FOR a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention !

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and, at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirit, that hath dar'd,
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 casques1,
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
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.
Suppose, within the girdle of these walls
Are now confin'd two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts

Within this wooden O, the very casques. O for circle, alluding to the circular form of the Globe theatre. The very casques, that is the casques alone, or merely the casques.

2

Imaginary forces. Imaginary for imaginant or imaginati your powers of fancy. The active and passive are often confound by old writers.

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
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth:
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.

SCENE I. London1. An Antechamber in the King's
Palace.

Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury, and
Bishop of Ely2.

Canterbury.

Y lord, I'll tell you,-that self bill is urg'd,
Which in the eleventh year o' the last

king's reign

pass'd,

But that the scambling 3 and unquiet time
Did push it out of farther question*.

1 This first scene was added in the folio, together with the choruses, and other amplifications. It appears from Hall and Holinshed that the events passed at Leicester, where King Henry V. held a parliament in the second year of his reign. But the chorus at the beginning of the second act shows that the poet intended to make London the place of his first scene.

2 Canterbury and Ely. Henry Chicheley, a Carthusian monk, recently promoted to the see of Canterbury. John Fordham, bishop of Ely, consecrated 1388, died 1426.

3

Scambling, i. e. scrambling. Vide note on Much Ado about Nothing, Act v. Sc. 1, note 8.

Question is debate.

288

ACT I.

Ely. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?
Cant. It must be thought on. If it pass against us,
We lose the better half of our possession :
For all the temporal lands, which men devout
By testament have given to the church,

Would they strip from us: being valued thus,-
"As much as would maintain, to the king's honour3,
"Full fifteen earls, and fifteen hundred knights :
"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 too6: 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,

With such a heady current, scouring faults;

Nor never hydra-headed wilfulness

5 This passage seems intended to be read by the Archbishop, as it bears a tone of approval that was not his.

The same thought occurs in the preceding play, where King Henry V.

says:

My father is gone wild into his grave,

For in his tomb lie my affections."

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,

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 musick:
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 still7,
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 8:

Which is a wonder, how his grace should glean it,
Since his addiction was to courses vain :

His companies9 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

7 Johnson has noticed the exquisite beauty of this line. We have the same thought in As You Like It, Act ii. Sc. 7:

"I must have liberty

Withal, as large a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please."

8 "So that the art and practick part of life

Must be the mistress to this theorick."

He discourses with so much skill on all subjects, "that this theoretic knowledge must have been taught by art and practice,' which is strange, since he could see little of the true art or practice among his loose companions, nor ever retired to digest his practice into theory. Practick and theorick, or rather practique and theorique, were the old orthography of practice and theory.

9

Companies, for companions.