Henry IV, Part 2

Two old men in Gloucestershire talk about the price of ewes at Stamford fair and the friends they have buried, and one of them says, we have heard the chimes at midnight. There is no sadder line in Shakespeare, and it is spoken almost cheerfully. This is the play where the party ends: the tavern grows colder, Falstaff's wit runs a little slower against the sound of his own body failing, and the sick king lies awake past one in the morning envying the ship-boy who can sleep through a storm. England itself seems feverish, rebellion put down by a trick rather than a battle, everyone owing money, everyone older than they were. And through it moves a prince learning the arithmetic of a crown, calculating what and whom he will have to set down in order to carry it. Read it for the last warm evening in the Boar's Head, and for the awful, tender certainty that the boy laughing beside Falstaff is already gone.