{"id":182,"date":"2024-04-13T18:06:56","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T01:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/?page_id=182"},"modified":"2026-02-23T10:28:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T18:28:44","slug":"king-richard-ii-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/king-richard-ii-2\/","title":{"rendered":"King Richard II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s History Plays<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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HOME<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
OLLI<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
QUESTIONS<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
COMMENTARIES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
AUDIO<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
GUIDES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
LINKS<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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ACT 1<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
ACT 2<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
ACT 3<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
ACT 4<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
ACT 5<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
ENDNOTES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Shakespeare, William. The Life and Death of King Richard the Second.<\/em> Folio. (The Norton Shakespeare: Histories,<\/em> 3rd ed. 488-548.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shakespeare Sources & Resources: <\/strong>RSC Resources<\/a> | ISE Resources<\/a> | S-O Sources<\/a> | 1623 Folio 370-95 (Folger)<\/a> | Shakespeare\u2019s Holinshed: Chronicle & Plays Compared: Richard II<\/a><\/em> | Holinshed\u2019s Chronicles <\/em>\u2026 \u201cHenry IV\u201c<\/a> | Owen Glendower from A Mirror for Magistrates<\/em><\/a> | Henry Percy from A Mirror for Magistrates<\/em><\/a> | S. Daniel\u2019s The First Fowre Bookes of the Civile Wars \u2026<\/em> III.86-114 (1595)<\/a> | Stow\u2019s Chronicles of England \u2026<\/em> 573-82 (1580)<\/a> | Richard II Dramatis Personae (Drake)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Encyclopedias\/Lexica:<\/strong> Britannica.com<\/a> | <\/strong>World History Encyclopedia<\/a> | <\/strong>Wikipedia<\/a> | Wiktionary<\/a> | C. T. Onions\u2019 Shakespeare Dictionary<\/a> | A. Schmidt\u2019s Shakespeare Dictionary<\/a> | Concordance (Shakespeare Network)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comprehensive Shakespeare:<\/strong> Folger Shakespeare Library<\/a> | RSC Shakespeare\u2019s Plays<\/a> | Shakespeare-Online (Mabillard)<\/a> | Internet Shakespeare Editions (U-Vic)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Text\/Media Repositories:<\/strong> U-Penn Books Page<\/a> | Holinshed Project<\/a> | Early English Books (EEBO)<\/a> | Renascence\/Luminarium<\/a> | Gutenberg<\/a> | HathiTrust<\/a> | Internet Archive<\/a> | M\u00fcnchen Digital Lib. (MDZ)<\/a> | Wikisource<\/a> | Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

English & European Royals:<\/strong> English Monarchy Timeline (Drake)<\/a> | English Monarchs<\/a> | Kings & Queens of Britain (Historic-UK)<\/a> | Historic-UK.com<\/a> | Shakespeare <\/a>& History<\/a> | Family Trees: Edward III\u00a0 \/ Neville \/ Percy (Hist. of Eng.)<\/a> | Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford)<\/a> |Burke\u2019s Peerage<\/a> | European Royal History<\/a> | French Rulers 840 CE to Present (Thoughtco)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hundred Years\u2019 War: <\/strong>Medievalists.net<\/a> | 100 Years\u2019 War (Britannica)<\/a> | 100 Years\u2019 War (WHE)<\/a> | 100 Years\u2019 War Timeline<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wars of the Roses:<\/strong> Wars of the Roses.com<\/a> | <\/strong>Key People<\/a> | Battles Timeline<\/a> <\/strong>| <\/strong>Battles (Brit. Battles)<\/a> | Battles (Battlefields Trust)<\/a> | R3 Society: Wars of the Roses<\/a> | R3 House of York Timeline<\/a> | History Extra<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tudors: <\/strong>Tudor Society<\/a> | TudorHistory.org<\/a> | The Tudors (Eng-Heritage UK)<\/a> | Life in Elizabethan England (M. Secara)<\/a> | Elizabethan Era.org<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACT 1<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Act 1, Scene 1 (489-93, King Richard is tasked with judging a quarrel between Thomas Mowbray and Henry Bolingbroke; Bolingbroke, King Richard II\u2019s cousin, accuses Thomas Mowbray of treason\u2014he says that Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, was culpable in the murder of his and Richard\u2019s uncle Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester; Richard and John of Gaunt find it impossible to reconcile Mowbray and Bolingbroke, so Richard declares that there must be a trial by combat at Coventry.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play begins with King Richard II (r. 1377-1399) trying to arbitrate a feudal quarrel between Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk and Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, [1]<\/a> both of whom bandy words of high honor and charges of treason at considerable length. This is an important test of Richard\u2019s power, coming in 1397, some twenty years after his accession in 1377 when he was ten years old, following the death of his grandfather Edward III. [2]<\/a> He has spent much of his reign trying to avoid being controlled by such powerful lords as these mutual accusers Mowbray and Bolingbroke. [3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Henry Bolingbroke\u2019s initial words sound almost contentless\u2014\u201cthou art a traitor and a miscreant, \/ Too good to be so, and too bad to live\u201d (489, 1.1.39-40), he declares boldly to Mowbray. The accused shoots back something more like an insult than a defense: \u201cI do defy him and I spit at him, \/ Call him a slanderous coward and a villain\u201d (490, 1.1.60-61).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These two could go on for some time slinging barbs, but Richard II steers Bolingbroke towards  an actual set of accusations. First, he says, Mowbray misappropriated funds intended for the King\u2019s military efforts, which misappropriation Bolingbroke calls treasonous. Secondly, he claims Mowbray has been responsible for all <\/em>of the fierce opposition and plotting against Richard II since Wat Tyler and John Ball\u2019s Peasants\u2019 Revolt of 1381, when the King was only 14 years old. Third, Mowbray is tagged with the apparent killing of Richard\u2019s uncle Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest of Edward III\u2019s five adult sons. [4]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hearing all this, King Richard claims that he will judge impartially between the two men, accuser and defendant, though this seems like an absurd promise because he himself was almost certainly involved in the killing of Gloucester in September 1397. The man was his uncle, to be sure, but Richard had reason to hate him and want him out of the way. Gloucester was one of the powerful noblemen who sought to direct Richard\u2019s kingship. Opposing the King\u2019s counselors the Earls of Suffolk (Michael de la Pole) and Oxford (Robert de Vere), Gloucester steered the \u201cLords Appellant\u201d and nearly deposed the King as early as 1388.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It makes sense, then, that Richard\u2019s real agenda here is to stop all talk of the Duke of Gloucester\u2019s death in 1397, and that can\u2019t happen if Bolingbroke and Mowbray keep tossing insults and accusations at each other in a very public way. Mowbray sounds increasingly guilty, and even admits to trying to have Gaunt ambushed and killed. In any event, Richard and Gaunt, who is Bolingbroke\u2019s father, try to reconcile Bolingbroke and Mowbray, but it immediately becomes clear that neither man finds King Richard II a commanding enough presence to cause them to cease quarreling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exasperated, Richard declares, \u201cWe were not born to sue but to command \u2026\u201d (493, 1.1.196), and quickly orders the two men to settle their differences in a duel to the death in full view of the public and the court. Richard\u2019s hasty arrangement of a public spectacle in which the winner will be thought to have fought with truth on his side presents an obvious risk to the King if Mowbray should be slain, but his \u201ctheater of deflection\u201d has not achieved what he wanted it to achieve, so for the time being, he has been forced into this course of action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 1, Scene 2 (493-94, the Duchess of Gloucester, wife of the murdered Duke, Thomas of Woodstock, urges Gaunt to intervene on Bolingbroke\u2019s side, but he stays neutral, believing that a King\u2014God\u2019s supposed agent on earth\u2014shedding royal blood is God\u2019s affair to deal with, not that of even the most highly placed mortals.