Henry IV, Part II

Now, my lords: if God grants us a victory in this violent civil war that bleeds at our very doorsteps, I will lead our young people in a greater cause, and fight nothing but holy wars. Our navy is ready, our army is assembled, the leaders who are my subordinates have their orders, and everything is standing by to achieve my main aim. The only drawback is that I’m feeling a little weak. So let’s wait a short while, until the rebels, now on the run, are brought back in line and are made obedient again.

We are sure that you’ll soon enjoy both good health and the rebels’ defeat.

My son Humphrey of Gloucester, where is your brother, Prince Hal?

I think he’s gone hunting at Windsor.

Who’s with him?

I don’t know, father.

Isn’t his brother, Thomas of Clarence, with him?

No, father. He’s here.

What is it you’d like, father?

Only good things for you, Thomas. Why aren’t you with the Prince, your brother? He loves you and you are neglecting him. He cares more about you than any of his other brothers, Thomas; cherish that fact, my boy. After I’m dead, you’ll be in a strong position to help maintain good relations between Prince Hal and his brothers. So don’t ignore him. Don’t turn away his love, and don’t ruin your good relationship with him by seeming cold or distant. He’s kind if he gets his way; he has compassion for others, and he’s generous with charity. But despite all this, once he gets angry, he becomes like a stone. He can be as tempestuous as winter, and can change himself as suddenly as snowflakes at dawn can turn to hail. So watch his temper. When he does something wrong, let him know it—gently, and when he’s in a happy mood. But when he’s ornery, give him room. Wait till his bad mood works itself out, like a beached whale that kills itself by struggling to return to sea. If you can do this, you’ll be a shelter for your friends, and a golden chain that links your brothers together. Once they’re united, the poison of criticism and rumor—which in this day and age is sure to be aimed at them—can’t do them any harm, no matter how explosive and destructive it may be.

I’ll watch over him with as much care and love as possible.

Then why aren’t you with him at Windsor?

He’s not there today. He’s in London.

Who’s with him? Do you know?

Poins, and the usual suspects.

Weeds grow best in the richest soil, and he—like myself at that age—is overrun by them. My sadness, then, cannot end with my death. When I imagine the lawless days and rotten times that you will face when I am dead and sleeping with my ancestors, the blood weeps from my heart. When Hal’s headstrong wildness has free rein; when aggression and passion are his advisors; when he has full opportunity to indulge in his riotous inclinations, then—Oh!—his criminal desires will fly like a bird towards danger and ruin.

Your highness, you’ve got him all wrong. The Prince is only studying his criminal companions, the way one studies a foreign language. In order to truly learn a language, one must learn even the most immodest curse word—which, as you know, is only learned in order to be identified and, thereafter, avoided. So, like vulgar language, the Prince will get rid of his followers when the time is right. Then they’ll live on in his memory as guidelines, by which he’ll judge the conduct of others. In this sense, he’ll change his past bad deeds to good ends.

It’s rare that a bee builds its nest in a dead animal’s carcass. The Prince won’t leave his current company.

Who’s there? Westmoreland?

I wish your highness good health, and happy news beyond the report I have to deliver! Prince John sends his respects: Mowbray, the Archbishop, Hastings and the rest are under arrest. There are no more rebels anywhere; the olive branch of peace has been extended everywhere. Here’s a letter explaining what happened. When you have time, you can read it and learn every detail.

Oh Westmoreland; you’re like a summer bird, which sings the dawn in as winter ends.

Look, here’s more news.

May heaven protect your highness from all enemies—and when they do rise up, may they fall just like the ones I’ve come to tell you about. The Earl of Northumberland and Lord Bardolph, with their mighty armies of Englishmen and Scotsmen, were defeated by the Sheriff of Yorkshire. This letter will tell you the details.

Why am I sick at this good news? Why can’t life ever bring you things with their appropriate complements? Why is good news so often conveyed in ugly terms? Life either gives you hunger but no food—which is the experience of poor, healthy people—or it gives you a feast with no appetite—which is how the rich live, who have wealth and abundance but cannot enjoy it. I should be celebrating this good news, and yet my eyesight is failing, and my brain is delirious. Oh God! Come to me, I’m very sick.

Take care, your highness!

Oh, my royal father!

My lord, feel better; take courage.

Wait a minute, princes. You know his highness has these episodes all the time. Move away from him. Give him air; he’ll be all right soon.

No, no, he can’t survive these attacks much longer. His mind’s endless worry and concern have so shaken his body that it can barely hold together.

The people are frightening me. They’ve seen terrible omens: children who seem to have supernatural fathers, and gruesomely deformed infants. The weather is in disarray, as if the calendar discovered some months were fast asleep, and decided to skip over them.

