[IV.136] bloods. So in Much Ado about Nothing, III, iii, 141: "How giddily a' turns about all the hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty?" Cf. I, ii, 151: "the breed of noble bloods."
[IV.137] murderous slumber | Murd'rous slumbler F1.
[IV.138] murderous slumber. The epithet probably has reference to sleep being regarded as the image of death; or, as Shelley put it, "Death and his brother Sleep." Cf. Cymbeline, II, ii, 31.
[IV.139] thy leaden mace. Upton quotes from Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I, iv, 44:
But whenas Morpheus had with leaden mace
Arrested all that courtly company.
Shakespeare uses 'mace' both as 'scepter,' Henry V, IV, i, 278, and as 'a staff of office,' 2 Henry VI, IV, vii, 144.
[IV.140] The boy is spoken of as playing music to slumber because he plays to soothe the agitations of his master's mind, and put him to sleep. Bacon held that music "hindereth sleep."
[IV.141] [Sits down] Camb.
[IV.142] Scene VII Pope.