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The banners borne in the English army, besides those of the king and the principal leaders, were, as usual, those of St. George, St. Edward, and the Trinity.

The French, in addition to the royal and knightly banners, displayed the oriflamme, which was of bright scarlet, embroidered with gold, and terminating in several swallow tails. It is so represented in the hands of Henri Seigneur de Metz, Marechal de France, in the church of Notre Dame de Chartres.

The female costume of this period was disfigured by a most extravagantly high and projecting horned head-dress, curious examples of which are to be seen in the royal MS. marked 15 D. 3, and in the effigy of Beatrice, Countess of Arundel, engraved in Stothard's Monumental Effigies. The rest of the habit was rather graceful than otherwise; consisting, in general, of a long and full robe confined by a rich girdle, high in the neck, the waist moderately short, and the sleeves like those of the men, reaching almost to the ground, and escalloped at the edges.

A representation of Katharine, Queen of England, exists in the carving of an oak chest in the Treasury of York Cathedral.

Isabelle of Bavaria, her mother, is engraved in Montfaucon, from a MS. in the French Royal Library, wearing the high, heart-shaped head-dress, introduced into England in the reign of Henry VI., but, probably, worn earlier in France. There are several other portraits of her in the steeple head-dress, a still later fashion, contemporary in England with the reign of Edward IV.

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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 spirit, that hath dared,
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? 2
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
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 confined 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:

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; 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."

a This chorus does not appear in the quarto editions.

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SCENE I.-London.

[Room of State in the Palace.]

ACT I.

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

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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: Thus runs the bill.

Ely. This would drink deep.
Cunt.

"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,

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:
Never came reformation in a flood,
With such a heady currance," scouring faults;

a Currance. So the original folio. It was changed to currant in the second and third folios; and to current in

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,3 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 honeyed sentences;
So that the art and practick part of life
Must be the mistress to this theorick: "
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;
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.

Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle ;

And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality:
And so the prince obscur'd his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

Cant. It must be so; for miracles are ceas'd; And therefore we must needs admit the means How things are perfected.

Ely.

But, my good lord, How now for mitigation of this bill Urg'd by the commons? Doth his majesty Incline to it, or no?

Cant.
Or, rather, swaying more upon our part,
Than cherishing the exhibiters against us:
For I have made an offer to his majesty,-

He seems indifferent;

the fourth folio. If it be necessary to modernize Shakspere's phraseology, the correction was right; but currance is the French courance, from which we have compounded concurrence and occurrence.

a Theorick. Malone says, "In our author's time this word was always used where we now use theory." Shakspere, indeed, never uses theory, although he has theorick in two other passages. In All's Well, we have "the theorick of war;" in Othello, "the bookish theorick." The word was occasionally used as late as in the time of the Tatler; but in Bishop Hall, a contemporary of Shakspere, we find theory, and in Fuller's Worthies both theory and theorick.

b Companies is here used for companions. Stow uses it in the same sense: "The prince himself was fain to get upon the high altar, to girt his aforesaid companies with the order of knighthood."

Y 2

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