[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’?