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In the second part of the sequence of plays bearing his name, King Henry IV feels increasingly burdened by the burden of his past and by the anxieties of the present. The stress of presiding over a kingdom in such disarray, with war unfolding on multiple domestic fronts, has left Henry a shadow of his former self. We first meet him at the top of act 3, where he’s awake writing letters in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. The soliloquy he delivers here concludes with his famous line reflecting on the stress of kingship: “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” (3.1.31). But perhaps more remarkable are the ingenious lines of poetry he utters before he concludes. The speech begins with him addressing sleep, asking why it has refused to “weigh [his] eyelids down” when it has happily visited his “poorest subjects.” Afterward, his speech grows increasingly elaborate, conjuring the image of a young man sleeping in the watchtower of a ship as it’s ravaged by stormy seas. The power of Henry’s poetry ominously echoes that of his predecessor, Richard II, whose gifts as a poet also increased as his kingly authority declined.
Yet the clearest sign of Henry’s degeneration is the grave illness that will eventually lead to his death. It’s never clear what his affliction is, but the details hardly matter: Shakespeare frames his sickness as symbolic of a more far-reaching disease that has infected all of England. This link between Henry and his kingdom is made manifest in the various prophetic visions the king presents of England’s dire future. The more he declines, the more pessimistic he becomes—to the point where even “good news make [him] sick” (4.3.110) and cause him to swoon. Henry believes that his illness is symbolically linked to the “indirect crook’d ways” (4.3.342) he took to obtain the crown. He pledges to his son and heir, Prince Harry, that the corrupting influence will go with him to the grave, thus preventing the new king from inheriting the old king’s burdens. With this pledge, Henry prepares himself for death by withdrawing to a chamber called “Jerusalem.” There, he will finally—though obliquely—fulfill a prophecy that foretold of his death in “the Holy Land.”
