SOURCE: "Discourse of Occasion in Henry IV" in Cahiers Elisabethains, No. 37, April, 1990, pp. 27-42.

[In the essay that follows, Black analyzes the "comic discourse " in the Henry IV plays and argues that while discourse in Shakespeare's history plays is typically limited, the comedic elements in the conversations and

2 Henry IV. Act I, scene ii. Falstaff and the Chief Justice. By F. Barnard (n.d.).

Keir Elam's analysis of Shakespeare's dramatic discourse leads him to propose that opening gambits vary artfully according to genre: "the comic incipit suggests an infinitely extendible continuity of speech . . . , the history play appears on the contrary to establish from the outset a sense of discursive limit and self-sufficiency." But Shakespeare's extensive use of comic techniques in Henry IV gives the play both...