ABSTRACT
The tragic hero's willingness to take terrible risks, to throw away power and life itself for a cause, is not demanded of the kings of the histories. Shakespeare's nine English history plays imply a standard of good kingship which no one of his kings, except possibly Henry V, fully attains. The merry word-games in which the Prince and Sir John Falstaff engage, the matchings of 'unsavory similes' of fatness and thinness, represent a comic playing with political and moral themes at core of the plays. Judgments in the later histories are kinder to the wastrel Richard than to the politician Bolingbroke, whose usurpation and killing of a king are thought more heinous than all of Richard's folly. Later in a long speech to Prince Hal, troubled Henry sees Richard's blind rioting recapitulated in his son, perhaps as a punishment for Henry's own mistreadings.
