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Henry IV Part 2 Diction

Decent Essays

In the following soliloquy from William Shakespeare's "Henry IV, Part II," King Henry laments his inability to sleep. As the poem progresses, so does the complex syntax. Shakespeare does this to show King Henry’s progression to madness.
Shakespeare introduces the reader to King Henry’s mind by juxtaposing how Henrys “poorest subjects are at this hour asleep” while Henry remains awake. By questioning Henry’s ability to remember, the simple task of sleeping, Shakespeare calls into question his ability to have a reliable mind. The mental stability of the king becomes questionable as he proclaims “O sleep! O gentle sleep!” as if sleep is a person. This apostrophe conveys the sanity that King Henry should express as a political figure. By referring …show more content…

To begin the second stanza, Henry questions sleep asking why it will visit those “in smoky cribs” but not him in the “perfum’d chambers” of his castle. With this classic struggle between classes, Henry highlights how the nobles felt entitled to more than what everyone else had. Ironically, Henry address sleep as a “dull god” in the second sentence of the stanza. Just some lines before Henry was questioning sleep as if sleep was unaware of the special treatment that Henry thought he deserved. Moreover, Henry’s mind continues to fall into chaos and change the role of sleep from a gift-giving person to a god who grants his followers tranquility. Henry tempts the “god of sleep” by offering him a place “under the canopies of costly state.” At this moment, Shakespeare parallels a scene from the bible where the devil tempts Jesus (God), but Jesus never cowered. The last sentence consisting of eight lines and conclude with a period shows the kings panic and stress as he loses control. The structure of the sentence shows how sleep “rock[s] his brains” causing a “rude imperious surge” of emotion. The kings’ mind degrades from his sleep deprivation. What once was a mind of authority becomes a mind of “clamor in the slippery clouds” of his brain. The final convoluted sentence attempts to establish structure, but loses focus until after the last comma when Shakespeare …show more content…

Henry informs sleep that he has “all appliances and means,” yet his money and fortune are no match for sleep. The nobility of the king is weak as he acts like a child who complains because he does not get what he wants. For the second to last line of the soliloquy Henry surrenders, but also scrutinizes sleep by informing him that he should “lie down” with the low. Henry’s metaphor “Then, happy low, lie down” represents Henry’s idea that sleep will be happy with the low poor people. To display his once apparent authority Henry commands the ever-shifting role of sleep to lie down. This remark shows how Shakespeare views Henry’s mind. At first, he believed it to be a person with a drop of insanity, just as Henry viewed sleep in the first stanza. Then Henry was a ruthless god who attempted to create order, but there were powerful forces, sleep, which had control over him. Finally, Henry commands sleep to lie down like a dog who lies with fleas. Henry views himself as superior, but Shakespeare views Henry as the uneasy “head that wears a crown.” Although sleep had not taken Henry’s crown, it stole something much more important, Henry’s

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