Okay, so thanks for coming back to this second lecture in the series approaches to Shakespeare.

Today I'm going to be talking about Henry V. Henry V.

So again, I'm going to focus on a specific question. Last week I asked a question about the

significance of Othello's race to that play.

This week, the critical question I'm trying to think about is again directed to the play's main character.

I think I'm asking, is Henry admirable? Is Henry admirable?

As last week, I'm going to try and use some different critical approaches,

in part the play's relation to its source material,

its iterations in print and on the stage,

its critical history, and its own structure and imagery

to provide different ways of addressing that question.

And again, I think my ultimate aim is to show that the play asks rather than answers the question.

So I'm trying to build up a sense.

I think that Shakespeare's play is a interrogative in some sense.

They demand that we address questions or that we think about questions rather than providing answers.

Now, last week when we thought about Othello's genre, we met some strange creatures who looking and quacking like ducks did not turn out to be ducks.

The duck, unlikely as it may seem, provides us with

another useful critical paradigm this week. Writing in the 1960s, the critic Norman Rabkin

likened Henry V to the drawing much used by psychologists to discuss mental processes in visual perception.

It's a line drawing that is both a rabbit and a duck.

You may be able to recall this image.

The picture is either a duck with a long beak looking to the left or a rabbit with long straight ears looking to the right.

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