Act 4, Scene 5

Another chamber.

[The King lying on a bed: Clarence, Gloucester, Warwick, and others in attendance.]
King Henry IV
2266 Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends;
2267 Unless some dull and favourable hand
2268 Will whisper music to my weary spirit.
Earl of Warwick
2269 Call for the music in the other room.
King Henry IV
2270 Set me the crown upon my pillow here.
Thomas, Duke of Clarence
2271 His eye is hollow, and he changes much.
Earl of Warwick
2272 Less noise! less noise!
[Enter Prince Henry.]
Prince Hal
2273 Who saw the Duke of Clarence?
Thomas, Duke of Clarence
2274 I am here, brother, full of heaviness.
Prince Hal
2275 How now! rain within doors, and none abroad!
2276 How doth the king?
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester
2277 Exceeding ill.
Prince Hal
2278 Heard he the good news yet? Tell it him.
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester
2279 He alt'red much upon the hearing it.
Prince Hal
2280 If he be sick with joy, he'll recover without physic.
Earl of Warwick
2281 Not so much noise, my lords: sweet prince, speak low;
2282 The king your father is disposed to sleep.
Thomas, Duke of Clarence
2283 Let us withdraw into the other room.
Earl of Warwick
2284 Will't please your grace to go along with us?
Prince Hal
2285 No; I will sit and watch here by the king.
[Exeunt all but the Prince.]
Prince Hal
2286 Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,
2287 Being so troublesome a bedfellow?
2288 O polish'd perturbation! golden care!
2289 That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide
2290 To many a watchful night! sleep with it now!
2291 Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
2292 As he whose brow with homely biggen bound
2293 Snores out the watch of night. O majesty!
2294 When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
2295 Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,
2296 That scalds with safety. By his gates of breath
2297 There lies a downy feather which stirs not:
2298 Did he suspire, that light and weightless down
2299 Perforce must move. My gracious lord! my father!
2300 This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep
2301 That from this golden rigol hath divorced
2302 So many English kings. Thy due from me
2303 Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood,
2304 Which nature, love, and filial tenderness,
2305 Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously:
2306 My due from thee is this imperial crown,
2307 Which, as immediate from thy place and blood,
2308 Derives itself to me. Lo, here it sits,
2309 Which God shall guard: and put the world's whole strength
2310 Into one giant arm, it shall not force
2311 This lineal honour from me: this from thee
2312 Will I to mine leave, as 'tis left to me.
[Exit.]
King Henry IV
2313 Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!
[Re-enter Warwick, Gloucester, Clarence, and the rest.]
Thomas, Duke of Clarence
2314 Doth the king call?
Earl of Warwick
2315 What would your majesty? How fares your grace?
King Henry IV
2316 Why did you leave me here alone, my lords?
Thomas, Duke of Clarence
2317 We left the prince my brother here, my liege,
2318 Who undertook to sit and watch by you.
King Henry IV
2319 The Prince of Wales! Where is he? let me see him:
2320 He is not here.
Earl of Warwick
2321 This door is open; he is gone this way.
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester
2322 He came not through the chamber where we stay'd.
King Henry IV
2323 Where is the crown? who took it from my pillow?
Earl of Warwick
2324 When we withdrew, my liege, we left it here.
King Henry IV
2325 The prince hath ta'en it hence: go, seek him out.
2326 Is he so hasty that he doth suppose
2327 My sleep my death?
2328 Find him, my lord of Warwick; chide him hither.
[Exit Warwick.]
