THE LIFE OF

KING HENRY V

PROLOGUE

Enter Chorus.

Chor. O 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, gen-
tles all,

The flat unraised spirits that have dared

On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth 10
So great an object: can this cockpit hold

The vasty fields of France? or may we cram

7. "famine, sword and fire"; this trio is probably suggested by a speech of Henry's, as reported by Holinshed, in which he replies to suppliant citizens, during his siege of Rouen (1419), that Bellona, the goddess of battle, had three handmaidens blood, fire,

and famine, all of which were at his choice to use (Hol. iii. 367, ed. Stone).-C. H. H.

9. "spirits that have dared"; so Staunton; Ff. 1, 2, 3, "hath"; F. 4, "spirit, that hath."-I. G.

Within this wooden O the very casques
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 confined two mighty monarchies, 20
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

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 30
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.

[Exit.

13. The "Wooden O" was the Globe Theater on the Bankside, which was circular withinside. It would seem that "very” was sometimes used in the sense of mere. "The very casques”; that is, “so much as the casques," or "merely the casques." So in The Taming of the Shrew: "Thou false deluding slave, that feed'st me with the very name of meat."-H. N. H.

18. "on your imaginary forces work"; that is, your powers of imagination: imaginary for imaginative. This indifferent use of the active and passive forms occurs continually in these plays.-H. N. H. 25. "puissance"; (three syllables).-C. H. H.

ACT FIRST

SCENE I

London. An ante-Chamber in the King's palace. Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of Ely.

Cant. My lord, I'll tell you; that self bill is urged, Which in the eleventh year of the last king's reign

Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd,

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

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:

10

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 honor,
Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,
Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;

Sc. 1. "Canterbury"; this was Henrie Chichele. Shakespeare follows the chronicles in attributing to him the chief share in the clerical plot for diverting the king's attention from his confiscation bill.-C. H. H.

7-19. This is taken almost literally from Holinshed.-H. N. H.

And, to relief of lazars and weak age,
Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil,
A hundred almshouses 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. 20 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 promised 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 envelope and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made;
Never came reformation in a flood,

Ely.

30

With such a heady currance, scouring faults;
Nor never Hydra-headed willfulness

So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,
As in this king.

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:

19. “A thousand pounds by the year"; "Hall and Holinshed the principal sum. 'And the king to have clerely to his cofers twentie thousand poundes' (Hall). Shakespeare reckons interest therefore at five per cent” (Wright).—C. H. H.

Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, 41
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 honey'd sentences;
So that the art and practic part of life
Must be the mistress to this theoric:

50

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

His companies unletter'd, rude and shallow,

51, 52. That is, he must have drawn his theory, digested his order and method of thought, from the art and practice of life, instead of shaping the latter by the rules and measures of the former: which is strange, since he has never been seen in the way either of learning the things in question by experience, or of digesting the fruits of experience into theory. Practic and theoric, or practique and theorique, were the old spelling of practice and theory. An apt commentary on the text occurs in A Treatise of Human Learning, by Lord Brooke, who was a star in the same constellation with Shakespeare, and one of the profoundest thinkers of the time.

"Againe, the active, necessarie arts

Ought to be briefe in bookes, in practise long:
Short precepts may extend to many parts;
The practise must be large, or not be strong.
For if these two be in one ballance weigh'd,
The artless use bears down the useless art.
The world should therefore her instructions draw
Backe unto life and actions, whence they came;
That practise, which gave being, might give law,
To make them short, cleare, fruitfull unto man:
As God made all for use, even so must she

By chance and use uphold her mystery.”—H. N. H.