SOURCE: Babula, William. “Whatever Happened to Prince Hal? An Essay On Henry V.” Shakespeare Survey 30 (1977): 47-59.

In the following essay, Babula studies the maturation process Henry undergoes in Henry V. The critic notes that as Henry progresses his language moves from artifice to honesty.

E. M. W. Tillyard is right in his assertion that Shakespeare in Henry V was ‘jettisoning the character he had created’ in the Henry IV plays.¹ The Hal that developed out of those earlier histories is not present at the opening of Henry V. This does not mean that Shakespeare has now accepted a Henry ‘who knew exactly what he wanted and went for it with utter singleness of heart …’² Nor has he, as Mark Van Doren would have us believe, stretched a hero ‘until he struts on tiptoe and is still strutting at the last insignificant exit.’³ Nor, on the other extreme, is...