The Consistency in Character of Prince Hal and King Henry the Fifth
"The prince, who is the hero both of the comick and tragick part, is a young man of great abilities and violent passions, whose sentiments are right, though his actions are wrong ; whose virtues are obscured by- negligence, and whose understanding is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loose than wicked; and when the occasion forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler." |The most characteristic thing about Johnson's criticism is found in his methodical route to his conclusion regarding the character problem of Prince Hal. He left him in the play. He did not do what so many critics are inclined to do with Shakesperian characters, lift them out of the dramatic context and liquidate such incidentals as the story, the setting and the elements of the plot, and leave.these characters dangling without support in the misty realms of speculation. The roots of this method are buried in the understanding Johnson had of Shakespeare as a whole.
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