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Duchess of Gloucester, wife of the murdered Duke of Gloucester, urges her brother-in-law John of Gaunt to intervene on the side of his son Bolingbroke and his brother Gloucester against Thomas Mowbray. Her initial appeal is to the pull of kinship: the seven sons of Edward III were, she says, as \u201cseven vials of his sacred blood, \/ Or seven fair branches springing from one root\u201d (492, 1.2.12-13). How can he stand by and watch his own father\u2019s royal blood (through the wounded body of the son Gloucester) poured into the earth, and do nothing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Gaunt responds with a combination of weariness and theological steadfastness: his \u201ctext\u201d is drawn from St. Paul\u2019s Epistle to the Romans<\/em> 12:19: \u201cVengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord.\u201d [5]<\/a> If we go by the Divine Right of Kings theory that flowered fully in Elizabethan-Jacobean England, it is not up to the mortal likes of John of Gaunt to correct or punish his sovereign. But of course, it has been dangerous to upbraid a monarch for much longer than that. In any case, Gaunt despairs of reforming Richard II\u2019s kingly misbehavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Duchess then offers a theory that must have occurred often to Shakespeare himself since, as Jonathan Bate points out, we hear so much from the playwright about the chaos <\/em>that is sure to ensue when degree and rank are not respected, and everyone starts asserting powers and rights for which there is no backing beyond their own ambition, desire, and willfulness. [6]<\/a> The Duchess says bluntly, \u201cIn suff\u2019ring thus thy brother to be slaughtered, \/ Thou show\u2019st the naked pathway to thy life, \/ Teaching stern murder how to butcher thee\u201d (494, 1.2.30-32).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Richard can cut one of his uncles down, she reasons, he can do so to another uncle whenever it suits his needs or his fancy. But the trouble is, Gaunt is old and ill and soon to meet his Maker, so the Duchess\u2019s argument doesn\u2019t convince him that he has any business acting against his God-anointed nephew Richard II. The Duchess is resigned to Gaunt\u2019s inaction, and says finally, \u201cDesolate, desolate, will I hence and die; \/ The last leave of thee takes my weeping eye\u201d (494, 1.2.73-74). As an aside, Eleanor de Bohun, Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cDuchess of Gloucester,\u201d died in October 1399, only days after Richard II was deposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 1, Scene 3 (495-500, just after Bolingbroke and Mowbray offer the prescribed formulaic challenges in their trial by combat, Richard halts the proceedings and instead banishes Bolingbroke, initially for ten years, but then reduces the term to six years; Mowbray is banished for life, and laments that his native language is now useless to him; Gaunt complains that he won\u2019t last even the now six years of his son\u2019s exile; Richard frets over reports of Bolingbroke\u2019s popularity as he makes his way towards exile on the Continent.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trial by combat is now come due. Thomas Mowbray and Henry Bolingbroke open the scene with formulaic language whose underlying purpose in medieval times was to restrain but also to justify acts of violence. In speaking, they follow the prescription set for them by the King\u2019s Marshal: \u201cIn God\u2019s name and the King\u2019s, say who thou art \/ And why thou com\u2019st thus knightly clad in arms, \/ Against what man thou com\u2019st, and what\u2019s thy quarrel\u201d (495, 1.3.11-13).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after so much has been said and so much action is about to take place, Richard decides, seemingly of a sudden, to stop the proceedings. He withdraws with his advisers, takes his time, and returns with a pronouncement that no doubt shocks all present. In sum, he banishes Bolingbroke for a period of 10 years, and Thomas Mowbray for life. His reasoning, at least publicly, is that \u201cour kingdom\u2019s earth should not be soiled \/ With that dear blood which it hath foster\u00e8d\u201d (497, 1.3.125-26).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbroke takes the news somewhat stoically, though he shows himself a realist. He cannot, as Richard will do later on, imagine his circumstances to be better than they really are. Of his predicament, he says poetically, \u201cOh, who can hold a fire in his hand \/ By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? \/ Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite \/ By bare imagination of a feast?\u201d (500, 1.3.258-61).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Mowbray reacts with more passion, lamenting that his native tongue will now become useless to him forevermore. He complains to the King, \u201cWithin my mouth you have enjailed my tongue, \/ Doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips, \/ And dull, unfeeling, barren  Ignorance \/ Is made my jailer to attend on me\u201d (498, 1.3.161-64).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard is not interested in Thomas Mowbray\u2019s problems with English, but he is interested in ensuring that these two powerful lords do not combine against him while in exile. He orders them as follows: \u201cYou never shall, so help you truth and heaven, \/ Embrace each other\u2019s love in banishment; \/ Nor ever look upon each other\u2019s face …\u201d (498, 1.3.178-80).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Richard notes how heartbroken John of Gaunt seems, he shortens Bolingbroke\u2019s sentence by four years. This scarcely relieves Gaunt\u2019s heartache since he is too old and sick for it to have any effect\u2014he will be dead shortly. But Bolingbroke himself notes something else from Richard\u2019s seemingly generous gesture. He can\u2019t help but admire the great power that a king wields: \u201cHow long a time lies in one little word! \/ Four lagging winters and four wanton springs \/ End in a word; such is the breath of kings\u201d (499, 1.3.207-09).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 1, Scene 4 (501-02, Richard makes arrangements to lead his troops in Ireland; because of his lavish spending habits, the King stands in need of funding for the Irish campaign, so he leases crown property and assets for cash, and farms out to his subordinates the power to tax England\u2019s wealthiest citizens; a report comes telling Richard that his Uncle John of Gaunt is at death\u2019s door; Richard responds with shocking callousness to Gaunt\u2019s approaching death.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The significance of what Bolingbroke said about the power that a king commands becomes obvious to us when we hear about Richard\u2019s reaction to Bolingbroke\u2019s departure from England to the Continent. The King notices what a gifted politician Bolingbroke is. He sees, as he says to Aumerle, \u201cWhat reverence he did throw away on slaves, \/ Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of souls \/ And patient underbearing of his fortune, \/ As \u2019twere to banish their affects with him\u201d (501, 1.4.27-30).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Henry the Fourth, Part 1, <\/em>this same Henry, older now, lectures his dissolute son Prince Hal about not <\/em>spending too much time with the common sort of people, [7]<\/a> but here in the late 1390s, he shows skills similar to those of a good politician in a modern democracy. To be fair, in Richard II<\/em> Henry isn\u2019t actually placing himself at the commoners\u2019 level. He is merely acknowledging their existence, and showing gratitude for the affection they bear him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shakespeare\u2019s Richard II can be roguishly charming in certain circumstances, but he is not \u201ca man of the people\u201d by any sensible standard. The King is therefore distrustful of Bolingbroke\u2019s abilities and his intentions as he leaves the country. Still, there isn\u2019t much time to devote to the newly exiled Hereford and Norfolk: Richard is more worried about his \u201cIrish Wars,\u201d in which he hopes to cut a dashing military figure. [8]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the King hears that John of Gaunt is on his deathbed, he jokes that Gaunt\u2019s estate, illegitimately snatched away from its rightful inheritor Henry Bolingbroke, will line his pockets for the Irish campaign, and utters the immortal bit of insouciance, \u201cPray heaven we may make haste, and come too late\u201d (502, 1.4.63).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACT 2<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Act 2, Scene 1 (502-08, just before he dies, Gaunt complains to York about Richard\u2019s wickedness and mismanagement of the kingdom, and then upbraids Richard directly; the report comes informing the King that Gaunt is dead; the King says he is confiscating Gaunt\u2019s estate to pay for his Irish campaign; Northumberland, Willoughby, and Ross privately express their disgust with Richard over his treatment of Bolingbroke; Northumberland says Bolingbroke is headed for England in defiance of his term of banishment; the three men make ready to join him.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mortally ill John of Gaunt, expressing the vain hope that \u201cthe tongues of dying men \/ Enforce attention like deep harmony\u201d (502, 2.1.5-6), spends some of his last breath conversing with York, and his cast of mind turns prophetic and patriotic, as he first castigates Richard in absentia<\/em> and then offers one of the most famous descriptions of England ever uttered, beginning with \u201cThis royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, \/ This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, \/ This other Eden, demi-paradise \u2026\u201d (503, 2.1.40-42).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaunt seems most upset that Richard, his nephew, has engaged in various schemes to extort money from wealthy citizens as well as to rent out crown lands for a quick profit. [9]<\/a> The effect of this, says Gaunt, is that \u201cThat England that was wont to conquer others \/ Hath made a shameful conquest of itself\u201d (503, 2.1.65-66). Gaunt is referring to the falling-off of English prowess against the French since the time of Edward III. This is the era, after all, of the long struggle between England and France that we call \u201cThe Hundred Years War.\u201d [10]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

