Bardolph (Shakespeare character) He is sentenced to punishment of death by hanging. In a focal point of "Henry V", King Henry, despite being friends with Bardolph in his youth, remorselessly agrees to his punishment and has him hanged. Bardolph appears in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" as one of Falstaff's associates along with Nym and Pistol again, though his role is minor. Abraham Slender accuses him and the others of getting him drunk and then robbing him after he passed out. They all deny it. Later, Bardolph is dismissed by Falstaff because of his inadequate thieving skills ("his filching was like an unskilful
Bardolph (Shakespeare character) Russell of Thornhaugh and Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford), and so used the name of the rebel. Since the character originally appears to have been a knight (both the Norman-French names "Russell" and "Bardolph" imply knighly status), this suggests that Shakespeare was following closely his source "The Famous Victories of Henry V" in which Prince Hal's disreputable companions are unruly knights rather than vagabonds. However Bardolph is clearly identified as a mere servant of Falstaff's in "Henry IV, Part 2", something that is not explicit in Part 1. In Part 2 Bardolph seems to copy the role of Hal's