... although Hal emerges from Falstaff's underworld with a sense of life and of the common man, his greatest political gain is the flexibility that he has acquired as sidekick to the playful Falstaff. Unlike his grave father or his rigid, humorless brother Prince John, Hal knows how to improvise, how to stay alert to the world around him, and - as we see in his manipulation of soldiers and ambassadors in Henry V - how to be what others need him to be. http://www.newyorker.com/critics/theatre/