In the past few days, I have started reading the play that my group was assigned King Henry IV Part 1. Like all Shakespeare's plays, at least for me, it is hard to get into reading it but after a few pages I get on a roll. About when I was just starting to be able to see the actors in my head saying the lines, I came across the Prince's rhapsody, which we talked about in class last week. I think that some would argue that the Prince's speech on lines 188-210 is not a rhapsody but it struck me as visionary that someone would be so in-tune with the nuances of politics and human nature to understand that by acting as a jerkish Prince now would make him even better later as King. The introduction to the play had mentioned this passage by saying that it is argued by critics if the Prince was sincere in his speech at this point or not. But I have to say how can anyone not take him seriously. I would not think that it is possible for someone to be so inconsistent as to be able to think of these words and not mean them. I use inconsistent here because I recently read part of a work by Aristotle, which said that "[the character should be] consistent. If the model for the representation is somebody inconsistent, and such a character is intended, even so it should be consistently inconsistent". I am no where near done with the play but thus far the Prince's character has been consistent with the idea that he is trying to behave in a manner that is consistent in the way that he tries to be a jerk but often does the responsible thing while making it seem like the wrong thing to do. Specifically one passage that he clearly states his intentions and illuminates why he had acted as he had earlier is
"Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
 Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
 To smother up his beauty from the world,
 That, when he please again to be himself
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapors that did seem to strangle him.
I feel that this is apt because at an earlier scene when trying to dissuade his comrades from a foolhardy escaped, the Prince seems to be strangled by his conflicting desires to appear the fancy-free youth and the responsible heir. I look forward to learning over the next few weeks, if the Prince does end up strangled by his conflicting desires and if anyone else felt that this one passage will be one of the cornerstones of the play's themes.