As we like to gaze at a panther or a young lion in
their cages in the Tower, and catch a pleasing horror from their
glistening eyes, their velvet paws, and dreadless roar, so we take a
very romantic, heroic, patriotic, and poetical delight in the boasts
and feats of our younger Harry, as they appear on the stage and are
confined to lines of ten syllables; where no blood follows the
stroke that wounds our ears, where no harvest bends beneath horses'
hoofs, no city flames, no little child is butchered, no dead men's
bodies are found piled on heaps and festering the next morning--in
the orchestra!
So much for the politics of this play; now for the poetry. Perhaps
one of the most striking images in all Shakespeare is that given of
war in the first lines of the Prologue.
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.
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