Carry them here and there3; jumping o'er times *; Who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray, 3 For 'tis your THOUGHTS that now must deck our KINGS, Carry them here and there;] We may read king for kings. The prologue relates only to this single play. The mistake was made by referring them to kings, which belongs to thoughts. The sense is, your thoughts must give the king his proper greatness; carry therefore your thoughts here and there, jumping over time, and crouding years into an hour.' JOHNSON. I am not sure that Dr. Johnson's observation is just. In this play the king of France, as well as England, makes his appearance; and the sense may be this :-" It must be to your imaginations that our kings are indebted for their royalty.'" Let the fancy of the spectator furnish out those appendages to greatness which the poverty of our stage is unable to supply. The poet is still apologizing for the defects of theatrical representation. STEEVENS. Johnson is, in my opinion, mistaken also in his explanation of the remainder of the sentence. Carry them here and there" does not mean, as he supposes, Carry your thoughts here and there;' for the Chorus not only calls upon the imagination of the audience to adorn his kings, but to carry them also from one place to another, though by a common poetical licence the copulative be omitted. M. MASON. 4 JUMPING O'ER times;] So, in the prologue to Troilus and Cressida : 66 · Leaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils-.” STEEVENS. KING HENRY V. ACT I. SCENE IS. 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 reign 5 This first scene was added since the edition of 1608, which is much short of the present editions, wherein the speeches are generally enlarged and raised : several whole scenes besides, and all the chorusses also, were since added by Shakspeare. POPE. 6 London.] It appears from Hall's and Holinshed's Chronicles, that the business of this scene was transacted 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 author intended to make London the place of his first scene. MALONE. 7 of CANTERBURY,] Henry Chicheley, a Carthusian monk, recently promoted to the see of Canterbury. MALONE 8 Ely.] John Fordham, consecrated 1388; died 1426. 9 REED. the SCAMBLING and unquiet time-] In the household book of the 5th Earl of Northumberland there is a particular section, appointing the order of service for the scambling days in Lent; that is, days on which no regular meals were provided, but every one scambled, i. e. scrambled and shifted for himself as well as he could. So, in the old noted book intitled Leicester's Commonwealth, one of the marginal heads is, "Scrambling between Leicester and Huntington at the upshot." Where in the text, the author says, "Hastings, for ought I see, when hee commeth to the scambling, is like to have no better luck by the beare [Leices Did push it out of further question'. ELY. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now? us, We lose the better half of our possession: Would they strip from us; being valued thus,- Of indigent faint souls, past corporal toil, A thousand pounds by the year2: 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. ter] then his ancestour had once by the boare." [K. Richard III.] edit. 1641, 12mo. p. 87. So again, Shakspeare himself makes King Henry V. say to the Princess Katharine, "I get thee with scambling, and thou must therefore prove a good soldier-breeder." Act V. PERCY. 66 Shakspeare uses the same word in Much Ado About Nothing: Scambling, out-facing, fashion-mong'ring boys." Again, in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1608: "Leave us to scamble for her getting out." See vol. vii. p. 134, n. 3. STEEVENS. out of further QUESTION.] i. e. of further debate. MALONE. So, in Antony and Cleopatra: "If we contemn, out of our question wipe him." STEEVENS. 2 A thousand pounds by the year:] Hall, who appears to have been Shakspeare's authority, in the above enumeration, says, " and the kyng to have clerely in his cofers twentie thousand poundes." REED. 66 ELY. And a true lover of the holy church. And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him; To envelop and contain celestial spirits. Never came reformation in a flood", With such a heady current, scouring faults; So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, ELY. We are blessed in the change. CANT. Hear him but reason in divinity', 3 The breath no sooner left his father's body, But that his wILDNESS, mortified in him, Seem'd to die too:] The same thought occurs in the last scene of the preceding play, where Henry V. says: 66 My father is gone wild into his grave, "For in his tomb lie my affections." M. MASON. * CONSIDERATION like an angel, &c.] As paradise, when sin and Adam were driven out by the angel, became the habitation of celestial spirits, so the king's heart, since consideration has driven out his follies, is now the receptacle of wisdom and of virtue. JOHNSON. Mr. Upton observes that, according to the Scripture expression, the old Adam, or the old man, signified man in an unregenerated or gentile state. MALONE. 5 Never came reformation in a flood,] Alluding to the method by which Hercules cleansed the famous stables, when he turned a river through them. Hercules still is in our author's head when he mentions the Hydra. JOHNSON. Old copy-currance. Cor 7 Hear him but reason in divinity, &c.] This speech seems to have been copied from King James's prelates, speaking of their Solomon; when Archbishop Whitgift, who, as an eminent writer says, "died soon afterwards, and probably doated then, at the Hampton-Court conference, declared himself verily persuaded, And, all-admiring, with an inward wish You would desire, the king were made a prelate: The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, that his sacred majesty spake by the spirit of God." And, in effect, this scene was added after King James's accession to the crown so that we have no way of avoiding its being esteemed a compliment to him, but by supposing it a compliment to his bishops. WARBURTON. Why these lines should be divided from the rest of the speech and applied to King James, I am not able to conceive; nor why an opportunity should be so eagerly snatched to treat with contempt that part of his character which was the least contemptible. King James's theological knowledge was not inconsiderable. To preside at disputations is not very suitable to a king, but to understand the questions is surely laudable. The poet, if he had James in his thoughts, was no skilful encomiast ; for the mention of Harry's skill in war forced upon the remembrance of his audience the great deficiency of their present king; who yet, with all his faults, and many faults he had, was such, that Sir Robert Cotton says, "he would be content that England should never have a better, provided that it should never have a worse." JOHNSON. Those who are solicitous that justice should be done to the theological knowledge of our British Solomon, may very easily furnish themselves with specimens of it from a book entitled, Rex Platonicus, sive de potentissimi Principis Jacobi Britanniarum Regis ad illustrissimam Academiam Oxoniensem adventu, Aug. 27. Anno 1605. In this performance we may still hear him reasoning in Divinity, Physick, Jurisprudence, and Philosophy. On the second of these subjects he has not failed to express his wellknown enmity to tobacco, and throws out many a royal witticism on the "Medici Nicotianistæ," and "Tobacconista "of the age; insomuch, that Isaac Wake, the chronicler of his triumphs at Oxford, declares, that "nemo nisi iniquissimus rerum æstimator, bonique publici pessimè invidus Jacobo nostro recusabit immortalem gloriæ aram figere, qui ipse adeo mirabilem in Theologia, Jurisprudentiæ, et Medicine arcanis peritiam eamque planè divinitùs assecutus est, ut," &c. STEEVENS. |