King Henry IV
2329 This part of his conjoins with my disease,
2330 And helps to end me. See, sons, what things you are!
2331 How quickly nature falls into revolt
2332 When gold becomes her object!
2333 For this the foolish over-careful fathers
2334 Have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains with care,
2335 Their bones with industry;
2336 For this they have engross'd and piled up
2337 The canker'd heaps of strange-achieved gold;
2338 For this they have been thoughtful to invest
2339 Their sons with arts and martial exercises;
2340 When, like the bee, tolling from every flower
2341 The virtuous sweets,
2342 Our thighs pack'd with wax, our mouths with honey,
2343 We bring it to the hive, and, like the bees,
2344 Are murdered for our pains. This bitter taste
2345 Yields his engrossments to the ending father.
[Re-enter Warwick.]
King Henry IV
2346 Now where is he that will not stay so long
2347 Till his friend sickness hath determin'd me?
Earl of Warwick
2348 My lord, I found the prince in the next room,
2349 Washing with kindly tears his gentle cheeks,
2350 With such a deep demeanour in great sorrow
2351 That tyranny, which never quaff'd but blood,
2352 Would, by beholding him, have wash'd his knife
2353 With gentle eye-drops. He is coming hither.
King Henry IV
2354 But wherefore did he take away the crown?
[Re-Enter Prince Henry.]
King Henry IV
2355 Lo, where he comes. Come hither to me, Harry.
2356 Depart the chamber, leave us here alone.
[Exeunt Warwick and the rest.]
Prince Hal
2357 I never thought to hear you speak again.
King Henry IV
2358 Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought:
2359 I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.
2360 Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair
2361 That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honours
2362 Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth!
2363 Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee.
2364 Stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity
2365 Is held from falling with so weak a wind
2366 That it will quickly drop: my day is dim.
2367 Thou hast stolen that which after some few hours
2368 Were thine without offence; and at my death
2369 Thou hast seal'd up my expectation:
2370 Thy life did manifest thou lovedst me not,
2371 And thou wilt have me die assured of it.
2372 Thou hidest a thousand daggers in thy thoughts
2373 Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,
2374 To stab at half an hour of my life.
2375 What! canst thou not forbear me half an hour?
2376 Then get thee gone and dig my grave thyself,
2377 And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear
2378 That thou art crowned, not that I am dead.
2379 Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse
2380 Be drops of balm to sanctify thy head:
2381 Only compound me with forgotten dust;
2382 Give that which gave thee life unto the worms.
2383 Pluck down my officers, break my decrees;
2384 For now a time is come to mock at form:
2385 Harry the Fifth is crown'd: up, vanity!
2386 Down, royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence!
2387 And to the English court assemble now,
2388 From every region, apes of idleness!
2389 Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum:
2390 Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,
2391 Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit
2392 The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?
2393 Be happy, he will trouble you no more;
2394 England shall double gild his treble guilt,
2395 England shall give him office, honour, might;
2396 For the fifth Harry from curb'd license plucks
2397 The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog
2398 Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent.
2399 O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows!
2400 When that my care could not withhold thy riots,
2401 What wilt thou do when riot is thy care?
2402 O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,
2403 Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!
