Learning to be a bastard: Hal’s second (plebeian) nature

This chapter examines how Hal performs the task of bastardisation. As the legitimate son of the reigning monarch, Hal has no problem with the dynastic bit of legitimacy; the capacity that he has to acquire is something that the bastard can do quite naturally. Just as the bastard, precisely because he is a bastard, has to be remade as a member of the royal family in order to emerge, as he does in the second half of the play, as a genuinely princely presence, so Hal, precisely because he is the legitimate issue of a reigning monarch, has to retrain as a bastard before he can emerge, as he does at the end of part II and throughout Henry V, as the true prince, able to elicit and mobilise the spontaneous valour and prowess of the English in the war against the foreigner and in the interests of royal power.