William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

Canterbury.—The king is full of grace and fair regard.

Ely.—And a true lover of the holy church.

Cant.—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; yea, at that very moment,

Consideration like an angel came,

And whipped 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 current, scouring faults;

Nor never hydra-headed wilfulness

So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,

As in this king.

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 study:

List his discourse of war, and you shall hear

A fearful battle rendered 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 chartered libertine, is still,

And the mute wonder lurketh in men’s ears,

To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences;

So that the air 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 vain:

His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow;

His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports,

And never noted in him any study,

Any retirement, any sequestration

From open haunts and popularity.