The Margery Bailey memorial lectures

These essays are an attempt to cope with the highly disparate—and often disparaging—positions taken with respect to two of Shakespeare's plays, and to produce a balanced view of what the author believes to be major dramatic achievements. Henry IV, Part Two is seen as a play making use of morality effects to indicate the depth of England's sickness and to show the pattern of life against which Hal arrives at the kingship; Hal is seen not as a man in whom the human touch dwindles as the hero emerges (Traversi's view) but as a king who is also a complex and moving human figure.Troilus and Cressida is seen not as a set of contrasts between Trojans and Greeks but as a tapestry in which both camps suffer from a perversion of both will and judgment; Troilus and Cressida both, in this view, emerge as more than usually sympathetic characters.