Prince Hal
2404 O, pardon me, my liege! but for my tears,
2405 The moist impediments unto my speech,
2406 I had forestall'd this dear and deep rebuke
2407 Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard
2408 The course of it so far. There is your crown:
2409 And He that wears the crown immortally
2410 Long guard it yours! If I affect it more
2411 Than as your honour and as your renown,
2412 Let me no more from this obedience rise,
2413 Which my most inward true and duteous spirit
2414 Teacheth, this prostrate and exterior bending.
2415 God witness with me, when I here came in,
2416 And found no course of breath within your majesty,
2417 How cold it struck my heart! If I do feign,
2418 O, let me in my present wildness die
2419 And never live to show the incredulous world
2420 The noble change that I have purposed!
2421 Coming to look on you, thinking you dead,
2422 And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,
2423 I spake unto this crown as having sense,
2424 And thus upbraided it: "The care on thee depending
2425 Hath fed upon the body of my father;
2426 Therefore, thou best of gold art worst of gold:
2427 Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,
2428 Preserving life in medicine potable;
2429 But thou, most fine, most honour'd, most renown'd,
2430 Hast eat thy bearer up." Thus, my most royal liege,
2431 Accusing it, I put it on my head,
2432 To try with it, as with an enemy
2433 That had before my face murder'd my father,
2434 The quarrel of a true inheritor.
2435 But if it did infect my blood with joy,
2436 Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride;
2437 If any rebel or vain spirit of mine
2438 Did with the least affection of a welcome
2439 Give entertainment to the might of it,
2440 Let God for ever keep it from my head
2441 And make me as the poorest vassal is
2442 That doth with awe and terror kneel to it!
King Henry IV
2443 O my son,
2444 God put it in thy mind to take it hence,
2445 That thou mightst win the more thy father's love,
2446 Pleading so wisely in excuse of it!
2447 Come hither, Harry, sit thou by my bed;
2448 And hear, I think, the very latest counsel
2449 That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son,
2450 By what by-paths and indirect crook'd ways
2451 I met this crown; and I myself know well
2452 How troublesome it sat upon my head.
2453 To thee it shall descend with better quiet,
2454 Better opinion, better confirmation;
2455 For all the soil of the achievement goes
2456 With me into the earth. It seem'd in me
2457 But as an honour snatch'd with boisterous hand,
2458 And I had many living to upbraid
2459 My gain of it by their assistances;
2460 Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed,
2461 Wounding supposed peace: all these bold fears
2462 Thou see'st with peril I have answered;
2463 For all my reign hath been but as a scene
2464 Acting that argument: and now my death
2465 Changes the mode; for what in me was purchased,
2466 Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort;
2467 So thou the garland wear'st successively.
2468 Yet, though thou stand'st more sure than I could do,
2469 Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green;
2470 And all my friends, which thou must make thy friends,
2471 Have but their stings and teeth newly ta'en out;
2472 By whose fell working I was first advanced
2473 And by whose power I well might lodge a fear
2474 To be again displaced: which to avoid,
2475 I cut them off; and had a purpose now
2476 To lead out many to the Holy Land,
2477 Lest rest and lying still might make them look
2478 Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry,
2479 Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
2480 With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,
2481 May waste the memory of the former days.
2482 More would I, but my lungs are wasted so
2483 That strength of speech is utterly denied me.
2484 How I came by the crown, O God, forgive;
2485 And grant it may with thee in true peace live!
Prince Hal
2486 My gracious liege,
2487 You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me;
2488 Then plain and right must my possession be:
2489 Which I with more than with a common pain
2490 'Gainst all the world will rightfully maintain.
[Enter Lord John of Lancaster.]
King Henry IV
2491 Look, look, here comes my John of Lancaster.
Prince John of Lancaster
2492 Health, peace, and happiness to my royal father!
King Henry IV
2493 Thou bring'st me happiness and peace, son John;
2494 But health, alack, with youthful wings is flown
2495 From this bare wither'd trunk: upon thy sight
2496 My worldly business makes a period.
2497 Where is my Lord of Warwick?
Prince Hal
2498 My Lord of Warwick!
[Re-enter Warwick, and others.]
King Henry IV
2499 Doth any name particular belong
2500 Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?
Earl of Warwick
2501 'Tis call'd Jerusalem, my noble lord.
King Henry IV
2502 Laud be to God! even there my life must end.
2503 It hath been prophesied to me many years,
2504 I should not die but in Jerusalem;
2505 Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land:
2506 But bear me to that chamber; there I'll lie;
2507 In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 2288rhetorical device
“O polish'd perturbation! golden care!”
Prince Hal addresses the crown directly as if it were a person capable of hearing him — a rhetorical figure called apostrophe. 'Polish'd perturbation' is a compressed paradox: the crown is beautifully burnished yet causes constant inner torment ('perturbation'); 'golden care' repeats the same twist — it is made of gold, the metal of kingship, but brings not rest but relentless worry.
