Bardolph is a fictional character who appears in four plays by William Shakespeare. He is a thief who forms part of the entourage of Sir John Falstaff. His grossly inflamed nose and constantly flushed, carbuncle-covered face is a repeated subject for Falstaff's and Prince Hal's comic insults and word-play. Though his role in each play is minor, he often adds comic relief, and helps illustrate the personality change in Henry from Prince to King.

In early published versions of Henry IV, Part 1, the character is called Rossill or Sir John Russel. Shakespeare renamed the character to avoid suggestions that he was ridiculing the then-prominent Russell family, which included the Earls of Bedford. Bardolph is thought to be named after Thomas Bardolf, 5th Baron Bardolf (d. 1408), one of the rebels affiliated with the insurrection of Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland.

In Henry V, Bardolph participates in the war (the Hundred Years' War) and is good friends with Pistol and Nym. By this stage he has been promoted to the rank of lieutenant. After the fall of Harfleur (1415), he is charged with looting, having been discovered stealing from a church in the conquered French town. 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 singer; he kept not time.") The host of the local inn gives him a job as a tapster (bartender). Pistol and Nym consider this absurd, since Bardolph is a drunk from a family of drunks. They say his parents even conceived him when they were drunk. Bardolph later tells the Host of the inn that some German guests need to borrow horses. Bardolph goes with them, but soon returns saying the Germans have galloped away on the horses.

Bardolph is continually compared to both an angel and a devil. He is Falstaff's loyal and constant companion, functioning as a form of demonic guardian angel, who reminds Falstaff of the mouth of hell to which he may be destined. Bardolph himself is willing to follow him there. As Harold Bloom says, "Bardolph, the butt of many of his jokes, want[s] to be with him whether he is in heaven or hell (2.3.7–8); for Bardolph the jests of Falstaff cast out even the fear of hell. Yet Bardolph has reason to know otherwise. Falstaff looked at Bardolph, but he did not see Bardolph, he saw souls burning in hell."

The hell imagery becomes stronger in Henry V when after Falstaff's death the page boy remembers him making a black joke about a flea: "a [he] saw a flea sticking on Bardolph's nose and a said it was a black soul burning in hellfire". Before Bardolph's execution he is described by Fluellen as a barely-human unstable eruption of noxious forces: "his face is all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o' fire: and his lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes plue [blue] and sometimes red; but his nose is executed, and his fire's out".

Bardolph's character in the King Henry series symbolises the change in Henry from a troublesome youth to a determined leader. Bardolph's execution is based on a real incident. A soldier, whose name is not known yet, was hanged during the campaign in France for robbing a church.