Westminster. The Jerusalem Chamber.
[Enter KING HENRY IV, the Princes Thomas
of CLARENCE and Humphrey of GLOUCESTER,
WARWICK, and others]
KING HENRY IV Now, lords,
if God doth give successful end
To this debate that bleedeth at our doors,
We will our youth lead on to higher fields
And draw no swords but what are sanctified.
Our navy is address’d, our power collected,
Our substitutes in absence well invested,
And every thing lies level to our wish:
Only, we want a little personal strength;
And pause us, till these rebels, now afoot,
Come underneath the yoke of government.
WARWICK Both which we doubt not but your majesty
Shall soon enjoy.
KING HENRY IV Humphrey, my son of Gloucester,
Where is the prince your brother?
GLOUCESTER I think he’s gone to hunt,
my lord, at Windsor.
KING HENRY IV And how accompanied?
GLOUCESTER I do not know, my lord.
KING HENRY IV Is not his brother, Thomas of Clarence,
with him?
GLOUCESTER No, my good lord; he is in presence here.
CLARENCE What would my lord and father?
KING HENRY IV Nothing but well to thee, Thomas of Clarence.
How chance thou art not with the prince thy brother?
He loves thee, and thou dost neglect him, Thomas;
Thou hast a better place in his affection
Than all thy brothers: cherish it, my boy,
And noble offices thou mayst effect
Of mediation, after I am dead,
Between his greatness and thy other brethren:
Therefore omit him not; blunt not his love,
Nor lose the good advantage of his grace
By seeming cold or careless of his will;
For he is gracious, if he be observed:
He hath a tear for pity and a hand
Open as day for melting charity:
Yet notwithstanding, being incensed, he’s flint,
As humorous as winter and as sudden
As flaws congealed in the spring of day.
His temper, therefore, must be well observed:
Chide him for faults, and do it reverently,
When thou perceive his blood inclined to mirth;
But, being moody, give him line and scope,
Till that his passions, like a whale on ground,
Confound themselves with working. Learn this, Thomas,
And thou shalt prove a shelter to thy friends,
A hoop of gold to bind thy brothers in,
That the united vessel of their blood,
Mingled with venom of suggestion–
As, force perforce, the age will pour it in–
Shall never leak, though it do work as strong
As aconitum or rash gunpowder.
CLARENCE I shall observe him with all care and love.
KING HENRY IV Why art thou not
at Windsor with him, Thomas?
CLARENCE He is not there to-day; he dines in London.
KING HENRY IV And how accompanied?
canst thou tell that?
CLARENCE With Poins, and other his continual followers.
KING HENRY IV Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds;
And he, the noble image of my youth,
Is overspread with them: therefore my grief
Stretches itself beyond the hour of death:
The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape
In forms imaginary the unguided days
And rotten times that you shall look upon
When I am sleeping with my ancestors.
For when his headstrong riot hath no curb,
When rage and hot blood are his counsellors,
When means and lavish manners meet together,
O, with what wings shall his affections fly
Towards fronting peril and opposed decay!
WARWICK My gracious lord, you look beyond him quite:
The prince but studies his companions
Like a strange tongue, wherein, to gain the language,
‘Tis needful that the most immodest word
Be look’d upon and learn’d; which once attain’d,
Your highness knows, comes to no further use
But to be known and hated. So, like gross terms,
The prince will in the perfectness of time
Cast off his followers; and their memory
Shall as a pattern or a measure live,
By which his grace must mete the lives of others,
Turning past evils to advantages.
KING HENRY IV ‘Tis seldom
when the bee doth leave her comb
In the dead carrion.
[Enter WESTMORELAND]
Who’s here? Westmoreland?
WESTMORELAND Health to my sovereign,
and new happiness
Added to that that I am to deliver!
Prince John your son doth kiss your grace’s hand:
Mowbray, the Bishop Scroop, Hastings and all
Are brought to the correction of your law;
There is not now a rebel’s sword unsheath’d
But peace puts forth her olive every where.
KING HENRY IV O Westmoreland, thou art a summer bird,
Which ever in the haunch of winter sings
The lifting up of day.
[Enter HARCOURT]
Look, here’s more news.
HARCOURT The Earl Northumberland
and the Lord Bardolph,
With a great power of English and of Scots
Are by the sheriff of Yorkshire overthrown.