TLN 2289archaic vocab
“keep'st the ports of slumber open wide”
'Ports' here means gates or doorways — the same word as a harbor port, both from Latin 'porta.' Hal pictures sleep as a walled city whose gates the crown holds open, preventing its wearer from ever getting inside. The crown does not merely disturb sleep; it stands in the gateway and bars entry.
TLN 2292archaic vocab
“brow with homely biggen bound”
A 'biggen' (also 'biggin') was a plain linen nightcap worn to bed by ordinary people. 'Homely' here means humble, unadorned — not ugly. Hal contrasts the golden crown, which keeps the king awake, with the cheap sleeping-cap that lets a common person sleep deeply and peacefully.
TLN 2296archaic vocab
“By his gates of breath”
'Gates of breath' means the nostrils and mouth — the openings through which a living person breathes. Hal holds a feather to his sleeping father's nose and mouth to test whether any air is moving. If the King were alive the feather ('downy feather,' 'light and weightless down') would stir; it does not, and Hal assumes his father has died.
TLN 2301archaic vocab
“this golden rigol hath divorced”
A 'rigol' is a circular groove, ring, or diadem — here the crown itself. Hal says this sleep 'from this golden rigol hath divorced / So many English kings,' meaning the crown has been passed (violently or by death) from one king to the next, each 'divorced' from it at the moment of dying. The word implies the kings' enforced separation from the symbol of their power.
TLN 2307historical topical
“as immediate from thy place and blood”
'Immediate' here is a legal term meaning 'without any intervening step in the succession.' Hal claims the crown as the next direct heir — no one stands between Henry IV's death and his own succession. 'From thy place and blood' means descending from the king's royal office and from his own body (by blood inheritance). Together the phrase asserts the strongest possible hereditary title.
historical Edward III and his seven sons
TLN 2337archaic vocab
“canker'd heaps of strange-achieved gold”
'Canker'd' means corrupted, infected, or corroded — the way a canker (an ulcer or rotting disease) eats into healthy tissue. 'Strange-achieved' means gained by unusual or crooked means. Henry IV is admitting, without quite stating it directly, that his own wealth and crown were won by morally tainted methods — a discreet reference to the usurpation of Richard II.
TLN 2340rhetorical device
“like the bee, tolling from every flower”
Henry IV compares industrious fathers to worker bees that gather honey all their lives only to be killed by their own hive. 'Tolling' here means 'collecting' or 'pulling' — as a toll-collector pulls coins — not the ringing of a bell. The simile bitterly argues that hard-working fathers build wealth and train their sons, only to be destroyed by those same children the moment gold becomes the sons' goal.
TLN 2358rhetorical device
“Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought”
Henry IV accuses Hal of wishful thinking: you wanted to believe I was dead, so you told yourself I was. The phrase adapts the classical proverb that 'the wish is father to the thought' — the mind accepts as true what desire wants to be true. This gave English the later expression 'wishful thinking.' Here it is a bitter accusation: Hal, in his eagerness for the crown, mistook a wish for a fact.
TLN 2360archaic vocab
“Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair”
'Chair' here means throne, not a seat at a table. The throne was called a 'chair of state' or simply 'chair.' Henry asks whether Hal is so hungry for the throne that he could not wait even a few more hours. 'Empty chair' doubles as a metaphor: a chair without its sitter, a throne soon to be vacant.
TLN 2369archaic vocab
“thou hast seal'd up my expectation”
To 'seal' something was to close and confirm it beyond reopening — like closing a letter with wax. Henry says Hal has 'sealed up,' i.e. permanently confirmed and closed off, the king's expectation (his hope or fear) that Hal did not love him. By taking the crown, Hal gave his father's worst suspicion its final proof.
