KING HENRY THE FIFTH

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, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have 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 casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may

10

2. invention: four syllables, as million, line 16, is three. W. 10. The theatrical allusions in the speeches of Chorus are very interesting. The stage is called a scaffold because it really was one placed in the middle of the circle, "this wooden O," "the girdle of these walls," in which the spectators sat and stood. It is called a cockpit probably because it was not unlike one; several of the older theatres were used at times for bull and bear baiting and for cockfighting. One of the theatres built shortly after this time was called The Cockpit.

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
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance;

20

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' th' receiving earth;
For 't is your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning th' 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.

ACT I

SCENE I. London. An antechamber 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 urg'd, Which in the eleventh year of the last king's reign

18. imaginary = imaginative. In 1. 25 the word has the modern meaning.

26. This was Shakespeare's general view of stage-setting. Cf. the satire on Wall and Moonshine in A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, i, 40-65, and V, i, 125–250.

1. bill after this scene we hear no more of the bill. It disappears when it has served its purpose of introducing King Henry by the very flattering mention of the archbishop.

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:

For all the temporal lands which men devout
By testament have given to the church
Would they strip from us; being valu'd thus:
As much as would maintain, to the King's honour,
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 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.

10

"T would drink the cup and all.

Ely. But what prevention?

21

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,

24. courses: these are the courses presented in 1 Henry IV. Shakespeare merely alludes to them as well known to his audi

ence.

The contrast between the wild youth and the serious king is not necessary to his purpose in this play.

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,

With such a heady current, scouring faults;
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,

And all-admiring with an inward wish

30

You would desire the King were made a prelate: 40

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 honey'd sentences;
So that the art and practic part of life
Must be the mistress to this theoric:

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,

50

50

33. reformation in a flood: an allusion to Hercules's cleansing of the Augean stables by turning a river through them. W. 38. Hear him but reason in divinity, etc. All this is mere fancy; there is no evidence that Henry V had these faculties and accomplishments. W.