Shakespeare describes, too, with lifelike fidelity, the causes of insomnia, which are not weariness or physical pain, but undue mental anxiety.  He constantly contrasts the troubled sleep of those burdened with anxieties and cares, with the happy lot of the laborer whose physical weariness insures him a tranquil night’s repose.  Henry VI. says:—­

  “And to conclude, the shepherd’s homely curds,
  His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
  His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade,
  All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
  Are far beyond a prince’s delicates.”

And Henry V. says:—­

  “’Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
  The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
  The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
  The farced title running ’fore the king,
  The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
  That beats upon the high shore of this world,—­
  No, not all these, thrice gorgeous ceremony,
  Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
  Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
  Who, with a body filled and vacant mind,
  Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread;
  Never sees horrid night, that child of hell,
  But, like a lackey, from the rise to set,
  Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night
  Sleeps in Elysium.... 
  And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,
  Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
  Hath the forehand and vantage of a king.”

Prince Henry says, in “Henry IV.":—­

  “O polished perturbation!  Golden care! 
  That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide
  To many a watchful night, sleep with it now! 
  Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
  As he whose brow with homely biggin bound
  Snores out the watch of night.”

In this same play, too, is found the familiar and marvellous soliloquy of Henry IV.:—­

  “How many thousand 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 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 sounds of sweetest melody? 
  O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile
  In loathsome beds, and leav’st 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 deafening clamor in the slippery