4 ideas
Friar Bacon spends seven years building a brass head that will speak and teach him to wall England with brass. Exhausted after sixty days awake with Friar Bungay, he sleeps and leaves his dim servant Miles on watch with orders to wake him if it speaks. The head says 'Time is,' 'Time was,' and 'Time is past.' Miles judges these words too trivial to report, and a hand with a hammer shatters the head, destroying the project in the one moment the master was absent.
Two scholars at Oxford ask to look into Bacon's magic glass, which shows distant events. They watch their fathers, rival suitors for Margaret, kill each other in a duel, and the sons immediately stab each other in grief and rage. Bacon breaks the glass and renounces magic, blaming his art for turning remote sight into fatal action.
Prince Edward sends his friend Lord Lacy, disguised as a farmer, to woo the Keeper's daughter Margaret for him. Lacy falls in love and wins her for himself, because the agent in direct contact builds the relationship the principal only wanted.
Edward, betrayed by Lacy, draws his dagger to kill him. Margaret's willingness to die in Lacy's place makes him give her up. The play presents the prince who conquers his own desire, and turns to a dynastic match with Eleanor of Castile, as fitter to rule than one who takes what his power allows.