Is This a Dagger Which I See Before Me?

by William Shakespeare

  That many have and others must sit there.

  And in this thought they find a kind of ease,

  Bearing their own misfortunes on the back

  Of such as have before endured the like.

  Thus play I in one person many people,

  And none contented. Sometimes am I king;

  Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar;

  And so I am. Then crushing penury

  Persuades me I was better when a king.

  Then am I kinged again; and by and by

  Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke,

  And straight am nothing. But whate’er I be,

  Nor I, nor any man that but man is,

  With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased

  With being nothing. (The music plays) Music do I hear.

  Ha, ha; keep time. How sour sweet music is

  When time is broke and no proportion kept.

  So is it in the music of men’s lives;

  And here have I the daintiness of ear

  To check time broke in a disordered string,

  But for the concord of my state and time,

  Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.

  I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;

  For now hath time made me his numbering clock.

  My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar

  Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch

  Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point,

  Is pointing still in cleansing them from tears.

  Now, sir, the sound that tells what hour it is

  Are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart,

  Which is the bell. So sighs, and tears, and groans

  Show minutes, times, and hours. But my time

  Runs posting on in Bolingbroke’s proud joy,

  While I stand fooling here, his jack of the clock.

  This music mads me. Let it sound no more;

  For though it have holp madmen to their wits,

  In me it seems it will make wise men mad.

  Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me;

  For ’tis a sign of love; and love to Richard

  Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.

  King John

  [II, i, 561–98] The bastard son of Richard I, Philip Falconbridge stands close to the centre of power yet is forever excluded – a unique vantage-point from which to observe the workings of a world in which ‘commodity’ (personal advantage) is the only law:

  Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition!

  John, to stop Arthur’s title in the whole,

  Hath willingly departed with a part;

  And France, whose armour conscience buckled on,

  Whom zeal and charity brought to the field

  As God’s own soldier, rounded in the ear

  With that same purpose-changer, that sly devil,

  That broker that still breaks the pate of faith,

  That daily break-vow, he that wins of all,

  Of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids –

  Who, having no external thing to lose

  But the word ‘maid’, cheats the poor maid of that –

  That smooth-faced gentleman, tickling commodity;

  Commodity, the bias of the world –

  The world, who of itself is peisèd well,

  Made to run even upon even ground,

  Till this advantage, this vile-drawing bias,

  This sway of motion, this commodity,

  Makes it take head from all indifferency,

  From all direction, purpose, course, intent –

  And this same bias, this commodity,

  This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word,

  Clapped on the outward eye of fickle France,

  Hath drawn him from his own determined aid,

  From a resolved and honourable war,

  To a most base and vile-concluded peace.

  And why rail I on this commodity?

  But for because he hath not wooed me yet;

  Not that I have the power to clutch my hand

  When his fair angels would salute my palm,

  But for my hand, as unattempted yet,

  Like a poor beggar raileth on the rich.

  Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail

  And say there is no sin but to be rich;

  And being rich, my virtue then shall be

  To say there is no vice but beggary.

  Since kings break faith upon commodity,

  Gain, be my lord – for I will worship thee.

  Henry IV Part 1

  [I, ii, 193–215] The scapegrace son of King Henry IV, Prince Harry is playing a much longer game than it may appear. The life of debauchery he leads, he says, as his drinking companions take their leave one night, is only the cover from which he will one day spring to glory:

  I know you all, and will awhile uphold

  The unyoked humour of your idleness.

  Yet herein will I imitate the sun,

  Who doth permit the base contagious clouds

  To smother up his beauty from the world,

  That, when he please again to be himself,

  Being wanted, he may be more wondered at

  By breaking through the foul and ugly mists

  Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

  If all the year were playing holidays,

  To sport would be as tedious as to work;

  But when they seldom come, they wished-for come,

  And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.

  So, when this loose behaviour I throw off,

  And pay the debt I never promisèd,

  By how much better than my word I am,

  By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;

  And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,

  My reformation, glittering o’er my fault,

  Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes

  Than that which hath no foil to set it off.

  I’ll so offend to make offence a skill,

  Redeeming time when men think least I will.

  [V, i, 127–40] Told by Prince Harry that he owes God a death, since all men must die eventually, Sir John Falstaff makes it clear that he has no intention of discharging his debt in that day’s battle:

  ’Tis not due yet – I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter, honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on, how then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is honour? A word. What is that word honour? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died a’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon – and so ends my catechism.

  [V, iv, 86–109] The great and the gross: victorious in battle, Prince Harry finds two very different men lying dead before him, the defeated rebel Hotspur and his own old drinking-companion Falstaff:

  For worms, brave Percy. Fare thee well, great heart!

  Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk.

  When that this body did contain a spirit,

  A kingdom for it was too small a bound;

  But now two paces of the vilest earth

  Is room enough. This earth that bears thee dead

  Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.

  If thou wert sensible of courtesy

  I should not make so dear a show of zeal,

  But let my favours hide thy mangled face,

  And even in thy behalf I’ll thank myself

  For doing these fair rites of tenderness.

  Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven!

  Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave,

  But not remembered in thy epitaph!
/>   (He spieth Falstaff on the ground)

  What, old acquaintance, could not all this flesh

  Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell!

  I could have better spared a better man.

  O, I should have a heavy miss of thee

  If I were much in love with vanity.

  Death hath not struck so fat a deer today,

  Though many dearer, in this bloody fray.

  Embowelled will I see thee by and by;

  Till then in blood by noble Percy lie.

  [V, iv, 110–27] Yet Falstaff, it seems, is made of more heroic stuff, rising when Harry leaves to reply with a soliloquy of his own:

  Embowelled? If thou embowel me to-day, I’ll give you leave to powder me and eat me too tomorrow. ’Sblood, ’twas time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me, scot and lot too. Counterfeit? I lie, I am no counterfeit. To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man. But to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life. Zounds, I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. How if he should counterfeit too, and rise? By my faith, I am afraid he would prove the better counterfeit. Therefore I’ll make him sure, yea, and I’ll swear I killed him. Why may not he rise as well as I? Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me. Therefore, sirrah (stabbing him), with a new wound in your thigh, come you along with me.

  Henry IV Part 2

  [III, i, 4–31] Beset on the one hand by further rebellions, on the other by anxieties about his idle son, a careworn King Henry meditates late one night on the responsibilities of office:

  How many thousands of my poorest subjects

  Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,

  Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

  That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down

  And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

  Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,

  Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

  And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,

  Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,

  Under the canopies of costly state,

  And lulled with sound of sweetest melody?

  O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile

  In loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch

  A watch-case or a common ’larum-bell?

  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,

  And in the visitation of the winds,

  Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

  Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them

  With deafing clamour in the slippery clouds,

  That with the hurly death itself awakes?

  Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose

  To the wet sea-son in an hour so rude,

  And in the calmest and most stillest night,

  With all appliances and means to boot,

  Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!

  Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

  [IV, ii, 85–122] The Duke of Lancaster’s promise to put in a good word fails to impress a sullen Sir John Falstaff: what reliance can be placed on the word of a man who ‘drinks no wine’?

  I would you had but the wit; ’twere better than your dukedom. Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me, nor a man cannot make him laugh – but that’s no marvel, he drinks no wine. There’s never none of these demure boys come to any proof, for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness; and then when they marry they get wenches. They are generally fools and cowards – which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which delivered o’er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood, which before, cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards to the parts’ extremes. It illumineth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits, muster me all to their captain, the heart, who, great and puff’d up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work, and learning, a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father he hath like lean, sterile, and bare land, manured, husbanded, and tilled, with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack.

  [IV, v, 22–48] Left to watch by the bedside of his dying father late one night, Prince Harry cannot resist anticipating his destiny a little:

  Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,

  Being so troublesome a bedfellow?

  O polished perturbation! Golden care!

  That keepest 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 thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit

  Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,

  That scaldest 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 hath divorced

  So many English kings. Thy due from me

  Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood,

  Which nature, love, and filial tenderness,

  Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously.

  My due from thee is this imperial crown,

  Which, as immediate from thy place and blood,

  Derives itself to me. (He puts the crown on his head) 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 thee

  Will I to mine leave as ’tis left to me.

  Much Ado About Nothing

  [II, iii, 8–33] His own armour of scorn so far proof against Cupid’s arrows, Benedick muses on the mysterious miracles worked by love, even on those who, like his friend Claudio, should know better:

  I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviours to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love; and such a man is Claudio. I have known when there was no music with him but the drum and the fife, and now had he rather hear the tabor and the pipe. I have known when he would have walked ten mile afoot to see a good armour, and now will he lie ten nights awake carving the fashion of a new doublet. He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier, and now is he turned orthography; his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes. May I be so converted and see with these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not. I will not b
e sworn but love may transform me to an oyster; but I’ll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me he shall never make me such a fool. One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall be, that’s certain; wise, or I’ll none; virtuous, or I’ll never cheapen her; fair, or I’ll never look on her; mild, or come not near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what colour it please God.

  Henry V

  [IV, i, 223–77] Harry, himself now a king, has occasion to consider the responsibilities of royal rank:

  Upon the King! Let us our lives, our souls,

  Our debts, our careful wives,

  Our children, and our sins, lay on the King!

  We must bear all. O hard condition,

  Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath

  Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel

  But his own wringing! What infinite heart’s ease

  Must kings neglect that private men enjoy!

  And what have kings that privates have not too,

  Save ceremony, save general ceremony?

  And what art thou, thou idol ceremony?

  What kind of god art thou, that suffer’st more

  Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?

  What are thy rents? What are thy comings-in?

  O ceremony, show me but thy worth!

  What is thy soul of adoration?

  Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form,

  Creating awe and fear in other men?

  Wherein thou art less happy, being feared,

  Than they in fearing.

  What drink’st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,

  But poisoned flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,

  And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!

  Thinks thou the fiery fever will go out

  With titles blown from adulation?

  Will it give place to flexure and low bending?

  Canst thou, when thou command’st the beggar’s knee,

  Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,

  That play’st so subtly with a king’s repose.

  I am a king that find thee, and I know

  ’Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball,