- In this speech
from King Henry, the loss of sleep is
lamented. King Henry is outraged because
Sleep, which is personified, delivers
sleep to his most lowly subjects but not
to his deserving, regal greatness. This
is conveyed mostly by diction and
imagery.
- King Henry
questions and courts sleep when the
chambers which it visits are compared to
his own chambers by him. He uses,
"smoky cribs," "uneasy
pallets," and "buzzing night
flies" to characterize the rooms of
his subjects, and "perfum'd chambers
of the great," "canopies of
costly state," and "sweetest
melody" to characterize his own,
more inviting rooms. The diction used by
King Henry to describe the subjects
suggests filth and disorder, while his
own sleepless chambers are presented as
being expensive and soothing. This
seeming contradiction sets up his
outrage, which is displayed by his
imagery.
- The boy
sleeping in the sea-storm is King Henry's
ultimate outrage at sleep. This image
suggests how completely unfair Sleep is
in its distribution of sleep. This image
then leads to King Henry's arrogant and
childish chastisement of sleep,
"Then, happy low, lie down!"
This, of course, leads to King Henry's
ultimate giving-up on sleep- "Uneasy
lies the head that wears a crown."
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- King Henry is
prodigiously vexed by his inability to
sleep. In addressing sleep itself, with
the use of an apostrophe, he hopes to
persuade it to fall upon him by asking
various rhetorical questions. He pleads
with sleep for it to abandon its
partiality, and bestow upon him some
rest, as it does upon the commoners.
However, at the end of the passage, his
indignation turns into resignation, as he
realizes that he can do little to alter
his situation. The transition in King
Henry's state of mind is conveyed through
the soliloquy's powerful images,
revealing word choice, and peculiar
sentence structure.
- The king feels
sorry for himself. He feels that it is
not fair that others, even the poor and
vile, be able to sleep, and that he, the
king, be deprived of rest. He asks sleep
why it discriminates against him, and not
the commoners, the loathsome members of
society, or a ship-boy, whom sleep could
lead to death. Henry IV's indignation is
evident as he employs powerful images to
contrast his noble situation with the
deplorable state of the masses. He refers
to their resting place as "smoky
cribs" and "loathsome
beds", while calling his own
"perfum'd chambers" and
"kingly couch".
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- King Henry's
conscience is not free of self-doubt. He
believes that he might have done
something to scare sleep away, and asks
it "how (has he) frighted
(it)." Because he is deprived of
sleep,it is of great value to the king,
who refers to it as "Nature's soft
nurse", and "dull god".
The contrast between the tenderness
conveyed in the former and the hostility
conveyed in the later address, help to
illustrate the transition in Henry IV's
state of mind as his self-loathing is
replaced by anger towards sleep.
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- Until the last
sentence, no sentences in the passage are
declarative. The fact that the king ends
his soliloquy with the statement
"Uneasy is the head that wears a
crown," suggests that after much
indignation he finally reaches a point of
resignation. He realizes that his
privileged social position does not help
him curry favor from sleep. The king
accepts his burden of discomfort for lack
of sleep, and concludes that it is a
consequence from his ruling position.
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Henry IV - SCORE
7
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- In his
soliloquy, King Henry asks sleep
repeatedly why it favors visiting simple,
poor minds over providing an escape from
mental turmoil to the powerful rich. His
combination of concrete and figurative
language to describe different social
situations creates an atmosphere of
polarity. While a repetition of
rhetorical questions exemplifies the
king's frustration with sleep, King
Henry's use of literary techniques
portray an elevated status, and his
mutating tone displays a gradual rise in
anger.
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- King Henry
uses several literary devices to enhance
his description of both sleep and
setting. Apostrophe furthers emotional
intensity; the king directly addresses a
personified abstraction, sleep, through
first his interjections "O sleep! O
gentle sleep!", second his usage of
"thou" (lines
4,6,12,15,&23), and third the
appositive phrase "O partial
sleep." Sleep takes on human
attributes by way of its implied
comparison with "Nature's soft
nurse" and King Henry's accusation
of partiality ("partial
sleep"), which indicates bias or
prejudice, inclinations that inhibit a
person's judgment. His description of his
own living quarters includes alliteration
("canopies of costly . . . sound of
sweetest . . . kingly couch") and
consonance ("calmest and most
stillest"), repetitions of sound
which soften the setting. In explaining
his subjects' humble abodes, King Henry
utilizes onomatopoeia ("buzzing
night-flies") in order to elaborate
on the shantiness of their "smoky
cribs"; flies congregate around
filth, for example landfills. In
addition, the king employs visual imagery
in the description of the "hour so
rude" at sea to fully arouse a
sensation of turbulence in his audience:
"giddy mast, slippery clouds."