King Richard II enters directly after Gaunt has made this remark, and soon becomes impatient and sardonic, failing to hide his disrespect for this dying pillar of the kingdom he rules. Gaunt infuriates Richard by speaking in the name of his own father, King Edward III, who he says would be ashamed of the way Richard is running the kingdom. The old man [11]<\/a> calls him easy prey to flatterers, and offers this devastating barb: \u201cLandlord of England art thou, and not king: Thy state of law is bondslave to the law \u2026\u201d (504, 2.1.113-14). Richard, Gaunt is telling him, is a failure in the eyes of his deadly serious predecessor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among Gaunt\u2019s final words to Richard are, \u201cLive in thy shame, but die not shame with thee; \/ These words hereafter thy tormentors be\u201d (505, 2.1.135-36). That is unmistakably a curse issued from a dying uncle to a profligate, dissolute nephew-king. Soon thereafter, word comes that Gaunt has died, and Richard\u2019s relief couldn\u2019t be more palpable: \u201cSo much for that. Now for our Irish wars\u201d (505, 2.1.155).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To York\u2019s extreme consternation, King Richard at once gives orders to confiscate everything of any value on or pertaining to Gaunt\u2019s estate, which should, of course, go to his son Henry Bolingbroke, even though he is currently exiled. Why is York so upset? Here\u2019s what he says: \u201cTake Hereford\u2019s rights away, and take from Time \/ His charters and his customary rights; \/ Let not tomorrow then ensue today; \/ Be not thyself, for how art thou a king \/ But by fair sequence and succession?\u201d (507, 2.1.195-99)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fundamentally, York is pointing out, King Richard does not sufficiently respect the feudal net of loyalties and obligations that legitimize and secure his rule. He is a feckless opportunist, and does not take care to protect his own position or England\u2019s reputation as a strong nation. The Duke of York, Edmund of Langley, is trying to explain to the youngish King that when he shreds the concept of primogeniture, he undercuts the legitimacy of his own rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Richard overrules such mature advice with a glib rhyming couplet. He tells York, \u201cThink what you will, we seize into our hands \/ His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands\u201d (506, 2.1.209-10). The King sees no reason why he should respect the rights of a man whom he has already sent into long exile, and with whom he already had an unpleasant history even before that event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard\u2019s next move is startling: York has just accused him of spitting on his entire royal line, but now the King uses this family connection, his uncle, to prop up his authority. He leaves York, whom he apparently considers docile or loyal enough to trust, in charge of managing the kingdom while he himself goes off to deal with a rebellion in Ireland. Whether this was a wise move, we will soon find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northumberland (Henry Percy, father of Harry Hotspur), Ross, and Willoughby remain behind and serve up a litany of Richard\u2019s offenses, saying that he is \u201cbasely led \/ By flatterers \u2026\u201d (507, 2.1.241-42), and that he has managed to anger both the nobility and the commoners in the realm by imposing extortionate fines, taxes, and whatnot. To be fair, this is not drastically different from the way most of England\u2019s early chieftains and then kings treated their subjects, but that is small comfort for the sufferers of such rapacious behavior. [12]<\/a> The upshot is that King Richard II has lost everyone\u2019s loyalty and respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conspiracy and rebellion can\u2019t be far behind, and indeed Northumberland has some cheering news about just that eventuality. He has heard, he says, that Henry Bolingbroke has gathered some of England\u2019s great lords in his cause and is on the way across the Channel at this very minute. Backing him are \u201ceight tall ships\u201d and \u201cthree thousand men of war\u201d (508, 2.1.286), says Northumberland, and all this affords Richard\u2019s enemies a fine chance to \u201cmake high majesty look like itself\u201d (508, 2.1.295), as once it did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 2, Scene 2 (509-12, the Queen is sorrowful at Richard\u2019s departure; Bolingbroke is now in England, at Ravenspurgh, at the head of an army; York, frankly confessing his ethical confusion over whom he should support, tells Bushy, Bagot, and Greene to gather their forces and meet him at Berkeley Castle; Bagot, however, decides to head for Ireland to join Richard, while Bushy and Green will seek protection at Bristol Castle.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene tells Richard\u2019s Queen that Henry Bolingbroke is presently back in England in defiance of his banishment: he has landed safely at Ravenspurgh along the east coast. [13]<\/a> The Queen seems genuinely upset at this news. She is more of a realist than her husband, saying disconsolately, \u201cI will despair and be at enmity \/ With cozening hope. He is a flatterer, \/ A parasite, a keeper-back of death \u2026\u201d (510, 2.2.68-70). Still, and understandably, when she sees York coming her way, she asks him fervently to \u201cspeak comfortable words\u201d (510, 2.2.76). [14]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Uncle Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, has no such words. He informs the Queen that King Richard is out of the country, and that he himself has been tasked with holding down the fort, so to speak\u2014or what\u2019s left of it. York sounds none too sure of himself by this point, saying \u201cHere am I left to underprop his land \/ Who, weak with age, cannot support myself\u201d (510, 2.2.81-82).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

News soon arrives that the Duchess of Gloucester, widow of the murdered Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, has died. With the situation crumbling around him, York weighs his loyalties with an earnestness that is ominous for the absent King Richard. Whom should he ally himself with? He says, \u201cTh\u2019one is my sovereign, whom both my oath \/ And duty bid defend; th\u2019other again \/ Is my kinsman whom the King hath wronged \u2026\u201d (511, 2.2.310-13). Thus far, all York can bring himself to cough up is, \u201cWell, somewhat we must do\u201d (511, 2.2.16).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

York tells Bushy, Bagot, and Greene to get their troops together and meet him at Berkeley Castle, but only Bagot chooses to make his way towards King Richard in Ireland. Bushy and Greene decide to save themselves by seeking refuge at Wiltshire Castle, where they hope that William le Scrope, First Earl of Wiltshire will protect them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 2, Scene 3 (512-16, Bolingbroke and Northumberland combine outside Berkeley Castle, where they meet Northumberland\u2019s son, Harry Percy; the Duke of York denounces Bolingbroke to his face as a traitor for returning in spite of his banishment, but recognizes that he can\u2019t stop him; the neutral position that York declares effectively favors Bolingbroke instead of Richard: he invites Bolingbroke and his confederates to stay at Berkeley Castle.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northumberland introduces his son, Harry Percy (the gallant \u201cHotspur\u201d of the Henry IV<\/em> plays), to Bolingbroke\u2014the beginning of a fraught connection between these two ambitious young men. [15]<\/a> Harry doesn\u2019t seem to recognize his illustrious colleague, but Bolingbroke is kind to him when they meet, telling him, \u201cI count myself in nothing else so happy \/ As in a soul rememb\u2019ring my good friends \u2026\u201d (513, 2.3.46-47).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Henry Bolingbroke again shows us his strength as both a politician and a realist. He describes himself starkly as \u201cA banished traitor\u201d in the eyes of the opponent, and gracefully expresses his gratitude to his supporters with, \u201cEvermore thanks, th\u2019exchequer of the poor, \/ Which till my infant fortune comes to years \/ Stands for my bounty\u201d (513, 2.3.60, 65-67). This is a man who, at least at this point in his career, knows how to gain and keep loyalty. He refrains from promising what he doesn\u2019t have, yet manages to paint himself as the quintessential \u201cgood chieftain\u201d who will distribute bounty to his loyal defenders when the time is right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon enough, the principal players get to the affair at hand: Bolingbroke informs Lord Berkeley that he will answer only to the title of \u201cLancaster,\u201d and not to \u201cHereford\u201d now that he is the rightful inheritor of his father, John of Gaunt, the late Duke of Lancaster and founder of that illustrious and warlike line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

