KING
Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends,
Unless some dull and favourable hand
Will whisper music to my weary spirit.
WARWICK
Call for the music in the other room.
KING
Set me the crown upon my pillow here.
CLARENCE
His eye is hollow, and he changes much.
WARWICK
Less noise, less noise!
PRINCE
Who saw the Duke of Clarence?
CLARENCE
I am here, brother, full of heaviness.
PRINCE
How now, rain within doors, and none abroad?
How the King?
GLOUCESTER
Exceeding ill.
PRINCE
Heard he the good news yet? Tell it him.
GLOUCESTER
He alt’red much upon the hearing it.
PRINCE
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
No, I will sit and watch here by the King.
PRINCE
Why 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 pinch bearer, sit
Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,
That scald’st 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 divorced
So many English kings. due from me
Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood,
Which nature, love, and filial tenderness,
Shall, O dear father, pay plenteously.
My due from is this imperial crown,
Which, as immediate from place and blood,
Derives itself to me. Lo, where 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
Will I to mine leave, as left to me.
KING
Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!
CLARENCE
the King call?
WARWICK
What would your Majesty? How fares your Grace?
KING
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
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
Where is the crown? Who took it from my pillow?
WARWICK
When we withdrew, my liege, we left it here.
KING
The Prince ta’en it . Go seek him out.
Is he so hasty that he suppose
My sleep my death?
Find him, my Lord of Warwick, chide him .
KING
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 engrossed and piled up
The canker’d heaps of strange-achieved gold;
For this they have been thoughtful to invest
Their sons with arts and martial exercises;
When, like the bee, tolling 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
Yields his engrossments to the ending father.
KING
Now where is he that will not stay so long
Till his friend sickness determin’d me?
WARWICK
My lord, I found the Prince in the next room,
Washing with kindly tears his gentle cheeks,
With such a deep demeanour in great sorrow
That tyranny, which never quaff’d but blood,
Would, by beholding him, have wash’d his knife
With gentle eye-drops. He is coming .
KING
But did he take away the crown?
KING
Lo where he comes. Come to me, Harry.
Depart the chamber, leave us here alone.
PRINCE
I never thought to hear you speak again.
KING
wish was father, Harry, to that thought.
I stay too long by , I weary .
so hunger for mine empty chair
That wilt needs invest with my honours
Before hour be ripe? O foolish youth!
seek’st the greatness that will overwhelm .
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.
stolen that which after some few hours
Were without offence, and at my death
seal’d up my expectation.
life did manifest loved’st me not,
And wilt have me die assured of it.
hid’st a thousand daggers in thoughts
Which whetted on stony heart,
To stab at half an hour of my life.
What, canst not forbear me half an hour?
Then get gone, and dig my grave thyself,
And bid the merry bells ring to ear
That art crowned, not that I am dead.
Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse
Be drops of balm to sanctify head,
Only compound me with forgotten dust.
Give that which gave 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, !
And to the English court assemble now,
From every region, apes of idleness!
Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum.
Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,
Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit
The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?
Be happy, he will trouble you no more.
England shall double gild his treble guilt,
England shall give him office, honour, might,
For the fifth Harry from curb’d license 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 riots,
What wilt do when riot is care?
O, wilt be a wilderness again,
Peopled with wolves, old inhabitants!
PRINCE
O, pardon me, my liege! But for my tears,
The moist impediments unto my speech,
I had forestall’d this dear and deep rebuke
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 th’ 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 depending
fed upon the body of my father;
Therefore best of gold art worst of gold.
Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,
Preserving life in med’cine potable;
But , most fine, most honour’d, most renown’d,
eat 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 with awe and terror kneel to it!
KING
O my son,
God put it in mind to take it ,
That mightst win the more father’s love,
Pleading so wisely in excuse of it!
Come , Harry, sit 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 it shall descend with better 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
seest with peril I have answered;
For all my reign been but as a scene
Acting that argument. And now my death
Changes the mood, for what in me was purchased,
Falls upon in a more fairer sort;
So the garland wear’st successively.
Yet though stand’st more sure than I could do,
art not firm enough, since griefs are green;
And all my friends, which must make 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 course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels, that action, 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 in true peace live!
PRINCE
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.
KING
Look, look, here comes my John of Lancaster.
LANCASTER
Health, peace, and happiness to my royal father!
KING
bring’st me happiness and peace, son John,
But health, , with youthful wings is flown
From this bare wither’d trunk. Upon sight
My worldly business makes a period.
Where is my Lord of Warwick?
PRINCE
My Lord of Warwick!
KING
any name particular belong
Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?
WARWICK
call’d Jerusalem, my noble lord.
KING
Laud be to God! Even there my life must end.
It 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.