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In wearing a Nazi uniform to a party and in other ways acting like an aristocratic twit, young Prince Harry was merely following in the footsteps of his royal namesake, so wonderfully depicted by Shakespeare.
Prince Hal, or Harry, later to become King Henry 5, led an equally wayward existence as a young man, consorting with low life, not in some stately home in Wiltshire, but at the Boar's Head pub in Eastcheap.
He also liked dressing up, on one occasion putting on an apron and leather jerkins to disguise himself as a waiter, so that he could hear what his rotund and dissolute pal Falstaff was saying about him.
Hitler was still in the future, or he might well have further adorned himself with a postage-stamp moustache and walked with a goose-step. Falstaff described him as "a good shallow young fellow". Our Prince Harry to a T.
But then, with a dying father on his hands, Prince Hal realised that to qualify for kingship he needed to undergo "a noble change". His drinking pals all thought they were in the pound seats, destined for elevation and royal favours, when he donned the crown.
Instead he turned his back on them in the interests of affirming the dignity of the throne. Prince Charles's younger son won't have to do that, unless something happens to Prince William, so he is free to go on living the life of Riley, even if he realises that wearing a swastika is not the hoot he thought it was.
Entering the army may do the trick. It's the same army that two generations back prevented the swastika from being hoisted over Buckingham Palace and German from being made Prince Harry's official language. Of course King Henry 5 became the archetypal soldier himself and went on to donner the French, culminating in his famous victory at Agincourt. Prince Harry won't have anyone to donner other than the poor Iraqis.
Henry wooed Katherine, daughter of the French king.
Harry is sweet on Zimbabwean commoner Chelsy Davy, but is bound to end up with someone more "suitable". Shakespeare would have delighted in the current situation.
At UCT summer school this week where author André Brink has been lecturing on Shakespeare's "masculinities", I think I understood him to imply that the playwright believed Queen Elizabeth 1 to be doing a better job than any of her male predecessors.
The same can be said for her namesake Queen Elizabeth 2, whose son has been a bit of a disappointment, and now her grandson is turning himself into fodder for the tabloids.
Both have a strong feminine side, though Harry hasn't yet been caught talking to plants, like his father.
She should be thankful he just went to the party as a Nazi. He might have gone as Robert Mugabe or, worse, George Bush. Both might have regarded it as the ultimate insult, and declared war on Britain.
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