The play covers the riotous youth of Prince Henry and his transformation into a warrior king, ending with his victory at Agincourt and his wooing of Princess Katherine.

The work is of unknown authorship, and various possible authors have been proposed, including a young Shakespeare, though this view is not widely accepted by scholars.

The Chief Justice hears about Henry's antics at the tavern, which include a drunken street brawl with drawn swords.

Angry at the Chief Justice, he tells Jocky and his companions that when he is king they shall have major positions of state.

The Dauphin of France sends tennis balls as a present to King Henry as an insult.

Before the battle, French soldiers (speaking in comically garbled English) discuss how they will divide the spoils.

After the battle he and John Cobler scheme to get out of the rest of the war by accompanying the deceased Duke of York's body back to England.

The play covers the same ground later traversed in significantly greater detail in the Shakespearean trilogy, covering the wildness of the prince in several episodes, a coronation in which he dismisses the dissolute companions of his youth, and his invasion of France, victory at Agincourt, and eventual marriage to the Princess Katherine.

Greer[2] identified fifteen plot elements that occur in both the anonymous play and in the Henry trilogy.

[4] In 1928 B. M. Ward suggested the extant version was based on an early court masque written by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.

[6] Alice-Lyle Scoufos argued that Welsh scrivener and theatrical producer Henry Evans, who was associated with the Earl, was the most likely author.

Pitcher argued that annotations to Edward Hall's Chronicles were probably written by Shakespeare and that these are very close to passages in the play.

[11] This is because of a record of a performance in which "Knel, then playing Henry the fift, hit Tarlton a sound boxe indeed, which made the people laugh the more".