honor of Maurice Browning Cramer, edited by Donna G. Fricke and Douglas C. Fricke, pp. 81-93. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1976.

In the following essay, Davis studies Henry Bolingbroke as an unsympathetic object of satire in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2.

“For now a time is come to mock at form” 

2 Henry IV, IV.v.118

The changing role of Henry Bolingbroke provides a vehicle for describing the logical development of form in the second tetralogy. The play sequence moves from the tragedy of Richard II, where Henry is a satirist, to the Henry IV plays which are structured for maximum exposure of Henry as object of satire primarily by means of parody and caricature. In fact, it is Henry's failure as a satirist that produces the multiple plots of...