The Second Part Of King Henry The Fourth

1 The King lying on a bed. Clarence, Gloucester, Warwick and others in
2 attendance.
3 KING.
4 Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends,
5 Unless some dull and favourable hand
6 Will whisper music to my weary spirit.
7 WARWICK.
8 Call for the music in the other room.
9 KING.
10 Set me the crown upon my pillow here.
11 CLARENCE.
12 His eye is hollow, and he changes much.
13 WARWICK.
14 Less noise, less noise!
15 Enter Prince Henry.
16 PRINCE.
17 Who saw the Duke of Clarence?
18 CLARENCE.
19 I am here, brother, full of heaviness.
20 PRINCE.
21 How now, rain within doors, and none abroad?
22 How doth the King?
23 GLOUCESTER.
24 Exceeding ill.
25 PRINCE.
26 Heard he the good news yet? Tell it him.
27 GLOUCESTER.
28 He alt’red much upon the hearing it.
29 PRINCE.
30 If he be sick with joy, he’ll recover without physic.
31 WARWICK.
32 Not so much noise, my lords. Sweet prince, speak low;
33 The King your father is disposed to sleep.
34 CLARENCE.
35 Let us withdraw into the other room.
36 WARWICK.
37 Will’t please your Grace to go along with us?
38 PRINCE.
39 No, I will sit and watch here by the King.
40 [_Exeunt all but the Prince._]
41 Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,
42 Being so troublesome a bedfellow?
43 O polish’d perturbation! golden care!
44 That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide
45 To many a watchful night! Sleep with it now;
46 Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
47 As he whose brow with homely biggen bound
48 Snores out the watch of night. O majesty!
49 When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
50 Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,
51 That scald’st with safety. By his gates of breath
52 There lies a downy feather which stirs not:
53 Did he suspire, that light and weightless down
54 Perforce must move. My gracious lord, my father!
55 This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep
56 That from this golden rigol hath divorced
57 So many English kings. Thy due from me
58 Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood,
59 Which nature, love, and filial tenderness,
60 Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously.
61 My due from thee is this imperial crown,
62 Which, as immediate from thy place and blood,
63 Derives itself to me. Lo, where it sits,
64 Which God shall guard; and put the world’s whole strength
65 Into one giant arm, it shall not force
66 This lineal honour from me. This from thee
67 Will I to mine leave, as ’tis left to me.
68 [_Exit._]
69 KING.
70 Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!
71 Enter Warwick, Gloucester, Clarence and the rest.
72 CLARENCE.
73 Doth the King call?
74 WARWICK.
75 What would your Majesty? How fares your Grace?
76 KING.
77 Why did you leave me here alone, my lords?
78 CLARENCE.
79 We left the Prince my brother here, my liege,
80 Who undertook to sit and watch by you.
81 KING.
82 The Prince of Wales! Where is he? Let me see him.
83 He is not here.
84 WARWICK.
85 This door is open, he is gone this way.
86 GLOUCESTER.
87 He came not through the chamber where we stay’d.
88 KING.
89 Where is the crown? Who took it from my pillow?
90 WARWICK.
91 When we withdrew, my liege, we left it here.
92 KING.
93 The Prince hath ta’en it hence. Go seek him out.
94 Is he so hasty that he doth suppose
95 My sleep my death?
96 Find him, my Lord of Warwick, chide him hither.
97 [_Exit Warwick._]
98 This part of his conjoins with my disease,
99 And helps to end me. See, sons, what things you are,
100 How quickly nature falls into revolt
101 When gold becomes her object!
102 For this the foolish over-careful fathers
103 Have broke their sleep with thoughts,
104 Their brains with care, their bones with industry;
105 For this they have engrossed and piled up
106 The canker’d heaps of strange-achieved gold;
107 For this they have been thoughtful to invest
108 Their sons with arts and martial exercises;
109 When, like the bee, tolling from every flower
110 The virtuous sweets,
111 Our thighs pack’d with wax, our mouths with honey,
112 We bring it to the hive; and like the bees,
113 Are murdered for our pains. This bitter taste
114 Yields his engrossments to the ending father.
115 Enter Warwick.
116 Now where is he that will not stay so long
117 Till his friend sickness hath determin’d me?
118 WARWICK.
119 My lord, I found the Prince in the next room,
120 Washing with kindly tears his gentle cheeks,
121 With such a deep demeanour in great sorrow
122 That tyranny, which never quaff’d but blood,
123 Would, by beholding him, have wash’d his knife
124 With gentle eye-drops. He is coming hither.
125 KING.
126 But wherefore did he take away the crown?
127 Enter Prince Henry.
128 Lo where he comes. Come hither to me, Harry.
129 Depart the chamber, leave us here alone.
130 [_Exeunt Warwick and the rest._]
131 PRINCE.
132 I never thought to hear you speak again.
133 KING.
134 Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought.
135 I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.
136 Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair
137 That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honours
138 Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth!
