SOURCE: Grossman, Marshall. “Recovering the Terror of Trifles.” Shakespeare Studies 27 (1999): 51-64.

In the following essay, Grossman points to Hal's ambivalent search for his own identity as the wayward prince's primary characteristic.

I know you all, and will a while uphold The unyoked humor of your idleness. 

Whatever it is Hal is doing in his doings with Falstaff, Peto, Bardolph, and Poins in the early scenes of 1 Henry IV, his first soliloquy reassures the audience or himself that he will do it only for “a while.” Harry Berger reminds us that this “a while”—the lapse of time between the “now” of act 1 scene 2 of 1 Henry IV and, say, the end of 2 Henry IV, when the debt Hal never promised comes due—is mediated by a representation that is both performative and textual (Making Trifles of Terrors, 244-45). During and through his verbal performance, the Hal we see or...