“Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,/ Our bending author hath pursu’d the story,” writes Shakespeare—the least sincere line of his most insincere drama, Henry V. But how far is “thus far”? Is it a time or a place, a duration or a location? Shakespeare is definitely thinking about space since the Chorus complains about close quarters—“In little room confining mighty men” (epil.3). “[L]ittle room” is clear enough, then—the place, elsewhere, of “great reckoning[s]” (As You Like It, 3.3.15). It's the cramped quarters of the “cockpit” (Henry V, prol.11) into which the writer has confined his work. Maybe that's why he's bending.

“Thus far” is a place, then. The line's a workplace gripe about a tiny office. But an instant later the epilogue mentions the “[s]mall time” in which this “star of England” lived (epil.5, 6). “Small time”? Like you could slap a handle on time and stow it in the overhead. “Brief” would have scanned, but here the temporal duration of this history play is deliberately spatialized, and vice versa. The notion, at the end, is that you’ve come along way without getting anywhere. Little room, small time: “thus far” is both a geographical and chronological span, the one the other in a form of theatrical synesthesia.

In a marginally less well-known history play, James IV, Robert Greene has King Arius announce that “thus far the English peeres have we displayed/ Our warring ensigns with a happy warre.”