KING HENRY THE EIGHTH.

PROLOGUE.

I COME no more to make you laugh; things now, That bear a weighty and a serious brow, Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow, We now present. Those that can pity, here May, if they think it well, let fall a tear; The subject will deserve it. Such as give Their money out of hope they may believe, May here find truth too.

Those that come to see

Only a show or two, and so agree,

The play may pass; if they be still, and willing,
I'll undertake, may see away their shilling
Richly in two short hours. Only they
That come to hear a merry, bawdy play,
A noise of targets, or to see a fellow
In a long, motley coat, guarded' with yellow,
Will be deceived; for, gentle hearers, know,
To rank our chosen truth with such a show
As fool and fight is, beside forfeiting

Our own brains, and the opinion that we bring,
(To make that only true we now intend,)

Will leave us never an understanding friend.

Therefore, for goodness' sake, and as you are known
The first and happiest hearers of the town,
Be sad, as we would make ye: think ye see
The very persons of our noble story,

1 i. e. faced or trimmed.

2 Happiest being here used in a Latin sense for propitious or favorable.

As they were living; think you see them great,
And followed with the general throng and sweat
Of thousand friends; then, in a moment, see
How soon this mightiness meets misery!
And, if you can be merry then, I'll say,
A man may weep upon his wedding-day.

ACT I.

SCENE I. London. An Antechamber in the Palace.

Enter the DUKE of NORFOLK, at one door; at the other, the DUKE of BUCKINGHAM, and the LORD ABERGAVENNY.1

Buckingham. GOOD morrow, and well met. How have you done,

Since last we saw in France?

Nor.

I thank your grace;

Healthful; and ever since a fresh admirer
Of what I saw there.

Buck.

An untimely ague

Stayed me a prisoner in my chamber, when
Those suns of glory, those two lights of men,
Met in the vale of Arde.

Nor.

2

'Twixt Guynes and Arde: I was then present, saw them salute on horseback ; Beheld them, when they lighted, how they clung In their embracement, as they grew together; Which had they, what four throned ones could have weighed

Such a compounded one?

1 George Nevill, who married Mary, daughter of Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham.

2 Guynes then belonged to the English, and Arde (Ardres) to the French; they are towns of Picardy. The valley where Henry VIII. and Francis I. met lies between them.

3 As for as if.

Buck.

All the whole time

I was my chamber's prisoner.

Nor.

Then you lost

The view of earthly glory. Men might say,
Till this time, pomp was single; but now married
To one above itself. Each following day
Became the next day's master, till the last
Made former wonders it's. To-day, the French,
All clinquant,' all in gold, like heathen gods,
Shone down the English; and, to-morrow, they
Made Britain, India; every man, that stood,
Showed like a mine. Their dwarfish pages were
As cherubins, all gilt: the madams too,
Not used to toil, did almost sweat to bear
The pride upon them, that their very labor
Was to them as a painting. Now this mask
Was cried incomparable; and the ensuing night
Made it a fool and beggar. The two kings,
Equal in lustre, were now best, now worst,
As presence did present them; him in eye,
Still him in praise; and, being present both,
'Twas said, they saw but one; and no discerner
Durst wag his tongue in censure. When these suns
(For so they phrase them) by their heralds challenged
The noble spirits to arms, they did perform

Beyond thought's compass; that former fabulous story,
Being now seen possible enough, got credit,
That Bevis was believed.

Buck.
O, you go far.
Nor. As I belong to worship, and affect
In honor honesty, the tract of every thing
Would by a good discourser lose some life,
Which action's self was tongue to. All was royal;
To the disposing of it nought rebelled;
Order gave each thing view; the office did
Distinctly his full function.

Buck.

1 i. e. glittering, shining.

Who did guide,

2 The old romantic legend of Bevis of Hampton.

I mean, who set the body and the limbs
Of this great sport together, as you guess?
Nor. One, certes, that promises no element1
In such a business.

Buck.

I pray you, who, my lord? Nor. All this was ordered by the good discretion Of the right reverend cardinal of York.

Buck. The devil speed him! No man's pie is freed
From his ambitious finger. What had he
To do in these fierce 2 vanities? I wonder
That such a keech3 can with his very bulk
Take up the rays o' the beneficial sun,
And keep it from the earth.

Nor.
Surely, sir,
There's in him stuff that puts him to these ends;
For, being not propped by ancestry, (whose grace
Chalks successors their way,) nor called upon
For high feats done to the crown; neither allied
To eminent assistants, but, spider-like,

Out of his self-drawing web, he gives us note,
The force of his own merit makes his way;
A gift that Heaven gives for him, which buys
A place next to the king.

Aber.

I cannot tell

What Heaven hath given him; let some graver eye
Pierce into that: but I can see his pride

Peep through each part of him. Whence has he that?
If not from hell, the devil is a niggard;

Or has given all before, and he begins

A new hell in himself.

Buck.

Why the devil,

Upon this French going-out, took he upon him,
Without the privity o' the king, to appoint

Who should attend on him? He makes up the file1

1 No initiation, no previous practice.

2 Fierce is here used, like the French fier, for proud.

3 A round lump of fat. The prince calls Falstaff tallow-keech in the First Part of King Henry IV. It has been thought that there was some allusion here to the cardinal, being reputed the son of a butcher.

4 List.

Of all the gentry; for the most part such,
Too, whom as great a charge as little honor
He meant to lay upon; and his own letter,
The honorable board of council out,

Must fetch him in he papers.1

I do know

Aber.
Kinsmen of mine, three at the least, that have
By this so sickened their estates, that never
They shall abound as formerly.

Buck.

O, many

Have broke their backs with laying manors on them
For this great journey. What did this vanity,
But minister communication of

A most poor issue?

Nor.

Grievingly I think,

The peace between the French and us not values
The cost that did conclude it.

2

Buck.
Every man,
After the hideous storm that followed, was
A thing inspired; and, not consulting, broke
Into a general prophecy,-That this tempest,
Dashing the garment of this peace, aboded
The sudden breach on't.

Nor.

For France hath flawed the league, and hath attached Our merchants' goods at Bourdeaux.

Aber.

Which is budded out;

Is it therefore

Marry, is't.

The ambassador is silenced ?3

Nor.

Aber. A proper title of a peace, and purchased At a superfluous rate!

Buck.

Why, all this business

Our reverend cardinal carried,

1 He papers, a verb; i. e. his own letter, by his own single authority, and without the concurrence of the council, must fetch him in whom he papers down.

2" Monday the xviii of June was such an hideous storme of winde and weather, that many conjectured it did prognosticate trouble and hatred shortly after to follow between princes."-Holinshed.

3 The French ambassador, being refused an audience, may be said to be silenced.