KING HENRY IV And wherefore should these
good news make me sick?
Will fortune never come with both hands full,
But write her fair words still in foulest letters?
She either gives a stomach and no food;
Such are the poor, in health; or else a feast
And takes away the stomach; such are the rich,
That have abundance and enjoy it not.
I should rejoice now at this happy news;
And now my sight fails, and my brain is giddy:
O me! come near me; now I am much ill.
GLOUCESTER Comfort, your majesty!
CLARENCE O my royal father!
WESTMORELAND My sovereign lord,
cheer up yourself, look up.
WARWICK Be patient, princes; you do know, these fits
Are with his highness very ordinary.
Stand from him. Give him air; he’ll straight be well.
CLARENCE No, no, he cannot long hold out these pangs:
The incessant care and labour of his mind
Hath wrought the mure that should confine it in
So thin that life looks through and will break out.
GLOUCESTER This apoplexy will certain be his end.
KING HENRY IV Softly, pray.
{They lay the King on a bed in an inner room]
[Enter PRINCE HENRY]
PRINCE HENRY Who saw the Duke of Clarence?
CLARENCE I am here, brother, full of heaviness.
PRINCE HENRY How now!
rain within doors, and none abroad!
How doth the king?
GLOUCESTER Exceeding ill.
PRINCE HENRY Heard he the good news yet?
Tell it him.
GLOUCESTER He alter’d much upon the hearing it.
PRINCE HENRY If he be sick with joy,
he’ll recover without physic.
WARWICK Not so much noise, my lords: sweet prince,
speak low; The king your father is disposed to sleep.
CLARENCE Let us withdraw into the other room.
WARWICK Will’t please your grace to go along with us?
PRINCE HENRY No; I will sit and watch here by the king.
[Exeunt all but PRINCE HENRY]
Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,
Being so troublesome a bedfellow?
O polish’d perturbation! golden care!
That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide
To many a watchful night! sleep with it now!
Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
As he whose brow with homely biggen bound
Snores out the watch of night. O majesty!
When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,
That scalds with safety. By his gates of breath
There lies a downy feather which stirs not:
Did he suspire, that light and weightless down
Perforce must move. My gracious lord! my father!
This sleep is sound indeed, this is a sleep
That from this golden rigol hath divorced
So many English kings. Thy due from me
Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood,
Which nature, love, and filial tenderness,
Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously:
My due from thee is this imperial crown,
Which, as immediate as thy place and blood,
Derives itself to me. Lo, here it sits,
Which God shall guard: and put the world’s whole strength
Into one giant arm, it shall not force
This lineal honour from me: this from thee
Will I to mine leave, as ’tis left to me.
[Exit]
KING HENRY IV Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!
[Re-enter WARWICK, GLOUCESTER,
CLARENCE, and the rest]
CLARENCE Doth the king call?
WARWICK What would your majesty?
How fares your grace?
KING HENRY IV Why did you leave
me here alone, my lords?
CLARENCE We left the prince my brother here,
my liege, Who undertook to sit and watch by you.
KING HENRY IV The Prince of Wales!
Where is he? let me see him:
He is not here.
WARWICK This door is open; he is gone this way.
GLOUCESTER He came not through the chamber
where we stay’d.
KING HENRY IV Where is the crown?
who took it from my pillow?
WARWICK When we withdrew, my liege, we left it here.
KING HENRY IV The prince hath ta’en it hence:
go, seek him out.
Is he so hasty that he doth suppose
My sleep my death?
Find him, my Lord of Warwick; chide him hither.
[Exit WARWICK]
This part of his conjoins with my disease,
And helps to end me. See, sons, what things you are!
How quickly nature falls into revolt
When gold becomes her object!
For this the foolish over-careful fathers
Have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains with care,
Their bones with industry;
For this they have been thoughtful to invest
Their sons with arts and martial exercises:
When, like the bee, culling from every flower
The virtuous sweets,
Our thighs pack’d with wax, our mouths with honey,
We bring it to the hive, and, like the bees,
Are murdered for our pains. This bitter taste
But wherefore did he take away the crown?
[Re-enter PRINCE HENRY]
Lo, where he comes. Come hither to me, Harry.
Depart the chamber, leave us here alone.
[Exeunt WARWICK and the rest]
PRINCE HENRY I never thought to hear you speak again.