The river has flooded three times, without receding between floods. The old people—those living history books—say that the last time this happened was when our great-grandfather, King Edward, fell ill and died.

Speak more softly, princes: the King is recovering.

These attacks will be the death of him.

Please, carry me into another room. Quietly. Please.

Please be silent, my friends, unless someone can play some restful, whispering music for my exhausted spirit.

Call the musicians in from the other room.

Put the crown here on my pillow.

His eyes are sunken, and he seems very pale.

Less noise, less noise!

Has anybody seen the Duke of Clarence?

I’m here, brother, full of sadness.

What’s going on? Raining inside while it’s dry outside? How’s the King?

Extremely sick.

Has he heard the good news yet? Tell him.

Yes, he heard it, and it affected him deeply.

If he’s sick from joy, then he’ll get better without medicine.

Not so loud, sirs. Prince, speak more quietly. Your father the King is trying to sleep.

Let’s go into the other room.

Will you come with us?

No. I’ll stay here with the King.

Why does the crown lie there on his pillow, when it’s such a troublesome bedfellow? Oh polished aggravation, golden anxiety! You keep the eyelids open wide, to face countless sleepless nights. You sleep with the crown now, father, but you don’t sleep as soundly, or half so deeply, as that man whose head is bound with nothing more than a cheap nightcap, who snores through the night. Oh, you crown! When you pinch the person wearing you, you’re like a great suit of armor worn on a hot day—you burn the person you’re protecting. There’s a feather near my father’s lips, and it’s not moving: if he were breathing, that light, weightless thing would move. My gracious lord! Father! This is a deep sleep indeed—this is a sleep that has removed the golden ring from the heads of many English kings. Father, I owe you tears and a deep grief, and my love, the bonds of family, and a son’s tender feelings will make sure that I pay you lavishly. Your debt to me is this kingly crown, which I am owed as your heir-apparent. (he puts the crown on his head) Look, here it sits, and God will guard it. Even if all the strength in the world were gathered into a single, giant arm, it wouldn’t be able to force this inherited honor from me. I will leave this to my son as you’ve left it to me.

(waking) Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!

Did you call, sir?

What can we do for you, your highness? How are you feeling?

Why did you leave me alone, sirs?

We left my brother, Prince Hal, here. He decided to sit with you.

The Prince of Wales? Where is he? I want to see him. He’s not here.

This door’s open. He went this way.

He didn’t come through the room we were in.

Where’s the crown? Who took it off my pillow?

When we left, sir, it was here.

The Prince has taken it. Go, find him. Is he in such a hurry that he thinks my sleep is my death? Find him, Lord Warwick. Rebuke him, and bring him here.

Henry’s actions join forces with my illness, and together they will kill me. Sons, look at what things you are. See how quickly blood bonds are broken, once money’s involved. This is what happens to foolish, overly concerned fathers who ruin their sleep with worry, burden their minds with anxiety, and break their bodies with hard work. This is what happens to fathers who amass vast amounts of money, earned in unsavory ways. This is what happens to fathers who have taken care to give their sons good educations, and train them in matters of war. Fathers are like bees, collecting sweet pollen from all the flowers in the world. We pack our thighs full of wax and our mouths full of honey, only to be killed when we return to the hive. This is the bitter fate of the dying father, no matter what he has accumulated in his life.

Where is that impatient man who can’t even wait for his friend, sickness, to put an end to me?

Sir, I found the Prince in the next room, with tears flowing down his cheeks. He looked so sorrowful that a tyrant—who never drank anything but blood—would, upon seeing him, have washed the blood from his knife with tears. He’s on his way.

But why did he take away the crown?

Look, here he comes. Come here, Harry. (to the rest) Leave the room, and leave us here alone.

I never thought I’d hear you speak again.

