Enter CHORUS. O, FOR a muse of fire, that would ascend Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all, And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, 1 "Within this wooden O, the very casques.' The O for circle, alluding to the circular form of the theatre. very casques does not mean the identical casques, but the casques alone, or merely the casques. Thus in The Taming of the Shrew, Katharine says to Grumio: Thou false deluding slave, That feedest me with the very name of meat." i. e. the name only of meat. 2 Imaginary forces.' Imaginary for imaginative, or your powers of fancy. The active and passive are often confounded by old writers. And make imaginary puissance: Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Who, prologue like, your humble patience pray KING HENRY V. ACT I. SCENE I. London1. An Antechamber in the King's Palace. Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Bishop My lord, I'll tell you, that self bill is urg'd, Ely. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now? 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 Chicheléy, a Carthusian monk, recently promoted to the see of Canterbury. John Fordham, bishop of Ely, consecrated 1388, died 1426. 3 i. e. scrambling. Vide note on Much Ado About Nothing, Act v. Sc. 1, p. 184. 4 Question is debate. Would they strip from us; being valued thus,- A thousand pounds by the year: Thus runs the 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. Seem'd to die too5: yea, at that very moment, And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him: To envelop and contain celestial spirits. With such a heady current, scouring faults; So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, Ely. We are blessed in the change. And, all admiring, with an inward wish You would desire, the king were made a prelate: "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 preceding play, where King Henry V. says : My father is gone wild into his grave, 2 Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, You would say,-it hath been all in all his study: The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Any retirement, any sequestration Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle; And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best, And so the prince obscur'd his contemplation 6 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.' 'So that the art and practick part of Hfe He discourses with so much skill on all subjects, that his theory must have been taught by art and practice,' which is strange, since he could see little of the true art or practice among his leose companions, nor ever retired to digest his practice into theory. Practick and theorick, or rather practique and theorique, was the old orthography of practice and theory. 8 Companies, for companions. 9 Popularity meant familiarity with the common people, as well as popular favour or applause. See Florio in voce Popolarita, |