Playing with the Muse

The Battle Between the Mice and the Frogs | trans. A.E. Stallings | Paul Dry Books

When Shakespeare’s Prologue in Henry V invokes a “muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention” and assist him in telling the story of Henry ’s conquests in France, he also betrays a certainty that he is doing little more than troubling heaven with his bootless cries. If Harry could truly embody the god of war, or the vast scope of t…