You thought that because you wished it to be true. I live too long for you; you’re tired of me. Are you so desperate for my throne that you would take the honors of kingship before it’s your time? Oh you foolish youth! You long for power that will end up overwhelming you. Wait a little while. What power I have left is held together so weakly that the lightest breeze would blow it away: my life is fading. You stole something from me that would freely have been yours in just a few hours. On my deathbed, you’ve confirmed all my expectations. All your life you showed that you didn’t love me, and now I will die certain of it. There are a thousand daggers in your thoughts, which you’ve sharpened on your stony heart with the hopes of stabbing me in the little time I have left. What? Couldn’t you endure me for half an hour? Then go and dig my grave yourself, and ring the bells to mark your coronation, not my death. Let all the tears that should be shed on my hearse be drops of holy water to bless your head. Just mix me up with the forgotten dust, and give my body—which gave you life—to the worms. Fire my officers, undo my laws; for now the time has come to jeer at authority. Henry the Fifth is crowned: up with foolishness! Down with decorum! Be gone, all you wise advisers! Assemble lazy apes from every region, and make them the royal court of England! Now, you neighboring countries, get rid of your scum. Do you have a criminal who swears, drinks, dances, parties all night, robs, murders, and commits the oldest sins in the newest ways? Then be happy: that man won’t trouble you any longer. England will paint over his guilt with gold. England will give him a position, honor, power. Because Henry the Fifth has removed the barriers to anarchy: he’s taken the restraining muzzle off the dog of misbehavior, and that wild dog will sink his teeth into the flesh of every decent person. Oh my poor kingdom, sick from this civil war! When all my hard work couldn’t keep disorder at bay, what will you do when disorder becomes your caretaker? Oh, you’ll be a wilderness again, and all the wolves who lived here once will once again be your only citizens.

Oh forgive me, your highness. If it weren’t for these tears—which are impeding my speech—I would have stopped this harsh scolding before you, in your grief, had spoken and before I had listened so long. There’s your crown. May God, who wears the crown eternally, guard it as yours for a long time. If I care for the crown in any way other than as a symbol of your honor and reputation, let me never rise from this kneeling position. It is my deepest and most dutiful feelings which teach my body to bend and bow to you, causing my outer body to reflect my inner feelings. May God be my witness: when I came in here and saw that you weren’t breathing, my blood ran cold. If I’m lying, may I die as the wild youth I was before, and never live to show the dubious world the transformation I have been planning. Coming to see you, thinking you were dead—and being nearly dead myself, just thinking that you were—I spoke to this crown as though it were alive. I scolded it like this: “The worry you’ve caused has eaten my father alive. So you, the best piece of gold, are actually the worst piece of gold. Other gold, perhaps worth less, is more precious, since it at least brings us health when mixed in our drinks. But you—the best, the most honored, the most famous—have consumed the person wearing you.” And as I accused it, I put it on my head, to fight against it as an enemy who’d killed my father before my very eyes. It was the fight of a loyal child. But may God keep it from me forever—making me like the poorest servant bowing down before it in awe and terror—if it in any way made me happy or arrogant, or if any part of me was the least bit pleased to welcome it and the power it brings.

Oh my son, God made you take it from me so that, in pleading your case so beautifully, you would make me love you more! Come here, Harry. Sit by my bed and listen to what I think will be the last advice I ever give. God knows the unusual paths and indirect, crooked ways that led me to this crown. And I know very well how much anxiety it has caused as I’ve worn it. It will fall to you in bitter peace, with better support and stronger approval. The stain of its obtainment dies now, with me. On me, the crown seemed like an honor grabbed with a violent hand, and many people lived to remind me that they had helped me take it. Eventually, those daily reminders grew into war and bloodshed, doing damage to the peace. You can see how much pain it’s caused me as I’ve fought my foes. My entire reign has been like a play, in which we rehash that disagreement. Now my death changes the show. What I bought, you will inherit. You’ll wear the crown by right of succession. But even though you have a firmer claim to the crown than I had, it’s not firm enough. Anger is still fresh, and my former friends—whom you must make into your friends—have only recently been disarmed. It was their power that first got me the crown, and I feared that same power could take me down. To avoid that, I defeated their rebellion, and planned to lead an army to the Holy Land. I thought that, with nothing to occupy themselves, they’d start eyeing me and my crown. Therefore, my Harry, make it your policy to focus the distracted minds of the people with foreign wars. Military actions abroad will make people forget about troubling matters in the past. I’d say more, but my lungs are so worn out that I don’t have the strength to speak. God forgive me for how I came by the crown, and may he grant that you enjoy it in peace.

My gracious lord, you won it, wore it, kept it, then gave it to me. My possession of it must therefore be honest and lawful. And I will work as hard as I can to defend this crown against any man.

Look, look, here comes my son, John of Lancaster.

Health, peace, and happiness to my royal father!

You bring me happiness and peace, John. But health, unfortunately, has flown from this shrunken body. Now that I’ve seen you, I have nothing more to do in this world. Where is Lord Warwick?

Lord Warwick!

Does the room I first collapsed in have a name?

It’s called the Jerusalem Room, your highness.

Praise be to God! That’s where I must die. For years it’s been predicted that I would die in Jerusalem; I foolishly thought that meant the Holy Land. But carry me to that room, and there I’ll lie. In that Jerusalem will Harry die.