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Why not to him in part, and us to all
That feel the bruises of the days before
And suffer the condition of these times
To lay a heavy and unequal hand
Upon our honors?
(Act 4, scene 1, lines 103–107)
In act 4, scene 1, the rebel leaders—the Archbishop of York and Lords Hastings and Mowbray—communicate their collective grievances to the king’s emissary, the Earl of Westmoreland. Yet Westmoreland consistently derides and downplays their complaints, claiming that the rebels have no real quarrel with the king. With these lines, however, Mowbray insists that they still bear “bruises” from the king’s betrayal of his promises. These betrayals, which Shakespeare explored more fully in Richard II and Henry IV, Part 1, persist in “the condition of these times” and hence continue to deprive them of their rightfully earned “honors.” Many other characters in Henry VI, Part 2 feel similarly bruised and burdened by past events depicted in the previous two “Henry” plays.
Note this: the King is weary
Of dainty and such picking grievances,
For he hath found to end one doubt by death
Revives two greater in the heirs of life;
And therefore will he wipe his tables clean
And keep no telltale to his memory
That may repeat and history his loss
To new remembrance.
(Act 4, scene 1, lines 207–214)
The Archbishop of York addresses these lines to the other leaders of the rebellion, Lords Hastings and Mowbray. These three men are negotiating peace with representatives of the king, and Mowbray has just expressed his reluctance to make a deal. He worries that, even if they do broker peace, the king will always remember their rebellion and hence never truly trust them. (Audiences familiar with Henry IV, Part 1 will recall that the same concern drove the Earl of Worcester to reject a similar deal. This rejection led to the rebels’ disastrous defeat at the Battle of Shrewsbury and to Worcester’s subsequent execution.) However, the Archbishop declares that the king is eager to forget the past. As he reasons here, Henry wants to “wipe his tables clean / And keep no telltale to his memory,” lest he remind his subjects of his deposing and assassination of Richard II. With the past being too much of a burden for the king, the rebels needn’t worry.
God knows, my son
By what bypaths and indirect crook’d ways
I met this crown, and I myself know well
How troublesome it sat upon my head.
To thee it shall descend with better quiet,
Better opinion, better confirmation,
For all the soil of the achievement goes
With me into the earth.
(Act 4, scene 3, lines 341–48)
In these lines, King Henry IV, nearing death, reflects on the burden of the crown. The power and responsibility of the crown would likely weigh heavily on the head of any king. However, Henry recognizes that in his case the weight is made more burdensome by the “bypaths and indirect crook’d ways / I met this crown.” Yet whereas Henry acquired the crown by forcefully deposing the previous king, Harry will inherit the crown from his father in the traditional way sanctioned by the doctrine of the divine right of kings. As such, he will wear a lighter crown, one disburdened of the weight of the past. For, as the dying king promises, “all the soil” and dirty business that enabled his rise “goes / With me into the earth.”
