He was extraordinarily sensitive, I say to myself, and lived in the
stress of great deeds; he treated Henry V., a man of action if ever
there was one, as an ideal, and lavished on him all his admiration, but
it will not do: I cannot shut my eyes to the fact; the effort is worse
than useless. He liked Henry V. because of his misled youth and his
subsequent rise to highest honour, and not because of his practical
genius. Where in his portrait gallery is the picture of a Drake, or even
of a Raleigh? The adventurer was the characteristic product of that
jostling time; but Shakespeare turned his head away; he was not
interested in him. In spite of himself, however, he became passionately
interested in the pitiful Richard II. and his untimely fate.
Notwithstanding the praise of the critics, his King Henry V. is a wooden
marionette; the intense life of the traditional madcap Prince has died
out of him; but Prince Arthur lives deathlessly, and we still hear his
childish treble telling Hubert of his love.
Those who disagree with me will have to account for the fact that, even
in the historical plays written in early manhood, all his portraits of
men of action are mere copies, while his genius shines in the portraits
of a gentle saint like Henry VI.
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