York, however, isn\u2019t impressed with Bolingbroke\u2019s courtly bows and whatnot. The younger man\u2019s graceful comportment, York makes plain to tell him, does not effectively conceal the fact that his return to England against the King\u2019s sentence amounts to treason\u2014a word that Bolingbroke, we may remember, has already applied to himself, though he does so mainly in the fashion of a politician bonding with his supporters. York wishes himself much younger so that he might punish this upstart, and tells him bluntly, \u201cThou art a banished man, and here art come \/ Before th\u2019expiration of thy time, \/ In braving arms against thy sovereign\u201d (514, 2.3.109-11).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbroke, however, is not so easily dealt with. He has a case to make for himself that is in its essentials undeniable. \u201cWherefore was I born?\u201d he asks York. \u201cIf that my cousin King be King of England, \/ It must be granted I am Duke of Lancaster\u201d (515, 2.3.121-23). Claiming that he has been denied proper legal counsel, he has, he insists, simply come to England to tender his claim to his \u201cinheritance of free descent\u201d (515, 2.3.135). This is his lawyerly self-defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ross and Willoughby chime in to bolster Bolingbroke\u2019s case, with the latter tellingly pointing out something dear to the heart of English royalty: \u201cBase men by his endowments are made great\u201d (515, 2.3.138). This kind of severe slippage in rank and status is apparently intolerable to the likes of Willoughby and, we may presume, Bolingbroke himself, though there is some irony in taking such a position when one is rebelling against a sovereign who\u2014whatever his faults\u2014enjoys a clear, superior claim to the throne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northumberland claims somewhat ridiculously in Bolingbroke\u2019s defense that the young man has only come all this way \u201cBut for his own\u201d (515, 2.3.148); that is, for his patrimony as Duke of Lancaster. It\u2019s common sense that a subject cannot engage in rebellion and then expect a deal forced upon the King at the point of an army\u2019s swords to be honored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, York\u2019s realism kicks in, and he admits to all present that his forces are too weak to serve as the enforcer that the absent King Richard wanted him to be. He is no match for Bolingbroke\u2019s forces, so he declares himself \u201cneuter\u201d (i.e., neutral), and then immediately invites the man he has just called a despicable traitor to \u201crepose\u201d (515, 2.3.158, 160) for the night at Berkeley Castle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking full advantage of this breakthrough, Bolingbrook pushes farther: he holds it necessary, he tells York, to make a trip to Bristol Castle, where he will seize Bushy, Bagot, and their accomplices, \u201cThe caterpillars of the commonwealth\u201d (515, 2.3.165), as he calls them, and it\u2019s clear that he does not mean them well. York professes to be of both minds even about this demand, saying only that he may or may not go. By now, York\u2019s neutrality has taken an almost nihilistic tone. As he says, \u201cThings past redress are now with me past care\u201d (516, 2.3.170).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Thomas Hobbes will not set forth his theory of royal absolutism in Leviathan<\/em> until 1651 (half a century or so after the present play, and two-and-a-half centuries after the events it covers), the Duke of York\u2019s reaction to Bolingbroke\u2019s attack illustrates the paradox in Hobbes\u2019s treatise: rebellion is utterly illegitimate and inadmissible, but if it succeeds, the rebel becomes the new absolute power, against whom nobody may rebel\u2014unless, of course, they do it successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

York knows the score: things have gone far beyond the point of no return, so there\u2019s no point in continuing to back him. King Richard II no longer has any effective fighting force, and he has lost the loyalty of his subjects from low status to high. Bolingbroke, with his army at his side, is already the de facto<\/em> ruler, and he will soon rule de jure.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 2, Scene 4 (516-16, King Richard has failed to return within ten days and the heavens and earth are full of terrible portents, so the captain of the Welsh troops Richard was counting on reports to Salisbury that he is dismissing his men; Salisbury laments that Richard is on the verge of catastrophe.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Welsh captain reports to one of the King\u2019s last remaining loyalists, John Montagu, 3rd Earl of Salisbury. He is full of misgivings, is this Welsh captain: he tells Salisbury, \u201cThe bay trees in our country all are withered, and meteors fright the fix\u00e8d stars of heaven \u2026\u201d (516, 2.4.8-9). This, and much more by way of astronomical and human behavioral portents, tells the good captain that there is more than enough chaos for him finally to give in and let his men return to their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There isn\u2019t much that Salisbury can say to make the captain feel better. He himself feels the meaning of the portents deeply, and concludes as if addressing Richard, \u201cThy friends are fled to wait upon thy foes, \/ And crossly to thy good all fortune goes\u201d (516, 2.4.23-24).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy for modern readers and viewers to dismiss all this talk about portents and fortune, but Shakespeare often seems (like many of his contemporaries) to be of two minds about what we would call superstition. The theory of \u201cman the microcosm\u201d held, after all, that humans contain within themselves the elements of all that is above and below them on the great ladder or chain of being. If that\u2019s the case, chaos in the heavens might very well correspond to chaos\u2014whether brewing or present\u2014in the sublunary realm, or as we say, \u201con the ground.\u201d [16]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACT 3<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Act 3, Scene 1 (516-17, Bolingbroke blames Bushy and Green for corrupting King Richard and turning him against both his Queen and Bolingbroke himself, and sentences the two men to die; he also sends a message of reassurance to Queen Isabella of Valois.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbroke accuses the captured Bushy and Green of corrupting the King, and we will see in the next scene that Richard himself feels he has been led astray. This is the polite fiction one so often sees tendered to kings and queens when they\u2019ve made grave mistakes: \u201cthe sovereign\u2019s corrupt, selfish, scheming advisors have led him or her astray, etc.\u201d Most likely, no one\u2014not the speaker, and not the sovereign\u2014really believes such formulaic responses to royal wrongdoing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the charge that Bolingbroke levels against Bushy and Greene, there is also perhaps an echo of Christopher Marlowe\u2019s treatment in Edward II <\/em>(1592) of the relationship between King Edward and his intimate companion, Piers Gaveston. [17]<\/a> Shakespeare\u2019s Bolingbroke says as follows to Bushy and Greene: \u201cYou have in manner with your sinful hours \/ Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him, \/ Broke the possession of a royal bed, \/ And stained the beauty of a fair queen\u2019s cheeks \u2026\u201d (516, 3.1.11-14). It is not difficult to catch what Bolingbroke is insinuating with these words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbroke also allows his smoldering anger at these two men for all the heartache and hardship their hostile actions have caused him. They have done so much wickedness, says Henry, that, as he says, that they have left him \u201cno sign, \/ Save men\u2019s opinions and my living blood, \/ To show the world I am a gentleman\u201d (517, 3.1.25-27). Neither Bushy nor Greene shows the slightest remorse for anything he has supposedly done, and both men are duly marched off to their executions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, Bolingbroke asks Northumberland, with whom the Queen is staying at present, to treat her with the great respect she deserves, and to send along his \u201ckind commends\u201d or greetings (517, 3.1.38). Evidently, he does not want anyone to think that he blames Isabella for her husband\u2019s offenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 3, Scene 2 (517-22, Richard returns to England and believes God is on his side; as Bolingbroke\u2019s forces close in and Richard hears more bad news\u2014the Welsh troops are gone, his friends are dead, and York and other erstwhile supporters have defected to Bolingbroke\u2014the King\u2019s moods swing wildly back and forth, from exuberance to despair and self-pity: he disbands his dwindled forces and withdraws into Flint Castle.