The King is full of grace and fair regard
Bishop Of Canterbury
The King is full of grace and fair regard.
Bishop Of Ely
And a true lover of the holy Church.
Bishop of Canterbury
The courses of his youth promised it not.
The breath no sooner left his father’s body
But that his wildness, mortified in him,
Seemed to die too.
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences
Yea, at that very moment
Consideration like an angel came
And whipped th’ offending Adam out of him,
Leaving his body as a paradise
T’ 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,
Nor never Hydra-headed willfulness
So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,
As in this king.
Bishop of Ely
We are blessèd in the change.
Bishop of Canterbury
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 studyAnaphora & Isocolon;
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle rend'red you in music;
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garterHyperbaton & Transferred Epithet; that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'dSyncope libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences;
So that the art and practic part of life
Must be the mistress to this theoric;
Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it,
Since his addiction was to courses vainAnastrophe,
His companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow,
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sportsAnacopes, Anaphora & Isocolon;
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestrationAnaphora
From open haunts and popularityHendiadys.
Bishop of Ely
The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbored by fruit of baser quality;
And so the Prince obscured his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness, which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen yet crescive in his faculty.