The_Burden_of_Kingship
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The Burden of Kingship in Shakespearean Rule
Uneasy Lies the Head
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Shakespeare introduces kingship as the ultimate performance. The monarch is an actor on a national stage, his every move watched, his every word carrying the weight of the realm. His life is not his own; it is a role to be played for the benefit—and judgment—of his people.
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!" - Chorus, Henry V
for a Muse of fire... A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
"O
A Kingdom for a Stage
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The wild Prince Hal must die so that the virtuous King Henry V can live. This transformation is the first, essential burden: the sacrifice of the self to the state.
A king is both a fallible human ( "the body natural") and the divine embodiment of the kingdom ("the body politic"). To rule, he must suppress his personal desires and flaws.
"Consideration, like an angel, came And whipp'd the offending Adam out of bim, Leaving his body as a paradise." - The Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry V
The Mortal Man, The Immortal State
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The king is not just a symbol; he is a commander. His duty to the realm forces him to wield violence as an instrument of statecraft. He must threaten the unthinkable—the slaughter of innocents—to preserve the lives of his own soldiers and achieve his kingdom's goals. This is the moral burden of the realm made manifest.
'The Gates of Mercy Shall Be All Shut Up'
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The crown isolates. A king can have counselors, but true friends are a liability. Henry's personal grief over Scroop's betrayal is profound, yet he must act not as a man, but as a king. He sentences his friend to death to protect his kingdom, demonstrating the chasm that power creates between the ruler and other men.
Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels, That knew'st the very bottom of my soul... May it be possible, that foreign hire Could out of thee extract one spark of evil That might annoy my finger?
thee, Lord Scroop?'
'What shall I say to
Not all burdens are sought. For Prince Hamlet, the duty of kingship is thrust upon him not as a crown, but as a terrible command for revenge. He is tasked with purging the corruption in the state of Denmark—a kingly dutybut without the authority or the temperament for it. His is the burden of a rightful heir forced into the role of executioner.
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The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!
`The Time is Out of Joint'
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common man. He must watch while his subjects sleep, bearing the weight of their lives on his conscience.
ere, Shakespeare gives the most profound articulation of the monarch's burden. The king is the vessel for his subjects' fears, sins, and fates. He enjoys general ceremony' but is denied the simple peace of a
H
"Upon the king! let us our lives, our souls, / Our debts, our careful wives, / Our children and our sins lay on the king! I We must bear all O bard condition, I Twin-born with greatness.."
`Upon the King!'
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While Henry bears the external weight of his men, Hamlet is crushed by the internal burden of his own mind. Tasked with a king's duty of revenge, his intellectual nature becomes a prison. He is paralyzed by thought, and this inaction torments his soul, making the burden of kingship a source of profound self-loathing.
'What would he do, Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears... Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing!'
O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!' in IM Fell English PRO font
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The burden of existence, amplified by the specific duties of a prince, becomes so immense that suicide presents itself as a logical escape. It is only the fear of the unknown—the ultimate existential dread—that forces him to continue. For the burdened ruler, even death offers no certain peace.
"...who would bear the whips and scorns of time... To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death— The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns—-puzzles the wil..."
"To be, or not to be..'
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A king does not only inherit a crown; he inherits the moral debts of his predecessors. Henry V fears his father's usurpation will doom his cause at Agincourt. Hamlet is literally haunted by his father's ghost, his entire purpose now defined by an ancestral crime. The burden spans generations.
'Revenge his foul and most unnatural murther.'
Not to-day, O Lord, O, not to-day, thinh not upon the fault My father made in compassing the crown!'
The Sins of the Father
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struggle against the forces of chaos-feuding families, rebellious mobs, ambitious challengers. The peace of the realm is a constant, exhausting battle.
For all its ceremony and divine right, monarchical power is fragile. It rests on consent that can vanish in an instant. The ruler must constantly
- Claudius, Hamlet
"Choose we! Laertes shall be king!""
"The rabble call him lord... They cry
- Prince Escalus, Romeo and fuliet
"Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace... Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace."
"The doors are broke."
Ultimately, the burden of kingship ends in the grave. In the churchyard, Hamlet confronts the fact that the skull a jester is no different from that of a king. His final act is not one of personal revenge, but a kingly one: to ensure a smooth succession by naming Fortinbras his heir, thereby healing the "out of joint' time at the cost of his own life.
"He has my dying voice.. The rest is silence."
To what base uses we may return.
"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio...
"The Rest is Silence.'
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as as the 'body politic,' sacrificing personal affection for the stability of his newly-won empire.
For Henry, the resolution is political, not mortal. Having borne the burden of war, he now bears the burden of peace-making. His marriage is not for love, but for the union of two realms. It is his final act
"...when France is mine and I am yours, then yours is France and you are mine."
FRANCE
ENGLAND
The King's Sacrifice
The King's Peace,
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The peace he fought for, the order he established—all of it is fragile and temporary.
The ultimate tragedy of the burden of kingship is that even the greatest sacrifices may be for naught Henry V bears the immense weight of conquest and rule, only for his legacy to be squandered by his heir.
Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King Of France and England, did this king succeed; Whose state so many had the managing,
That they lost France and made his England bleed.
"They lost France and made his England bleed'
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For Shakespeare's monarchs, the crown is not a prize, but a sentence. It is the weight of a nation's soul, the isolation of absolute responsibility, and the tragic knowledge that even a king is merely a player on a stage, whose final curtain is always death.
Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears a Crown