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard opens this scene by weeping for joy and touching the earth of his beloved kingdom. He condemns the rebels who have trod this ground in their treasonous pursuit of his crown. The men surrounding him, though, seem to function much like King Lear\u2019s Fool in that they make it more difficult for an audience to take Richard\u2019s earnest effusions seriously. [18]<\/a> This is signaled in the text when the King feels obliged to say to his elite supporters, \u201cMock not my senseless conjuration, lords\u201d (518, 3.2.23). Either they are already mocking him, or he anticipates that they will. That is not a good look for a monarch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, there is something genuinely moving in the claim, \u201cNot all the water in the rough rude sea \/ Can wash the balm from an anointed king\u201d (518, 3.2.49-50). This sounds less like a basic assertion of the royal prerogative that gives English kings the right to do their will without parliament\u2019s say-so, and more like the later assertion (by King James I and others) of the theory that would in future be called \u201cthe divine right of kings.\u201d Richard is speaking for the sacramental, divine element that he embodies as an anointed king.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Thanks to Ernst H. Kantorowicz\u2019s book The King\u2019s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology <\/em>(1957), we have convenient access to the notion developed by medieval jurists that a monarch\u2019s physical frame contains both a normal, mortal body and plays host to a corporate<\/em> body that represents or embodies the divine principle of kingship. In essence, the king is both a mortal human being and a host for the god-sanctioned principle of kingship itself. [19]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

King Richard\u2019s belief that he is unassailable is strong at this point, as we see when he says, \u201cFor every man that Bolingbroke hath pressed \/ To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown, \/ Heaven for His Richard hath in heavenly pay \/ A glorious angel\u201d (518, 3.2.53-56). This is not a man who expects to lose his title to a band of traitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, bad news begins to roll in by the minute: Salisbury brings word that the 12,000 Welsh troops Richard was counting on have gone over to Bolingbroke. Richard still insists that \u201cthe king\u2019s name\u201d is worth many thousands of ordinary fighting men, but still the terrible news comes his way\u2014Bolingbroke is winning over to his cause all sorts of Englishmen. As Scrope puts it, \u201cdistaff-women manage rusty bills \/ Against thy seat. Both young and old rebel \u2026\u201d (520, 3.2.113-14). Bushy, Greene, and the Earl of Wiltshire are dead, executed at Bristol, and the Duke of York is no longer defending the King.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a moment\u2019s worth of such news, Richard\u2019s mood swings from great optimism to despair. Unforgettably, he urges all his hearers to join in his lament: \u201cFor heaven\u2019s sake let us sit upon the ground \/ And tell sad stories of the death of kings \u2026\u201d (520, 3.2.150-51). He soon slips from this sad frame of mind to a fine but macabre sense of where he now stands, saying memorably, \u201cwithin the hollow crown \/ That rounds the mortal temples of a king \/ Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits, \/ Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp \u2026\u201d (520, 3.2.155-58).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, Richard seems to be suggesting that a mere mortal can hardly expect to have the strength to hold together the \u201ctwo bodies\u201d that a king must contain harmoniously within himself. In fact, the true \u201cruler\u201d who emerges here is Death, who grins for a time and scoffs, and at last swallows up the frail human who dares to accept his role as a dualistic, symbolically fraught entity of great significance to the life of an entire nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As his chances crumble, Richard II offers his audience a message and a question he thinks they sorely need to hear: \u201cyou have but mistook me all this while. \/ I live with bread like you, feel want, \/ Taste grief, need friends. Subjected thus, \/ How can you say to me I am a king?\u201d (521, 3.2.169-72) [20]<\/a> How can a frail, perishing individual take upon himself the attributes and burdens of a divinity-hedged and mandated king?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At such a moment, one wants to grant Richard a measure of epiphanic insight, but throughout this scene, he has lurched from one extreme mood to its opposite, so it\u2019s hard to accommodate this generous desire to accord his states of mind the function of wisdom. [21]<\/a> Indeed, while Carlisle and Aumerle\u2019s rebukes are mild in manner, they are devastating in their import. Carlisle says, \u201cMy lord, wise men ne\u2019er wail their present woes, \/ But presently prevent the ways to wail\u201d (521, 3.2.173-74). And that man\u2019s son, Aumerle, says, \u201cMy father hath a power. Inquire of him, \/ And learn to make a body of a limb\u201d (521, 3.2.180-81).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard takes this criticism well, but then arrives the worst possible news: the political realist Duke of York, Edmund of Langley, has defected to Bolingbrook. There is no coming back from this information, this loss: Richard is a king without an army, and a medieval king without an army will not remain a king for long. This King disbands whatever\u2019s left of his forces, and withdraws to Flint Castle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are we to make of King Richard II\u2019s conduct in this scene? We might say that he is incapable of seeing things directly, incapable of raw perception in so far as anyone is capable of such a thing. But that may not do him justice. Perhaps we are to understand that he sees things too clearly sometimes, so much so that he is driven immediately to begin telling a fine story that distances him from the painfulness of his perceptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is, after all, one of the many uses of art. A sad story can serve the same purpose as a triumphant one in this regard, justifying life and preserving dignity by aesthetic means when it can\u2019t be justified or dignified otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 3, Scene 3 (522-26, Bolingbroke finds out that King Richard II is inside Flint Castle; when Richard appears at the battlements, Bolingbroke, through Northumberland, demands the return of his \u201clineal royalties\u201d and the cancellation of his banishment, both of which things Richard recognizes he must grant; defeated and diminished, Richard obeys his opponents\u2019 demand to descend to ground-level and go with him to London: Bolingbroke thereby admits that it isn\u2019t only his own patrimony he wants, it\u2019s the English crown.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In conversation in front of Flint Castle, York shows what may be signs of a guilty conscience over his abandonment of Richard. He takes offence at Northumberland\u2019s failure to say \u201cKing Richard\u201d instead of simply \u201cRichard,\u201d and is loath to give up his complaint when that lord says he meant no disrespect, though the words he uses leave plenty of room for doubt: \u201conly to be brief \/ Left I his title out\u201d (522, 3.3.10-11).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbroke seems to be misleading York when he promises him that he has no intention of taking King Richard\u2019s crown, no matter how it looks. When Bolingbroke tells him to \u201cmistake not\u201d the meaning of Northumberland\u2019s penchant for brevity, York admonishes him in return to \u201cTake not \u2026 farther than you should. Lest you mistake the heavens are o\u2019er your head\u201d (522, 3.3.15-17). This prompts Bolingbroke to declare, \u201cI know it, uncle, and oppose not myself \/ Against their will\u201d (522, 3.3.18-19). Henry Bolingbrook is a master at this sort of equivocation\u2014the will of heaven is the point of contention, and it isn\u2019t certain where he thinks that will tends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbrook\u2019s instructions to Northumberland as his messenger to the King sound hollow, but the threat they constitute is real enough: either King Richard will agree to the restoration of Bolingbroke\u2019s right of inheritance and the repeal of his banishment, or violence will follow: the incensed nobleman will, he says, \u201cLay the summer\u2019s dust with showers of blood \/ Rained from the wounds of slaughtered Englishmen \u2026\u201d (523, 3.3.43-44).