Book contents
- Frontmatter
- ‘Henry IV’ and ‘Hamlet’
- Prince Hal and Tragic Style
- The True Prince and the False Thief: Prince Hal and the Shift of Identity
- Falstaff, the Prince, and the Pattern of ‘2 Henry IV’
- Whatever Happened to Prince Hal?: An Essay on ‘Henry V’
- ‘Henry V’ and the Bees’ Commonwealth
- ‘All’s Well that Ends Well’
- ‘Hamlet’ and the Power of Words
- Hamlet the Bonesetter
- ‘Hamlet’: A Time to Die
- Shakespeare, Lyly and Ovid: The Influence of ‘Gallathea’ on ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
- Making a Scene: Language and Gesture in ‘Coriolanus’
- Freedom and Loss in ‘The Tempest’
- Inigo Jones at The Cockpit
- Theory and Practice: Stratford 1976
- The Year's Contributions to Shakespearian Study 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare’s Life, Times, and Stage
- 3 Textual Studies
- Index
- Plate Section
‘Henry IV’ and ‘Hamlet’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2007
- Frontmatter
- ‘Henry IV’ and ‘Hamlet’
- Prince Hal and Tragic Style
- The True Prince and the False Thief: Prince Hal and the Shift of Identity
- Falstaff, the Prince, and the Pattern of ‘2 Henry IV’
- Whatever Happened to Prince Hal?: An Essay on ‘Henry V’
- ‘Henry V’ and the Bees’ Commonwealth
- ‘All’s Well that Ends Well’
- ‘Hamlet’ and the Power of Words
- Hamlet the Bonesetter
- ‘Hamlet’: A Time to Die
- Shakespeare, Lyly and Ovid: The Influence of ‘Gallathea’ on ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
- Making a Scene: Language and Gesture in ‘Coriolanus’
- Freedom and Loss in ‘The Tempest’
- Inigo Jones at The Cockpit
- Theory and Practice: Stratford 1976
- The Year's Contributions to Shakespearian Study 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare’s Life, Times, and Stage
- 3 Textual Studies
- Index
- Plate Section
Summary
The hazards inherent in a topic such as this have been unforgettably dramatized by Shakespeare himself. In Henry V, as the battle of Agincourt nears its end, Fluellen rashly sets about drawing a Plutarchan parallel between Harry of Monmouth and ‘Alexander the Pig’ of Macedon, for the edification of Captain Gower. Part of this laboured essay, all too anticipatory of the efforts of many a modern student of literature faced with the odious task of comparison, runs thus:
I tell you, Captain, if you look in the maps of the ’orld, I warrant you sall find, in the comparisons between Macedon and Monmouth, that the situations, look you, is both alike. There is a river in Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth; it is call’d Wye at Monmouth, but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but ’tis all one, ’tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both.
(iv, vii, 21–7)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shakespeare Survey , pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1977