The scene, in so far as the Prince is
concerned, is badly conducted. When he yields to Poins and agrees to rob
Falstaff, his words are: "Yea, but I doubt they will be too hard for
us,"--a phrase which hardly shows wild spirits or high courage, or even
the faculty of judging men, and the soliloquy which ends the scene
lamely enough is not the Prince's, but Shakespeare's, and unfortunately
Shakespeare the poet, and not Shakespeare the dramatist:
"
P. Hen. I know you all and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours, that did seem to strangle him. ..."
If we could accept this stuff we should take Prince Henry for the prince
of prigs; but it is impossible to accept it, and so we shrug our
shoulders with the regret that the madcap Prince of history is not
illuminated for us by Shakespeare's genius.
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