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbroke\u2019s speech in its entirety is cast in the form of a Jeremiad in miniature, with wonderful benefits for doing the right thing and unspeakable woe for not doing it, but we moderns will no doubt recognize that it has a mafioso flavor: \u201cNice country you\u2019ve got here\u2014it would be a shame if anything happened to it.\u201d How ironic that Bolingbroke, a native Englishman, is making this threat to a monarch who was born in Bordeaux, France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbroke is in command of the situation, and when Northumberland hurries off to do his errand, he makes what some directors stage as action flowing from a vulgar pun: \u201cBe he [Richard] the fire, I\u2019ll be the yielding water; \/ The rage be his, while on the earth I rain \/ My waters\u2014on the earth and not on him\u201d (523, 3.3.58-60). Bolingbroke seems to be alluding obliquely to urination with the image of \u201craining his waters.\u201d He promises that he only means to urinate on the ground, not on Richard. He doesn\u2019t sound sincere in that promise, if that\u2019s what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbroke\u2019s mockingly grandiose description of King Richard when he appears at the battlements of Flint Castle is countered by York\u2019s similar but earnest description: \u201cYet looks he like a king. Behold his eye, \/ As bright as is the eagle\u2019s, lightens forth \/ Controlling majesty\u201d (523, 3.3.68-70).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard himself soon appears and takes pains to display his shock at the disrespectful conduct of his subjects, saying, \u201cWe are amazed, and thus long have we stood \/ To watch the fearful bending of thy knee, \/ Because we thought ourself thy lawful king\u201d (523, 3.3.72-74). He calls upon his master, \u201cGod omnipotent\u201d (523, 3.3.85) to strike down these rebels, and prophesies that Bolingbroke\u2019s payment will be not a royal crown but \u201cTen thousand bloody crowns of mothers\u2019 sons \u201c (524, 3.3.96).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northumberland\u2019s response is to swear on behalf of Bolingbroke that the man will take nothing but what is his: \u201cHis coming hither hath no further scope \/ Than for his lineal royalties, and to beg \/ Enfranchisement immediate on his knees \u2026\u201d (524, 3.3.112-14). It should be obvious by now that Bolingbroke cannot mean this\u2014his return from banishment is looked upon as treason, and so is his taking up arms against the King. Sometimes, monarchs find it necessary to temporize and delay retribution, but this isn\u2019t the sort of affront that a King can forgive. It’s all or nothing now, and both Bolingbroke and King Richard II know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By now, Richard is certain that his lot is to be \u201cnothing.\u201d He says to Aumerle and others around him on the battlements, \u201cWhat must the King do now? Must he submit? \/ The King shall do it. Must he be deposed? \/ The King shall be contented\u201d (525, 3.3.143-45). Following this is an eloquent string of imaginings, with the King transforming himself into an impoverished monk or a holy religious pilgrim, and finally inhabiting \u201cA little, little grave, an obscure grave,\u201d or even ending up interred \u201cin the king\u2019s highway\u201d (525, 3.3.154-55) along with criminals and suicides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this marks quite a fall for Richard, and the fall is shocking both for its distance and its velocity. He has gone from being \u201camazed\u201d that anyone would dare deny him the ceremonious respect he deserves to accepting the most abject, humiliating fate he can imagine. In the end, King Richard II understands something he should have already known: \u201cThey well deserve to have \/ That know the strong\u2019st and surest way to get\u201d (526, 3.3.199-200). It isn\u2019t that he\u2019s saying this sententia<\/em> is morally right\u2014he is admitting only the Machiavellian point that it\u2019s how things actually work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To end the scene, Bolingbroke the smooth politician finally serves up a straightforward statement of his intentions, one that doesn\u2019t include any mumbling of phrases like \u201clineal royalties.\u201d When Richard asks him pointedly, \u201cSet on towards London, cousin, is it so?\u201d Bolingbroke responds simply, \u201cYea, my good lord\u201d (526, 3.3.207-08). He will be led to Westminster, where he will be expected to resign the crown in a very formal, humiliating way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 3, Scene 4 (526-29, a gardener explains Richard\u2019s failures in horticultural terms, and maintains his view even when confronted with opposition by the Queen.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queen Isabella and her two ladies hide themselves among the trees, eager to hear what the Gardener will say. This fellow turns out to be wise beyond expectation, and while his words bring no consolation to the Queen, he helps us compare the workings of a kingdom with the processes of nature. The Gardener asserts a correspondence between the care and maintenance of plants and the governance of a court environment, or even of an entire nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This laborer tells his assistant that King Richard, like a bad gardener, has failed to keep his plot\u2014which is England\u2014orderly: whereas he should have pruned those branches of the nobility and his subjects more generally that were growing beyond what is healthful, he let everything get out of control, with disastrous consequences for all concerned, including himself. This \u201cpruning\u201d metaphor is ancient\u2014it has been used as least as far back as the Greek historian Herodotus. [22]<\/a> The \u201cweeds\u201d in this garden of England, it makes sense to suggest, are nourished by the pride of its ambitious nobility and the insolence of corrupt favorites, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gardener\u2019s description of what has happened is anything but gentle. When the assistant asks why anyone in England should bother behaving well if the whole land has gone to seed, the gardener replies sternly: \u201cHold thy peace. \/ He that hath suffered this disordered spring \/ Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf\u201d (527, 3.4.47-49). In the gardener\u2019s view, the workings of nature in his little garden are as ruthless and inexorable as can be\u2014they will certainly remind us today of the process of evolution, whereby only the fittest members of the various species survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Queen steps forward with her ladies to curse the plainspoken gardener for his all-too-accurate description of England under the rule of her husband. She says he has offered a vision of \u201ca second fall of curs\u00e8d man\u201d (528, 3.4.76), and curses the gardener with the sentence, \u201cI would the plants thou graft\u2019st may never grow\u201d (528, 3.4.101).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, when the Queen and her ladies exit the scene, the gardener has the last word. He points out that nature, and his dealings with nature, are not subject to the Queen\u2019s curse. He will make nature testify to the Queen\u2019s sorrow by planting \u201ca bank of rue\u201d (528, 3.4.105), but as for her desire, all he can say is, \u201cI would my skill were subject to thy curse\u201d (528, 3.4.103).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the gardener means by this that he wishes the consequences of Richard\u2019s mistakes and misdeeds did not have to be so severe. But in truth, there is no stopping natural process, and there is no avoiding the consequences that accrue to a state badly managed. What must happen, will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACT 4<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Act 4, Scene 1 (529-36, Bolingbroke demands from Bagot the details of Gloucester\u2019s death; Bagot accuses Aumerle of having a hand in it, and several men issue challenges to Aumerle and one another; York reports that Richard has given up his crown; as Bolingbroke takes the throne, Carlisle calls him a traitor and predicts civil war; this Bishop is immediately arrested, and Bolingbroke orders that Richard be brought before him; Richard eloquently \u201cuncoronates\u201d himself, and requests permission to depart; he is taken away to the Tower of London; the Abbot of Westminster tells Aumerle that a plot is already brewing against Bolingbroke.