Wracked by illness and facing the prospect of civil war, King Henry IV fears for England's future after his death. He watches helpless as his son, Prince Hal, wastes his life away on endless debauchery in the company of the hilarious, irrepressible Falstaff. As the stakes increase, Shakespeare's both epic and intimate drama unfolds: of a father confronting his own mortality, and of a future King struggling with the destiny he cannot avoid.