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How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
. . .
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
(Act 3, scene 1, lines 4–8 and 31)
With these lines, King Henry IV makes his first appearance in the play. Little time has passed since the end of Henry IV, Part 1, but the king seems to have aged a great deal. Now gravely ill, he reflects on how the stress and anxiety of kingship have weighed heavily on him and led to many sleepless nights such as this one. Although his speech culminates with one of the play’s most famous lines (“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”), perhaps more remarkable are the ingenious images he develops in his poetry. 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.
O God, that one might read the book of fate
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea, and other times to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chance’s mocks
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book and sit him down and die.
(Act 3, scene 1, lines 45–51)
King Henry makes numerous projections about the future, and these lines constitute one of his more elaborate prophecies. Couched within a request to God to allow him to “read the book of fate,” Henry indulges in an apocalyptic vision of biblical proportions. Indeed, he sees mountains being reduced to rubble and the land itself sinking into the ocean. This vision of incredible devastation is so intense that it would make “the happiest youth” shudder with fear. Instead of facing the future, this youth would “shut the book [of fate] and sit him down and die.” As his illness progresses and he nears death, Henry grows increasingly pessimistic about the future. His fervent belief in England’s doom certainly reflects his continuing perception of Prince Harry as a reprobate. However, it also reflects a larger worry that his own past actions—specifically, the murder of Richard II—may have cursed the House of Lancaster as well as England itself.
King Henry: Doth any name particular belong
Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?
Warwick: ’Tis called Jerusalem, my noble lord.
King Henry: Laud be to God! Even there my life must end.
It hath been prophesied to me many years,
I should not die but in Jerusalem,
Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land.
But bear me to that chamber; there I’ll lie.
In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.
(Act 4, scene 3, lines 393–401)
These are the last lines King Henry utters before his death, which happens offstage between acts 4 and 5. Newly reconciled with Harry and less concerned for England’s future, the king withdraws to rest. He asks about the name of the chamber where he swooned earlier, and when Warwick replies that the chamber is called “Jerusalem,” the king realizes that this is the room where he will die. This realization stems from an old prophecy that he would take his last breath in “the Holy Land.” Henry’s belief in this prophecy played a role in his longstanding desire to go on a Crusade—a desire he first announced at the end of Richard II and which he was in the midst of planning before civil war broke out at the beginning of Henry IV, Part 1. Long deferred due to domestic troubles, Henry will now make his final pilgrimage not to Jerusalem but to “Jerusalem,” thereby fulfilling the prophecy and bringing the era of his reign to an end.