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Parliament, Bolingbroke insists that Bagot tell what he knows of the murder of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. The question is, \u201cwho performed \/ The bloody office of his timeless end\u201d (529, 4.1.4-5)? Bagot names Aumerle, who steps forward, and is at once accused of murdering the youngest son of King Edward III. Aumerle is disgusted at having to throw down his gage against such a base individual as Bagot, but he does it all the same. When Bolingbroke tells Bagot not to take up the challenge, Fitzwater throws down against Aumerle instead. Harry Percy then challenges Aumerle, too, but Surrey takes up Aumerle\u2019s cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aumerle next challenges Norfolk, aka Thomas Mowbray. Bolingbroke declares that he will recall Norfolk from banishment and restore to him his lands, even though he was an enemy. Apparently, the new King wants to make a show of respecting the feudal nobility\u2019s rights in hopes of keeping order in his realm. Both Aumerle and he are surprised to hear from Bishop Carlisle that Mowbray had died in Venice before he could sail to the Holy Land on a crusade. [23]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When York informs him that Richard has willingly given up his crown, Bolingbroke declares that he will ascend the throne \u201cIn God\u2019s name\u201d (531, 4.1.107). The Bishop of Carlisle is aghast when he hears Bolingbroke\u2019s words, and declares that nothing of the sort must be allowed to happen. Carlisle\u2019s argument is close to the notion of \u201cdivine right\u201d as articulated by King James I in Shakespeare\u2019s day. [24]<\/a> The Bishop asks in seeming exasperation, \u201cWhat subject can give sentence on his king?\u201d (531, 4.1.115). To him, the answer is obviously, \u201cnobody but God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carlisle\u2019s next words are the ones that no doubt result in his arrest: he denounces Bolingbroke in brutally frank language: \u201cMy lord of Hereford here, whom you call king, \/ Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford\u2019s king; \/ And if you crown him, let me prophesy \/ The blood of English shall manure the ground\u201d (531, 4.1.127-30).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbroke is determined that his taking of the throne should be perceived as a legitimate act alongside Parliament\u2019s legal pursuit of Richard once he is dethroned. This need for legitimacy on Bolingbroke\u2019s part is a keen lens through which we can look at what happens next. Richard surely knows that his opponent and future king is in a great hurry to get this whole affair over with and have himself officially installed as King Henry IV. What he does, then, is a performance of dilatory genius: Richard will muse, marvel, and metaphorize in a way that Bolingbroke could never do, even if he wanted to (which he surely doesn\u2019t).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard\u2019s first gesture among several extraordinary ones is to ask, \u201cAlack, why am I sent for to a king, \/ Before I have shook off the regal thoughts \/ Wherewith I reigned? I hardly yet have learned \/ To insinuate, flatter, bow, and bend my knee\u201d (532, 4.1.156-59). He even compares himself to Christ, saying that at least he <\/em>found eleven disciples faithful, instead of not even one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, Richard appears to dangle the crown in the air, as if, he says, it were a balancing mechanism\u2014a pool with a pair of buckets inside it. As Bolingbroke\u2019s empty bucket is hauled up, elevated so to speak, Richard\u2019s is weighed down with water, which comes from his flowing tears. Of course, there\u2019s more than a hint in the figure that Bolingbroke\u2019s claim to the crown is much \u201clighter\u201d than Richard\u2019s. It\u2019s a striking figure, and one for which the soon-to-be King Henry IV has no patience. He says tartly, \u201cI thought you had been willing to resign\u201d (533, 4.1.183). Richard\u2019s eloquence sets the practical Bolingbroke\u2019s teeth on edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Richard is not done yet, no matter how annoyed cousin Bolingbroke gets with such impressive wordsmanship. He says he will indeed resign his crown, <\/em>but as for his sorrow, that belongs to him, and as he says, \u201cYou may my glories and my state depose, \/ But not my griefs; still am I king of those\u201d (533, 4.1.185-86). King Richard strives to keep at least something of his former identity, even if it\u2019s only resident in his terrible distress at what is happening to him so rapidly that he can scarcely accommodate it, or fully register it in his mind. [25]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What follows next is an extraordinary scene, one in which Richard very deliberately \u201cun-coronates\u201d himself. [26]<\/a> In answer to Bolingbroke\u2019s curt question, \u201cAre you contented to resign the crown?\u201d (533, 4.1.193) Richard gives a \u201cyes and no\u201d response for the ages, much of it pure poetry drawn from his own sense of negation. \u201cNow mark me how I will undo myself,\u201d he tells a triumphant, yet all but hapless Bolingbroke, \u201cI give this heavy weight from off my head,\u201d and, he continues, \u201cWith mine own tears I wash away my balm, \/ With mine own hands I give away my crown, \/ With mine own tongue deny my sacred state \u2026\u201d (533, 4.1.196-97, 200-02).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, and much more. A series of rhyming couplets manage a simultaneously formulaic yet poetical end to this remarkable act of self-undoing. It is as if Richard recognizes that as God\u2019s anointed, only he <\/em>can properly do this to himself\u2014not a subject even such as the mighty Henry Bolingbroke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard seems to believe that what he has said, capped off with some half-cheerful-sounding formulaic language, ought to be quite enough to satisfy his antagonists, but that isn\u2019t how things play out. Northumberland brusquely offers him a document that he must read in front of the Commons and others around him, a paper containing his allegedly numerous and grave crimes and those of his followers, the better to show Bolingbroke\u2019s righteousness in seizing the crown from him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard seems incredulous, and this leads him to become angry. He calls others and himself a traitor since, as he describes his actions, \u201cI have given here my soul\u2019s consent \/ T\u2019undeck the pompous body of a king, \/ Made glory base, a sovereignty a slave, \/ Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant\u201d (534, 4.1.242-45). This anger, in turn, leads Richard to contemplate the strangeness of his existential state: he has no name, no proper identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he offers us a startling figure: \u201cOh, that I were a mockery king of snow, \/ Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, \/ To melt myself away in water-drops\u201d (534, 4.1.253-55). [27]<\/a> The lines are so remarkable that we almost forget Richard isn\u2019t <\/em>such a sad royal snowman, melting into oblivion before his sun-like vanquisher. The question is still, for him and us, what remains of Richard of Bordeaux, formerly King of England?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The metaphor of self-understanding that Richard settles upon is not that of melting water, it is a figure that involves reflection. He commands that a mirror be brought to him \u201cThat it may show me what a face I have, \/ Since it is bankrupt of his majesty\u201d (534, 4.1.259-60). When he beholds his image, his first remark is one of surprise that he can\u2019t see the effects of his \u201csorrow\u201d (534, 4.1.270) in his visage. He declares that \u201cA brittle glory shineth in this face, \/ As brittle as the glory is the face\u201d (535, 4.1.280-81) and dashes the mirror to the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There the mirror lies, shattered\u2014\u201ccracked in an hundred shivers\u201d (535, 4.1.282). In his influential reading, Ernst Kantorowicz finds that Richard\u2019s gesture marks the now-former King\u2019s abandonment of any last attempt to keep together the duality, the \u201ctwo bodies,\u201d that a monarch contains: the ordinary one\u2014which Richard in breaking suggests is the only one remaining to him\u2014and the sacred, corporate, and effectively immortal one wherewith he represents his entire people, or the nation. He is now no more than himself, a mortal, vulnerable man surrounded by powerful enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbroke seems startled by this gesture, and tries to tame it by suggesting to Richard, \u201cThe shadow of your sorrow hath destroyed \/ The shadow of your face\u201d (535, 4.1.285-86), but the now-deposed king is not to be dismissed so easily. Richard\u2019s reply is similar to the one that Hamlet offers his mother Gertrude when she tries to cheer him up regarding his father\u2019s death: \u201cI have that within which passes show, \/ These but the trappings and the suits of woe.