Shakespeare really understood human ego

Shakespeare from Henry IV,

While the first line about a kingdom being “too small a bound” is from Henry IV, that exact vivid image of  the King’s remains being used to plug drafts and holes in a wall comes from the famous graveyard scene in Hamlet (Act 5, Scene 1).Hamlet is looking at the dirt in the graveyard and realizes that even the greatest emperors eventually decompose into basic mud (loam) that commoners use to patch drafty walls. He says it in this famous rhyme.

“Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall t’ expel the winter’s flaw!” (winter draft/wind)

He says it while looking down at the body of his fierce rival, the rebel warrior Hotspur (Henry Percy), right after defeating him in battle.

The exact Shakespeare quote is:

“Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound;
But now two paces of the vilest earth
Are room enough.”