At the beginning of Act 3, King Henry IV is troubled by the ongoing rebellion, led now by the Archbishop of York. Unable to sleep due to his worries, the King personifies the concept of sleep, imagining sleep as a godlike or human figure in a short soliloquy:
O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt 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?
Here, he addresses sleep directly, calling to her and describing her as “Nature’s soft nurse.” He feels that he must have frightened sleep if she will not come to visit him, and implores her to “steep [his] senses in forgetfulness” and allow him a brief reprieve from his many anxieties and sorrows. Further, he suggests that sleep prefers to lie in bed with poor, everyday people but is uninterested in visiting “the perfumed chambers of the great” who lie beneath “the canopies of costly state.” Through this act of personification, the King suggests that great power and privilege such as his own come at the cost of peace of mind.
