Suppose, within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous, narrow ocean parts asunder.
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance:

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them

The flat unraised spirit, that hath dared,
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt ? 2
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest, in little place, a million;

And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work:

For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our

kings,

Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times;
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass; For the which supply,
Admit me chorus to this history;

Who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play."

a This chorus does not appear in the quarto editions.

SCENE I.-London.

An Ante-chamber in the King's Palace.

Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, and BISHOP OF ELY.

Cant. My lord, I'll tell you, -that self bill is urg'd,

Which, in the eleventh year o' the last king's

Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;
And, to relief of lazars, and weak age,
Of indigent faint souls, past corporal toil,
A hundred alms-houses, right well supplied;
And to the coffers of the king beside

A thousand pounds by the year: Thus runs the bill.

Ely. This would drink deep.
Cant.

"Twould drink the cup and all.
Ely. But what prevention?
Cant. The king is full of grace and fair regard.
Ely. And a true lover of the holy church.
Cant. The courses of his youth promis'd it not.
The breath no sooner left his father's body,
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seem'd to die too: yea, at that very moment,
Consideration like an angel came,
And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him;
Leaving his body as a paradise,

To envelop and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made:
Never came reformation in a flood,

Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,

As in this king.
Ely.
We are blessed in the change.
Cant. Hear him but reason in divinity,3
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish
You would desire the king were made a prelate:
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You would say it hath been all-in-all his study:
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle render'd you in music:
Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences;
So that the art and practick part of life
Must be the mistress to this theorick: a
Which is a wonder, how his grace should glean it,
Since his addiction was to courses vain:
His companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow;
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports;
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.

Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle ;

And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality :
And so the prince obscur'd his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

Cant. It must be so; for miracles are ceas'd; And therefore we must needs admit the means How things are perfected.

Ely.

But, my good lord,
How now for mitigation of this bill
Urg'd by the commons? Doth his majesty
Incline to it, or no?

Cant.
He seems indifferent;
Or, rather, swaying more upon our part,
Than cherishing the exhibiters against us:
For I have made an offer to his majesty,-

the fourth folio. If it be necessary to modernize Shakspere's phraseology, the correction was right; but currance is the French courance, from which we have compounded Concurrence and occurrence.

* Theorick. Malone says, "In our author's time this word was always used where we now use theory." Shakspere, indeed, never uses theory, although he has theorick in two other passages. In All's Well, we have "the theorick of war;" in Othello, "the bookish theorick." The word was occasionally used as late as in the time of the Tatler; but in Bishop Hall, a contemporary of Shakspere, we find theory, and in Fuller's Worthies both theory and theorick.

b Companies is here used for companions. Stow uses it in the same sense: "The prince himself was fain to get upon the high altar, to girt his aforesaid companies with the order of knighthood."

Upon our spiritual convocation;

And in regard of causes now in hand,
Which I have open'd to his grace at large,
As touching France,-to give a greater sum
Than ever at one time the clergy yet
Did to his predecessors part withal.

Ely. How did this offer seem receiv'd, my lord?

Cant. With good acceptance of his majesty ; Save, that there was not time enough to hear (As I perceiv'd his grace would fain have done,) The severals, and unhidden passages, Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms; And, generally, to the crown and seat of France, Deriv'd from Edward, his great grandfather. Ely. What was the impediment that broke this off?

Cant. The French ambassador, upon that in

a Severals. Monck Mason would read several. plural noun of the text has the force of our modern details. b The play in the quartos begins at the next line.

e The differences in the text of the folio and the quarto editions are so numerous, and so minute, that it would be