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- Passage
structure coupled with the repetition of
sentence structure causes King Henry's
speech to be quite persuasive; sleep
should grant him repose. The entire
soliloquy contains eight complete
sentences, five of which are questions,
and the other three are exclamations. At
the beginning of the king's questions,
which are complex sentences, he states
the main idea, or subject and verb, and
then expands on that idea with a series
of details ("Why rather, sleep,
liest . . . sweetest melody?"). In
such cumulative sentences, his rambling
(expansion) conveys his distraught at
sleep's partiality. Succinct, simple
sentence exclamations appear at the
beginning and end of the passage. At
first, King Henry attempts to woo sleep,
coax it into a visitation ("gentle
sleep . . . Nature's soft nurse").
However, at the end of the passage,
directly following the zenith of his
hostility towards sleep ("Canst
thou, O partial sleep, . . . Deny it to a
King?"), he resigns from his
efforts, ironically weary, tired
("Then, happy low, lie down! Uneasy
lies the head that wears a crown!").
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Henry IV - SCORE
9
- In the midst
of a civil war, England's monarch's
agitations and worries beget a night of
civil unrest and lamentations for the
unfortunate ruler. Throughout the course
of the evening King
- Henry, dwells
with longing upon the "thousand of
[his] poorest subjects [which] are at
this hour asleep" and left
blissfully unaware of the scourges of
war. As darkness descends, and
- "buzzing
night-flies" flit through the air,
His Majesty rhetorically demands of
"Nature's soft nurse" to lay
some purpose upon his discomfiture. Thus
personified, "Nature's soft
nurse," in conjunction with
expectations, remains deaf to the
ill-fortuned king's cries. So ignored,
England's monarch begins
- a violent
tirade against the seemingly illogical
actions of Sleep. Infuriated, Henry's
tone, at first laden with respect turns
embittered as he refers to Sleep as a
"dull god." The very fact that
Henry, himself, understands the reasoning
why he cannot rest "in gentle
sleep" serves only to compound his
- moodiness and
irritability. A whining note creeps into
King Henry's voice as he acidly bemoans
the responsibilities that arise from
monarchy. Obsessively, his thoughts
linger on those whom he governs--a
mixture of jealousy and rage filling him
as he speculates how all
"his...subjects" are at that
very moment "lull'd with sound of
sweetest melody" while he alone is
forced to remain awake. His Majesty's
emotions, an unenviable union of stress,
fear, and anger collide and cause
irrational thoughts to develop in Henry's
mind. He states: "Uneasy lies the
head that wears a crown" and deems
enviable the position of even a storm
tossed "ship-boy" in a
"loathsome bed," when in all
reality his
- anguish stems
from his attempts to retain his position
of authority. Undeniably, had has
political position been more favorable,
King Henry reclining in his "kingly
couch" in the "perfumed
chambers of the great" would never
give thought to trading places with a
"wet sea-boy."
-
- To convey
Henry's disturbed state of mind,
Shakespeare employs contrastingly intense
imagery in order to allow the reader to
draw comparisons between Henry and his
subjects. England's
- monarch is
thus described as reclining in the
"perfum'd chambers of the
great" while his subjects repose
"in smoky cribs...upon uneasy
pallets." Henry's tumultuous
feelings physically
- manifest
themselves in a depiction of a storm, in
"cradle of the rude imperious
sure..and in the visitation of the
winds." Visually, "monstrous
heads" are envisioned and a
"deaf'ning
- clamor"
pierces through the night--allowing for
"hurly death itself" to awake.
Attention is drawn, as well, to Henry's
desire for slumber by the use of several
exclamation pointswhich serve to
highlight these emotions.
-
- Unsure of his
victory, Henry, thus self-confines
himself to a night of restlessness and
unhappiness. He bemoans his station as
king, yet in reality he earnestly strives
to retain this
- particular
honor. Rhetorically, he demands of Sleep
the reason behind his discomfiture,
however, he realizes that the answer lies
within himself and not some "dull
god" and as a result, the reader is
able to enter his state of mind.
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