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 't is your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
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.

23 Piece out] Make up.

[Exit.

24 Into a thousand. . . man] Suppose one man to represent a thousand. 31 an hour-glass] A rough estimate of the time occupied by a theatrical performance.

32 Chorus] Interpreter. See line 1, supra, and note.

30

AN ANTE-CHAMBER IN THE KING'S PALACE

Enter the ARCHBISHOP of CANTERBURY, and the BISHOP of ELY CANTERBURY

Y 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 ques

tion.

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

1 CANTERBURY] The speaker is Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, founder of All Souls College, Oxford. Shakespeare follows

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 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.

"T would 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.

Hal to Hew The breath no sooner left his father's body,

roni

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,

Holinshed in making him the leader of the plot against Henry IV's bill for confiscating church property.

self] selfsame.

4 scambling] bustling, turbulent. Cf. V, ii, 202, infra.

15 lazars] lepers.

19 A thousand pounds by the year] The chroniclers estimate £20,000 to be the capital sum requisitioned by the bill for the royal coffers. This amount at five per cent would produce £1,000 a year.

26 wildness, mortified in him] Cf. 2 Hen. IV, V,

gone wild into his grave." "Mortified" means

28 Consideration] Reflection, repentance.

66

ii, 123: "my father is

being done to death.”

10

rom Halt

40

30

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 currance, 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

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 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

34 heady currance] impetuous flow.

35 Hydra-headed wilfulness] many headed, infinitely varied, waywardness. 45 cause of policy] question of state affairs.

48 The air, a charter'd libertine] Cf. As you like it, II, vii, 47-49: “I must have liberty Withal, as large a charter as the wind, To blow on whom I please." The air has prescriptive freedom from restraint. 51 art and practic part of life] practical experience of life; cf. Meas. for Meas., I, i, 13: "Art and practice."

50