With detailed reference to their words and actions, consider whom you find the more attractive character – Hal or Hotspur

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With detailed reference to their words and actions, consider whom you find the more attractive character - Hal or Hotspur

Hal and Hotspur have what is probably the strongest rivalry in this play. The word attractive can have many meanings but I will interpret it as being the person who comes across as being the one who really appeals to the audience through their strong and weak points.

In real life Hal and Hotspur were not even of the same generation, let alone the same age. Shakespeare has changed the age of Hotspur to make him the same age as Hal. This allows him to compare the two characters and to build up a strong rivalry between them. Shakespeare also uses Hotspur to make Hal's character appear more attractive and to show that he is actually very suited to the throne.

Prince Hal is a character who, at the start of the play, appears to be riotous and disobedient. However, Hal does possess many appealing qualities and as the play goes on, we start to see that the time Hal spends in the tavern is part of his learning experience and he is learning to be able to function at any level to help him become an effective and successful king. We learn this from Hal's soliloquy when he says, "He may be more wondered at, by breaking through the foul and ugly mists" (by which he means the world of the tavern and in particular, Falstaff). By this Hal means that when he decides to throw off Falstaff and Poins and become a righteous Prince, it will be a shock to people and he will look like a much better person. Another strong quality that Hal's soliloquy shows us he has is that he has a plan to his life and he knows what he is going to do and when he is going to do it. This is shown by Hal's statement of how he is going to be "Redeeming time when men think least I will" and also by the level of planning that has gone into his soliloquy. It is obvious that he hasn't just thought it up on the spot but that he has thought it all through previously.
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Hal appears in both the tavern and the court but it is when he is in the world of the tavern that he really emerges as a humorous character and he uses his intelligence to mock Falstaff through puns like, "come, roundly, roundly" amongst others. This humor makes Hal an 'attractive' character because audiences like comics and humor and will always like a humorous character even if one of his jokes seems to be cruel and pointless (shown when Hal mocks Francis who has done him no wrong).

Prince Hal also has unattractive qualities which make him ...

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