content to tell us casually that Prince Henry was a sensualist; but he
shows us Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet engaged at lips' length. To put it
briefly, Shakespeare attributes lewdness to his impersonations, but will
not emphasize the fault by instances. Nor will Shakespeare allow his
"madcap Prince" even to play "drawer" with hearty goodwill. While
consenting to spy on Falstaff in the tavern, the Prince tells Poins that
"from a Prince to a prentice" is "a low transformation," and scarcely
has the fun commenced when he is called to the wars and takes his leave
in these terms:
"P. Hen. By Heaven, Poins, I feel me much to blame,
So idly to profane the precious time
When tempest of commotion, like the south
Borne with black vapour, doth begin to melt
And drop upon our bare, unarmed heads."
The first two lines are priggish, and the last three mere poetic
balderdash. But it is in the fourth act, when Prince Henry is watching
by the bedside of his dying father, that Shakespeare speaks through him
without disguise:
"Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow
Being so troublesome a bedfellow?
O polished 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 biggin bound
Snores out the watch of night."
In the third act we have King Henry talking in precisely the same way:
"O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee?...
* * * * *
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge."...
The truth is that in both these passages, as in a hundred similar ones,
we find Shakespeare himself praising sleep as only those tormented by
insomnia can praise it.
When his father reproaches him with "hunger for his empty chair," this
is how Prince Henry answers:
"O pardon me, my liege, but for my tears,
The moist impediments unto my speech,
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