Amylyn Ja. De Paz
English IV: Brit Lit
Mr. Naylor
February 05, 2023
Macbeth and King Henry’s Relationship with Sleep
Throughout the passage, King Henry expresses his troubled relationship with sleep by employing imagery and personification. It is evident that King Henry is desperate for a good night’s rest for in the dialogue, King Henry uses numerous rhetorical approaches to woo sleep. For instance, at the beginning of the soliloquy, King Henry uses eulogizing terms to refer to sleep as if to allure it to come upon him: “O gentle sleep!” and “Nature’s soft nurse.” When this approach fails, the King refers to logic and dwells on sleep’s unfairness, for it falls upon people in tumultuous situations but will not deign itself to serve him. To accomplish the comparison, the King uses the imagery of a boy who despite
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In both, the characters provide insight into their insomniac states. They also mention their hand in pushing sleep away. For instance, Macbeth comments that he hears voices condemning him to “Sleep no more!” since “Macbeth does murder sleep.” King Henry expresses a related comment when he attests: “how have I frighted thee.” Another crosspoint between the two can be found in their employment of heavy imagery and conceits to further portray the depth of their situations; in particular, they reference negatively connotated forces or artifacts. Macbeth often uses animals of evil nature to paint a detailed image of his unsettled mind: “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!” Comparably, King Henry uses imagery to describe sleep’s preference for the impoverished conditions of his citizen’s homes to the luxurious chambers of the King: “Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee…Than in the perfum’d chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody?” Both men are in dire condition and in need of