TLN 2380historical topical
“Be drops of balm to sanctify thy head”
At coronations, the new king's head was anointed with holy oil ('balm' or 'chrism') as the central act of the ceremony, consecrating him as God's anointed representative on earth. Henry bitterly inverts this: the tears that should fall at his funeral bier will instead serve as coronation oil for the son he suspects of wishing him dead. The anointment of the head is the moment the body natural becomes the body politic — kingship passes by consecration, not merely by inheritance.
historical The divine right of kings
TLN 2385rhetorical device
“up, vanity! Down, royal state!”
Henry IV delivers a bitter sarcastic prophecy in commands — as if issuing royal decrees about the coming chaos of Hal's reign. 'Vanity' here means idle frivolity, foolish pleasure-seeking. 'Royal state' means the dignity and order of the monarchy. Henry imagines a world turned upside down: vice and idleness will rise, sober governance will fall, and every ruffian in Europe will find welcome at an English court that rewards riot.
TLN 2394wordplay
“England shall double gild his treble guilt”
Henry puns on 'gild' (to cover with gold, to honor and reward) and 'guilt' (moral wrongdoing), which were pronounced nearly identically in Elizabethan English. The line means: England will lavishly reward (double-gild) the ruffian's triple crimes (treble guilt). The pun makes the horror precise — rewarding is the same act as gilding, and gold, the metal of the crown, covers over (rather than cleanses) guilt.
TLN 2404rhetorical device
“but for my tears, The moist impediments unto my speech”
Hal describes his tears as 'moist impediments unto my speech' — a formal, slightly clinical periphrasis (roundabout description) for crying so hard he could not speak. The circumlocution is not accidental: by treating his grief as a physical obstruction rather than a personal failure, Hal defends his silence as involuntary, and therefore as proof of genuine feeling rather than calculation.
TLN 2426rhetorical device
“thou best of gold art worst of gold”
Hal constructs a pointed antithesis: the crown is the best thing made of gold (in terms of rank and honor) yet the worst of all gold objects in what it actually does to people (it consumes its wearer). The reversal — the superlative praise folded inside a superlative condemnation — is the scene's sharpest rhetorical figure, and Hal uses it to excuse putting the crown on: he was attacking an enemy, not claiming a prize.
TLN 2450historical topical
“By what by-paths and indirect crook'd ways”
Henry IV here finally confesses, in plain terms, that he did not acquire the crown by straightforward inheritance. 'By-paths and indirect crook'd ways' means back-roads and devious routes — the opposite of the straight, clear road of legitimate succession. He is admitting that his seizure of the crown from Richard II in 1399 was irregular and morally tainted, even while dying.
historical Edward III and his seven sonshistorical The king's two bodies
TLN 2469archaic vocab
“since griefs are green”
'Green' here means fresh, recent, and still raw — the way a new wound is still open and unhealed. Henry warns that although Hal's position is stronger than his own was, the former rebels' grievances are still 'green' (fresh), not yet faded with time. The metaphor compares recent grievances to unripe fruit or tender new growth — not yet hardened or resolved.
TLN 2476historical topical
“lead out many to the Holy Land”
Henry IV had vowed to go on crusade to Jerusalem as an act of penitence for the sins of his reign, most importantly the deposition and death of Richard II. He now reveals a second, colder reason for the planned crusade: to keep his restless former allies — men who helped him to power and might use their military strength against him again — occupied abroad. A foreign war would 'busy giddy minds' and erase the memory of civil conflict.
historical The Jerusalem Chamber and the prophecy
TLN 2501historical topical
“'Tis call'd Jerusalem, my noble lord”
The room where Henry IV collapses and is carried to die turns out to be called the Jerusalem Chamber — a room in the Abbot's lodgings at Westminster Abbey. Henry had long been told he would die 'in Jerusalem,' and took this to mean he would die on crusade in the Holy Land. The irony of its being a room-name in London rather than a city in Palestine is precisely the bitter punchline the dying king accepts: 'In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.' The historical Henry IV did die in the Jerusalem Chamber on 20 March 1413.
historical The Jerusalem Chamber and the prophecy