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
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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
By comparing the “majesty of heaven” to “earthly kings”, Henry is appealing to ethos, or the audience’s concept of ethics.
First, one should focus on the language and Henry's ethos. The soldiers are burdened with the thought of a
Two of the important characters in Shakespeare’s Henry V are King Henry V, and the Dauphin. Henry V is the ruling monarch of England who, in the previous plays of the tetralogy, was presented as a riotous youth and troublemaker. This former life ultimately becomes a preparation for his sovereignty, and his earlier experiences of immaturity and unprincipled living allow him to understand his common subjects and to measure his own sense of worth by their lack of honorable qualities. With the ascension to the throne, the rowdiness of the king vanishes entirely and he promises his subjects that his life of wild living ended with his father’s death, and he is now a completely reformed person altogether. The main purpose of Henry V is to convey the idea that King Henry represents in all aspects the model of the ideal Christian ruler. Various scenes depict his religious nature, his mercy, pity, and compassion, his absolute sense of justice, his administrative skill, his fighting ability, his instinctive nobility, his ability to connect with the common class of soldiers and people, his self-discipline, evenness of temper, complete courtesy, and finally his role as a romantic lover in the suit of Princess Katharine’s hand in marriage.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare easily blurs the lines of reality by inviting the audience into a dream. He seamlessly toys with the boundaries between fantasy and reality. Among the patterns within the play, one is controlled and ordered by a series of contrasts: the conflict of the sleeping and waking states, the interchange of reality and illusion, and the mirrored worlds of Fairy and Human. A Midsummer Night's Dream gives us insight into man's conflict with characteristics of human behavior.
Prompt: In the soliloquy, King Henry laments his inability to sleep. In a well-organized essay, briefly summarize the King's thoughts and analyze how the diction, imagery, and syntax help to convey his state of mind.
Unlike Hal, King Henry’s role consist of three qualities that radiate kingship, the traits being composed, assertive and commanding. Despite these traits being essential to kingship, they ultimately lead to the court turning against King Henry and planning a rebellion against him. When discussing news of war and casualties in his throne room, Henry remains composed and finds the positive points in the situation rather the
Henry is trying to communicate to his audience that the British will betray them in terms that his audience will relate to or understand, so he uses a situation that happens in a well-known piece of
To examine Shakespeare’s exploration of identity as a means of control, it is important to understand what all constitutes each character’s identity. In the case of Henry, for one, it is apparent that the actions of his past alter his perceived identity throughout the play. Before Henry speaks his first lines in the play, the Bishop of Ely calls Henry a “true lover of the holy Church,” to which the Archbishop of Canterbury replies, “The courses of [Henry’s] youth promised it not” (1.1.23-24). This reckless reputation follows Henry further into the play when an ambassador from France delivers a message to Henry from the Dauphin: “…the prince our master says that you savor too much of your youth and bids you to be advised there’s naught in France that can be with a nimble galliard won: you cannot revel into dukedoms there” (1.2.250-254). Along with this message, the Dauphin included a gift of tennis balls meant to further insult Henry. Even later in the play, after the English won the battle at Harfleur, the noble Frenchmen continue to underestimate Henry’s ability as a leader: “What a wretched and peevish fellow is this King of England, to mope with his fat-brained followers so far out of his knowledge” (3.8.120-122).
Shakespeare’s ‘King Henry IV Part I’ centres on a core theme of the conflict between order and disorder. Such conflict is brought to light by the use of many vehicles, including Hal’s inner conflict, the country’s political and social conflict, the conflict between the court world and the tavern world, and the conflicting moral values of characters from each of these worlds. This juxtaposition of certain values exists on many levels, and so is both a strikingly present and an underlying theme throughout the play. Through characterization Shakespeare explores moral conflict, and passage three is a prime example of Falstaff’s enduring moral disorder. By this stage in the play Hal has
Our fear and pity for Lear are both intensified and relieved. His disturbed conscious is magnified when he is mad, and the reality and his awareness is further denied by those sensible such as Edgar, Kent, ironically the Fool, and Albany. Although Scene 6 is written with intention to galvanize our fear and pity by presenting to us both Gloucester and Lear wretched circumstances, it also relieves both our understandings and our sentiment. Nevertheless, this tragic “relief” quickly turns into deceit. We learn of an old man seeking awareness in suffering to discover the subplot of another old man betrayed
Macbeth Sleep is a time when our minds are at rest and the subconscious comes out to play. Sleep is oftentimes considered the place where we are able to see into our future and perhaps figure out how to solve our problems. Sleep is also what heals and cures our minds and bodies. Without sleep we slowly begin to disintegrate. Mind and body no longer cooperate without the healing force sleep brings with it. Shakespeare uses sleep both as a reward and as a consequence in his plays. If a character is innocent and pure, he is allowed restful, fulfilling sleep. If the character lacks these traits of goodness, he is condemned to a lifetime
Shakespeare’s choice of language shows that he values ability to sleep, which in my opinion is influenced by his own experience. He thinks of it as a “balm of hurt
Henry V is a wise and loyal king, changing from a wild youth to a mature king. He is described to be an intelligent, thoughtful and an efficient statesman. He thinks carefully whether to invade France or not which represents his responsible character. King Henry gives a very strong speech which gave courage and confidence to his army that they could win the battle. This character describes him to be a king of great ability to fight and having good administrative skills. Throughout the play Henry’s nature is religious, merciful and compassionate.
Act 2, scene 2, line 35-36 “Sleep no more! /Macbeth doth murder sleep” is showing the lack of inner peace in Macbeth as only the “innocent” can sleep as it is nature giving you and your mind time to rest and recuperate from any stress or other damaging thoughts or actions. This is nature punishing Macbeth for disturbing its order.
In this time of feudalism, people knew Henry V as an important leader who gives his glory and honor to not only a few individuals, but to each and every person who is serving physically as a knight and doing any actions made to build status into their country. The speech that he gives before the battle clearly states the loyal characteristics on how much of hard work he put into training his men whether they were from noble birth or from the poorest and lowest of classes. With the following statements, they show his gamely character meaning to speak out with courage with a purpose. First, he states how he and his army can have the achievement they fight for even if there are only a few men to fight in a chaotic battle like this, then he forms a type of honorable day and group remembered for fighting in this battle dead or alive, so that there would be no level on which individual was better than the other, and last he makes it loud and clear that he would even treat those men as if they were his brothers because they were the only few men that would support him and fight with him against their enemies. The three big examples here are the political expectations on what a group of men needs from a leader like Henry V and a true king with the power of his absolute anarchy.