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Henry IV, Part One is considered to be one of the more controversial and popular of Shakespeare's histories, due to its political and moral implications as well as to the fascinating nature of the characters struggling for power in the play. Increasingly, criticism on Henry IV, Part One has shifted from an emphasis on character studies and the historical sources which Shakespeare drew on to define his characters and plot to an emphasis on the language, structure, and deeper psychological truths evident in the play. The debate over the exact relationship between the two parts of Henry IV intensified during the twentieth century, although an understanding of the conjectures on this topic is not necessary to understand and enjoy either play.

Samuel Johnson, the renowned eighteenth-century Shakespearean scholar, discussed both the first and second parts of Shakespeare's plays revolving around King Henry IV. As quoted by Howard Staunton in The Complete Illustrated Shakespeare, he noted, ''Perhaps no author has ever in two plays afforded so much delight.'' Regarding Shakespeare's craftsmanship, he wrote, ''The incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man.'' Johnson had the most to say about the ''unimitated, unimitable Falstaff,'' eventually concluding, ''The moral to be drawn from this representation is, that no man is more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; and that neither wit nor honesty ought to think themselves safe with such a companion, when they see Henry seduced by Falstaff.''

David Bevington similarly connotes a positive perception of the play: ''The greatness of Henry IV, Part I is witnessed by its undiminished popularity in both performance and reading, and by an equally undiminished critical debate about its structure, themes, language, and characterization.'' He goes on to cite the wide array of topics over which critics have met with disagreement, such as the actual virtuousness of Hal, the extent to which Falstaff presents himself genuinely, and whether Shakespeare was supportive of one side of the rebellion or the other. Bevington asserts, ''These issues are illuminated by striking motifs and images, including those of vocation and recreation, the redeeming of time, bodily illness and wounding, commercial exchange and thievery, sun and moon, lion and hare, Scriptural iteration and parody.'' Indeed, the play is so rich with various modes of metaphorical imagery that few critical treatments have even attempted to discuss them comprehensively.

Over the years, of course, critical treatments of Shakespeare's plays have delved ever deeper into the abstract notions exemplified therein. In the course of her own highly complex critical essay entitled ''Prince Hal's Falstaff: Positioning Psychoanalysis and the Female Reproductive Body,'' Valerie Traub summarily notes, ''Psychoanalytic criticism of the Henriad has tended to perceive Prince Hal's developmental problem as a choice between two fathers: a biological father, King Henry IV, standing for conviction, duty, and control, yet burdened by his guilty acquisition of the crown; and a father substitute, Falstaff, whose hedonism, lawlessness, and wit provide an attractive, if temporary, alternative.'' Traub herself alters this paradigm somewhat in presenting Falstaff as essentially maternal, rather than paternal.

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