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And make imaginary puissance: 2

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;3 jumping o'er times;4
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.

2 And make imaginary puissance:] This shows that Shakspeare was fully sensible of the absurdity of showing battles on the theatre, which, indeed, is never done, but tragedy becomes farce. Nothing can be represented to the eye, but by something like it, and within a wooden O nothing very like a battle can be exhibited. Johnson.

Other authors of that age seem to have been sensible of the same absurdities. In Heywood's Fair Maid of the West, 1631, a Chorus enters and says:

"Our stage so lamely can express a sea,
"That we are forc'd by Chorus to discourse

"What should have been in action," &c. Steevens.

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 crowding 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 license the copulative be omitted. M. Mason.

4

Cressida:

jumping o'er times;] So, in the prologue to Troilus and

"Leaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils —."

Steevens

KING HENRY V.

ACT I.....SCENE 1.5

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 Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd, But that the scambling and unquiet time9

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

9

Ely.] John Fordham, consecrated 1388; died 1426.

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, "Scambling between Leicester and Huntington at the upshot." Where in the text, the author says, "Hastings, for ought I see, when hee cometh to the scambling, is like to have no better luck by the beare [Leicester] 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.

Shakspeare uses the same word in Much Ado about Nothing: "Scambling, out-facing, fashion-mong'ring boys."

Again, in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1508:

"Leave us to scamble for her getting out." Steevens.

Did push it out of further question.1

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 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 alms-houses, right well supplied;

And to the coffers of the king beside,

A thousand pounds by the year:2 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,3

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:

1

out of further question.] i. e. of further debate. Malone. So, in Antony and Cleopatra:

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"If we contend, 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.

3 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 unregene. rated or gentile state. Malone.

Never came reformation in a flood,4
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,5

4 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.

5 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, 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.

On the

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. 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 Nicotianista," 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 Facobo nostro recusabit immortalem gloriæ aram figere, qui ipse adeo mirabilem in Theologia,

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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 still,"
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honey'd 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 companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow;
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports;

Jurisprudentia, et Medicine arcanis peritiam eamque planè divinitùs assecutus est, ut" &c. Steevens.

6 The air, &c.] This line is exquisitely beautiful. Johnson. The same thought occurs in As you Like it, Act II, sc. vii: I must have liberty

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"Withal, as large a charter as the wind,

"To blow on whom I please." Malone.

So that the art and practick part of life-] He discourses with so much skill on all subjects, that the art and practice of life must be the mistress or teacher of his theorick; that is, that his theory must have been taught by art and practice; which, says he, 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. Art is used by the author for practice, as distinguished from science or theory. Johnson.

8 to this theorick:] Theorick is what terminates in speculation. So, in The Valiant Welshman, 1615:

❝ son Caradoc,

"'Tis yet unfit that, on this sudden warning, "You leave your fair wife to the theorique "Of matrimonial pleasure and delight." Bookish theorick is mentioned in Othello. Steevens.

In our author's time this word was always used where we now use theory. See Vol. V, p. 269, n. 8. Malme.

9 companies] Is here used for companions. It is used by other authors of Shakspeare's age in the same sense.

Malone.

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