KING HENRY IV Thy wish was father,
Harry, to that thought:
I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.
Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair
That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honours
Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth!
Thou seek’st the greatness that will o’erwhelm thee.
Stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity
Is held from falling with so weak a wind
That it will quickly drop: my day is dim.
Thou hast stolen that which after some few hours
Were thine without offence; and at my death
Thou hast seal’d up my expectation:
Thy life did manifest thou lovedst me not,
And thou wilt have me die assured of it.
What! canst thou not forbear me half an hour?
Then get thee gone and dig my grave thyself,
And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear
That thou art crowned, not that I am dead.
Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse
Be drops of balm to sanctify thy head:
Only compound me with forgotten dust
Give that which gave thee life unto the worms.
Pluck down my officers, break my decrees;
For now a time is come to mock at form:
Harry the Fifth is crown’d: up, vanity!
Down, royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence!
And to the English court assemble now,
From every region, apes of idleness!
For the fifth Harry from curb’d licence plucks
The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog
Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent.
O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows!
When that my care could not withhold thy riots,
What wilt thou do when riot is thy care?
O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,
Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!
PRINCE HENRY O, pardon me, my liege! but for my tears,
The moist impediments unto my speech,
I had forestall’d this dear and deep rebuke
Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard
The course of it so far. There is your crown;
And He that wears the crown immortally
Long guard it yours! If I affect it more
Than as your honour and as your renown,
Let me no more from this obedience rise,
Which my most inward true and duteous spirit
Teacheth, this prostrate and exterior bending.
God witness with me, when I here came in,
And found no course of breath within your majesty,
How cold it struck my heart! If I do feign,
O, let me in my present wildness die
And never live to show the incredulous world
The noble change that I have purposed!
Coming to look on you, thinking you dead,
And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,
I spake unto this crown as having sense,
And thus upbraided it: ‘The care on thee depending
Hath fed upon the body of my father;
Therefore, thou best of gold art worst of gold:
Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,
Preserving life in medicine potable;
But thou, most fine, most honour’d: most renown’d,
Hast eat thy bearer up.’ Thus, my most royal liege,
Accusing it, I put it on my head,
To try with it, as with an enemy
That had before my face murder’d my father,
The quarrel of a true inheritor.
But if it did infect my blood with joy,
Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride;
If any rebel or vain spirit of mine
Did with the least affection of a welcome
Give entertainment to the might of it,
Let God for ever keep it from my head
And make me as the poorest vassal is
That doth with awe and terror kneel to it!
KING HENRY IV O my son,
God put it in thy mind to take it hence,
That thou mightst win the more thy father’s love,
Pleading so wisely in excuse of it!
Come hither, Harry, sit thou by my bed;
And hear, I think, the very latest counsel
That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son,
By what by-paths and indirect crook’d ways
I met this crown; and I myself know well
How troublesome it sat upon my head.
To thee it shall descend with bitter quiet,
Better opinion, better confirmation;
For all the soil of the achievement goes
With me into the earth. It seem’d in me
But as an honour snatch’d with boisterous hand,
And I had many living to upbraid
My gain of it by their assistances;
Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed,
Wounding supposed peace: all these bold fears
Thou see’st with peril I have answered;
For all my reign hath been but as a scene
Acting that argument: and now my death
Changes the mode; for what in me was purchased,
Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort;
So thou the garland wear’st successively.
Yet, though thou stand’st more sure than I could do,
Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green;
And all my friends, which thou must make thy friends,
Have but their stings and teeth newly ta’en out;
By whose fell working I was first advanced
And by whose power I well might lodge a fear
To be again displaced: which to avoid,
I cut them off; and had a purpose now
To lead out many to the Holy Land,
Lest rest and lying still might make them look
Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry,
Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days.
More would I, but my lungs are wasted so
That strength of speech is utterly denied me.
How I came by the crown, O God forgive;
And grant it may with thee in true peace live!
PRINCE HENRY My gracious liege,
You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me;
Then plain and right must my possession be:
Which I with more than with a common pain
‘Gainst all the world will rightfully maintain.
[Enter WARWICK, and others]
KING HENRY IV Doth any name particular belong
Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?
WARWICK ‘Tis call’d Jerusalem, my noble lord.
KING HENRY IV 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.
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