139 Thou seek’st the greatness that will overwhelm thee.
140 Stay but a little, for my cloud of dignity
141 Is held from falling with so weak a wind
142 That it will quickly drop. My day is dim.
143 Thou hast stolen that which after some few hours
144 Were thine without offence, and at my death
145 Thou hast seal’d up my expectation.
146 Thy life did manifest thou loved’st me not,
147 And thou wilt have me die assured of it.
148 Thou hid’st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts
149 Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,
150 To stab at half an hour of my life.
151 What, canst thou not forbear me half an hour?
152 Then get thee gone, and dig my grave thyself,
153 And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear
154 That thou art crowned, not that I am dead.
155 Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse
156 Be drops of balm to sanctify thy head,
157 Only compound me with forgotten dust.
158 Give that which gave thee life unto the worms.
159 Pluck down my officers, break my decrees;
160 For now a time is come to mock at form.
161 Harry the Fifth is crown’d. Up, vanity!
162 Down, royal state! All you sage counsellors, hence!
163 And to the English court assemble now,
164 From every region, apes of idleness!
165 Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum.
166 Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,
167 Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit
168 The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?
169 Be happy, he will trouble you no more.
170 England shall double gild his treble guilt,
171 England shall give him office, honour, might,
172 For the fifth Harry from curb’d license plucks
173 The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog
174 Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent.
175 O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows!
176 When that my care could not withhold thy riots,
177 What wilt thou do when riot is thy care?
178 O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,
179 Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!
180 PRINCE.
181 O, pardon me, my liege! But for my tears,
182 The moist impediments unto my speech,
183 I had forestall’d this dear and deep rebuke
184 Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard
185 The course of it so far. There is your crown;
186 And He that wears the crown immortally
187 Long guard it yours! If I affect it more
188 Than as your honour and as your renown,
189 Let me no more from this obedience rise,
190 Which my most inward true and duteous spirit
191 Teacheth this prostrate and exterior bending.
192 God witness with me, when I here came in,
193 And found no course of breath within your Majesty,
194 How cold it struck my heart! If I do feign,
195 O, let me in my present wildness die
196 And never live to show th’ incredulous world
197 The noble change that I have purposed!
198 Coming to look on you, thinking you dead,
199 And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,
200 I spake unto this crown as having sense,
201 And thus upbraided it: “The care on thee depending
202 Hath fed upon the body of my father;
203 Therefore thou best of gold art worst of gold.
204 Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,
205 Preserving life in med’cine potable;
206 But thou, most fine, most honour’d, most renown’d,
207 Hast eat thy bearer up.” Thus, my most royal liege,
208 Accusing it, I put it on my head,
209 To try with it, as with an enemy
210 That had before my face murder’d my father,
211 The quarrel of a true inheritor.
212 But if it did infect my blood with joy,
213 Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride,
214 If any rebel or vain spirit of mine
215 Did with the least affection of a welcome
216 Give entertainment to the might of it,
217 Let God for ever keep it from my head
218 And make me as the poorest vassal is
219 That doth with awe and terror kneel to it!
220 KING.
221 O my son,
222 God put it in thy mind to take it hence,
223 That thou mightst win the more thy father’s love,
224 Pleading so wisely in excuse of it!
225 Come hither, Harry, sit thou by my bed,
226 And hear, I think, the very latest counsel
227 That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son,
228 By what by-paths and indirect crook’d ways
229 I met this crown, and I myself know well
230 How troublesome it sat upon my head.
231 To thee it shall descend with better quiet,
232 Better opinion, better confirmation,
233 For all the soil of the achievement goes
234 With me into the earth. It seem’d in me
235 But as an honour snatch’d with boisterous hand,
236 And I had many living to upbraid
237 My gain of it by their assistances,
238 Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed,
239 Wounding supposed peace. All these bold fears
240 Thou seest with peril I have answered;
241 For all my reign hath been but as a scene
242 Acting that argument. And now my death
243 Changes the mood, for what in me was purchased,
244 Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort;
245 So thou the garland wear’st successively.
246 Yet though thou stand’st more sure than I could do,
247 Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green;
248 And all my friends, which thou must make thy friends,
249 Have but their stings and teeth newly ta’en out;
250 By whose fell working I was first advanced
251 And by whose power I well might lodge a fear
252 To be again displaced; which to avoid,
253 I cut them off, and had a purpose now
254 To lead out many to the Holy Land,
255 Lest rest and lying still might make them look
256 Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry,
257 Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
258 With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out,
259 May waste the memory of the former days.
260 More would I, but my lungs are wasted so
261 That strength of speech is utterly denied me.
262 How I came by the crown, O God, forgive,
263 And grant it may with thee in true peace live!
264 PRINCE.
265 My gracious liege,
266 You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me;
267 Then plain and right must my possession be,
268 Which I with more than with a common pain
269 ’Gainst all the world will rightfully maintain.
270 Enter Lord John of Lancaster and others.
271 KING.
272 Look, look, here comes my John of Lancaster.
273 LANCASTER.
274 Health, peace, and happiness to my royal father!
275 KING.
276 Thou bring’st me happiness and peace, son John,
277 But health, alack, with youthful wings is flown
278 From this bare wither’d trunk. Upon thy sight
279 My worldly business makes a period.
280 Where is my Lord of Warwick?
281 PRINCE.
282 My Lord of Warwick!
283 Enter Warwick and others.
284 KING.
285 Doth any name particular belong
286 Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?
287 WARWICK.
288 ’Tis call’d Jerusalem, my noble lord.
289 KING.
290 Laud be to God! Even there my life must end.
291 It hath been prophesied to me many years,
292 I should not die but in Jerusalem,
293 Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land.
294 But bear me to that chamber; there I’ll lie;
295 In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.
296 [_Exeunt._]