During this period, he alternated between reading Henry IV, Part I and an edition of John Playford's The English Dancing Master, as well as folk melodies collected by Cecil Sharp and others.

A performance at the Golders Green Hippodrome followed on 20 April 1925, with the following singers among the cast:[1] Holst's opera was part of a double bill with Puccini's Gianni Schicchi.

Hugh Ottaway has commented that another reason for the failure of the opera was that the music did not add sufficiently to the original texts.

The story focuses on the conversations between Falstaff and Prince Hal, and the characters who wander in and out of the Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap.

Throughout the story, the sound of door knocks bring reminders of events happening in the world outside the tavern, including the marching of soldiers to war.

[3] The story begins in late afternoon, as Bardolph, Gadshill and Peto sing and drink in an upstairs room at the tavern.

Falstaff asks for a song, whereupon the disguised Prince Hal sings Shakespeare's sonnet 19, "Devouring Time, blunt though the lion's paws".