“Henry VI — Part I.”
Act i. sc. 1. Bedford’s speech:—
“Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky;
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry’s death!
Henry the fifth, too famous to live long!
England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.”
Read aloud any two or three passages in blank verse even from Shakespeare’s earliest dramas, as Love’s Labour’s Lost, or Romeo and Juliet; and then read in the same way this speech, with especial attention to the metre; and if you do not feel the impossibility of the latter having been written by Shakespeare, all I dare suggest is, that you may have ears,—for so has another animal,—but an ear you cannot have, me judice.