Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown

Being a king is a job that many consider a pretty good deal. People will submit to your commands and you get to live in a majestic castle with the finest fabric available in 14th century England.

Plus you get the all the best selfies

As with any job one acquires, there are certain downsides. You can always get laid off, experience budget cuts, have co-workers make extensive plans for your execution, or even get a really terrible boss. However, there are certain aspects of kingship that both King Henry IV and Henry V are constantly struggling with. 

In both plays, there are scenes where the present king ponders to himself about the worrisome nature of role and how others are socially beneath him, yet are not burdened with such a fate. In his bedchambers (Act III.1:4-14) Henry IV muses;

“How many thousand of my poorest subjects/Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, o gentle sleep” “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?”

In this speech he ponders the idea that he, in such a superior surrounding, is more distressed than someone sleeping with flies and dirty cribs. Yet the pristine nature of his palace cannot cleanse the thoughts that plague his being. 

Later Henry V muses about his own responsibilities in a monologue following an interaction with Williams and Bates in Act IV.1:222-276. This entire speech focuses on that topic, however since I personally do not want to type 54 lines of dialogue I will instead pick out key lines. He starts at line 222 saying “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,” which introduces the same idea of the king having to carry the burden of his subjects that he concludes with at the end at lines 273-275 “The slave, a member of the country’s peace,/Enjoys it but in gross brain little wots/What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace.” In both of these lines he carries on the same message of Henry IV, in that he resounds that his fate is burdened with the lives of his kingdom. This idea connects with the idea of the kingly body that is comprised of the divine power from above and made up from the subjects around him. However since this power derives partly from the support of those around him, there is a sense that he must have the full cooperation of those body parts. At this point, Henry V is discovering that his army is not as supportive of his endeavors as he had hoped and this in his mind causes disfunction in the operation of the kingdom. Since he is the head of this body, the distress felt by this disfunction causes him pain, similar to a migraine. 

In this same speech Henry V says “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,”. These lines imply the nature of kingship as one that does not entail the pleasures of his subjects. Considering Henry V had to shed his former life filled with pleasures of the flesh, this almost reads as a longing for the former pastimes he had. Along with having to carry the role of the kingdom on his shoulders, there is also the removal of many of the pastimes he had once enjoyed. These mirroring of fates show that to accept such a heavy burden, an equally heavy sacrifice is needed.