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.

Rubens, if he had painted it, would not have improved upon this simile.  The conversation between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely relating to the sudden change in the manners of Henry V is among the well-known beauties of Shakespeare.  It is indeed admirable both for strength and grace.  It has sometimes occurred to us that Shakespeare, in describing ‘the reformation’ of the Prince, might have had an eye to himself—­

     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.

This at least is as probable an account of the progress of the poet’s mind as we have met with in any of the Essays on the Learning of Shakespeare.

Nothing can be better managed than the caution which the king gives the meddling Archbishop, not to advise him rashly to engage in the war with France, his scrupulous dread of the consequences of that advice, and his eager desire to hear and follow it.

     And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,
     That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading,
     Or nicely charge your understanding soul
     With opening titles miscreate, whose right
     Suits not in native colours with the truth. 
     For God doth know how many now in health
     Shall drop their blood, in approbation
     Of what your reverence shall incite us to.

     Therefore take heed how you impawn your person,
     How you awake our sleeping sword of war;
     We charge you in the name of God, take heed. 
     For never two such kingdoms did contend
     Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops
     Are every one a woe, a sore complaint
     ’Gainst him, whose wrong gives edge unto the swords
     That make such waste in brief mortality. 
     Under this conjuration, speak, my lord;
     For we will hear, note, and believe in heart,
     That what you speak, is in your conscience wash’d,
     As pure as sin with baptism.