\u201d [28]<\/a> The full reality of Richard\u2019s grief is unavailable to the likes of Henry Bolingbroke, and not reducible to his words and gestures alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though Richard II <\/em>is not among Shakespeare\u2019s most-performed plays, the scene just examined is surely among the finest he ever composed. [29]<\/a> Throughout the scene, Richard all but \u201csteals the show\u201d while his victorious opponent finds that he has his hands full in trying to limit the damage Richard is causing him as he tries to bring about a smooth, if forced, transfer of power. Bolingbroke is nothing if not a skillful politician, and he wants his ascension to happen gracefully, but Richard undercuts this carefully staged production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The former king\u2019s metaphors and figures, his musings about identity and nothingness in the face of those who simply want him out of the way, hold their own. In history King Richard II was crushed, but Shakespeare is not writing the play for Bolingbroke, he\u2019s writing it for his contemporaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard is called upon to play his part dutifully and abdicate, but he is too much of an actor for that. He insists upon his grief as a private man and underscores the heavy and solemn nature of the act that is taking place\u2014it is more than the \u201cshow trial\u201d that Bolingbroke wants it to be. Henry wants hollow formalism, but Richard puts on a Stanislavsky \u201cmethod acting\u201d master class, in that his performance is grounded in the depths of his own experiences and emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, Bolingbroke at last manages to end the ordeal. In truth, he has little time for such high drama and philosophical speculation. He promises to grant Richard one wish, and that wish is \u201cgive me leave to go\u201d (535, 4.1.306), the sharp returning question is \u201cWhither?\u201d The first idea is that Richard must be taken to the Tower of London, there to remain a prisoner until his death. But as it will turn out, Pomfret (Pontefract Castle in West Yorkshire), will be his final lodgings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbroke has tried to keep his seizure of the crown more or less civil, but in the end, Richard undermines that effort when he picks up on the command that he be \u201cconveyed\u201d to the Tower, saying, \u201cConveyors are you all \/ That rise thus nimbly by a true king\u2019s fall\u201d (535, 4.1.310-11). In effect, as the Norton editor notes, Richard calls all of his antagonists thieves.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To end the scene, the Abbot, Carlisle, and Aumerle discuss among themselves the possibility of reversing this coup against King Richard II, to whom they remain loyal. The Abbot invites the other two to dinner, saying that he has a plan to make things right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ACT 5<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Act 5, Scene 1 (536-38, Queen Isabella is dismayed at Richard\u2019s passivity; she says goodbye to him and will be sent to France; Richard, who will be lodged at Pomfret Castle, warns Northumberland about the fickleness of destiny and friends.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queen Isabella of Valois tries to revive Richard\u2019s spirits, but she finds it impossible. This scene between a well-matched husband and wife is pure imagination on Shakespeare\u2019s part since Isabella was nine years old in 1399, the year in which this part of the play is set, but it may be patterned somewhat after Marlowe\u2019s portrait of Queen Isabella of France, the wife of another ill-fated king, Edward II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any event, the Queen makes known her dismay at how abject Richard has become, asking him, \u201cHath Bolingbroke \/ Deposed thine intellect?\u201d (536, 5.1.27-28) But by this time, Richard is most concerned that his sad story become a royal winter\u2019s tale. Evidently, he has already transitioned into a melancholy, reflective post-reign mode, and is trying to imagine a time beyond the span of his life. He suggests to the Queen, \u201cTell thou the lamentable fall of me \/ And send the hearers weeping to their beds\u201d (537, 5.1.44-45). In this way, she will keep his memory alive, at least among the company she keeps by the fireside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard\u2019s eloquence never truly deserts him, as we see when he goes on to say to Isabella, \u201cthe senseless brands will sympathize \/ The heavy accent of thy moving tongue \/ And in compassion weep the fire out \u2026\u201d (537, 5.1.46-48). It is worth asking how much \u201ccompensation\u201d Richard\u2019s evergreen eloquence brings him in his ordeal of grief and loss\u2014perhaps this is an unanswerable question, but it arises because Shakespeare shows a strong and consistent interest in the many uses of fine language, as well as in its limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard, about to be sent to Pomfret rather than the Tower, exchanges some pointed words with the new King Henry IV\u2019s ally Northumberland, aka Henry Percy. He calls Percy the \u201cladder wherewithal \/ The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne \u2026\u201d (537, 5.1.55-56), [30]<\/a> and predicts that this great lord who so strongly supported the new king\u2019s violent usurpation of the throne will soon distrust Henry IV, just as Henry will come to consider him a deadly enemy: understandably, neither man will trust the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Northumberland is unfazed, and responds, \u201cMy guilt be on my head, and there an end\u201d (537, 5.1.69). It\u2019s time for Richard to go to Pomfret, and his young Queen to France. [31]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 5, Scene 2 (538-41, Bolingbroke rides to his coronation at Westminster in October 1399, with Richard in tow; York, describing the procession to his wife, pledges faith to Bolingbroke, even as he confesses his sadness over Richard\u2019s downfall; York snatches an incriminating paper from his son Aumerle and sets out on horseback to warn the new King about the treasonous plot to assassinate him; Aumerle and the Duchess also head for the court to beg King Henry to pardon Aumerle.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Duke of York describes the coronation procession of Henry Bolingbroke. While he is not without sympathy for the outgoing Richard II, York makes it clear that he knows it\u2019s time to show his loyalty for the incoming sovereign. His stance is hardly heroic, but it\u2019s undeniably practical. He says, \u201cTo Bolingbroke are we sworn subjects now, \/ Whose state and honor I for aye allow\u201d (539, 5.2.39-40). As we say today, \u201cnothing succeeds like success.\u201d Those who have the most to gain and lose generally back the politician who seems most likely to provide security. [32]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Duke of York\u2019s description of Bolingbroke in procession to Westminster is astute: as he relates the sight to his wife the Duchess, \u201cYou would have thought the very windows spake, \/ So many greedy looks of young and old \/ Through casements darted their desiring eyes \/ Upon his visage \u2026\u201d (538, 5.2.12-15). It seems as if almost the whole population of London has pinned its hopes on the success of the new king, and York\u2019s account makes him sound like a late-medieval rock star. Henry Bolingbroke, as Shakespeare portrays him, is an accomplished politician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Bolingbroke rides towards his coronation, Richard\u2019s sad role is to serve as the cleanup act. He shows almost Christlike patience in this new role. York describes the ex-monarch\u2019s fate as follows: \u201cAs in a theater the eyes of men, \/ After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, \/ Are idly bent on him that enters next, \/ Thinking his prattle to be tedious \u2026\u201d (539, 5.2.23-26), so it goes with Richard of Bordeaux. No friends commiserate with him in the crowd, and in fact they throw dust on his head, but he suffers it all without any display of anger at the surly, disrespectful crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now a potential domestic disaster looms for the Duke of York when he discovers\u2014however implausibly\u2014on his son Aumerle\u2019s person a document directly implicating the young man in a treasonous plot to assassinate Henry IV. Brushing aside with almost comic brusqueness the pleas of his wife the Duchess, York sets out to warn the king even though it means condemning his own son\u2014something he seems eager to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 5, Scene 3 (541-44, King Henry IV is worried about his son Hal\u2019s madcap behavior and absence from court; Aumerle arrives at Henry\u2019s chamber first and implores him for a pardon; York then shows up and rails until the King admits him; York reveals the Oxford plot as detailed in Aumerle\u2019s incriminating document; the Duchess arrives and all three family members kneel before the king, two for Aumerle\u2019s pardon and York for his execution; Henry magnanimously pardons Aumerle for this dire offense; all the same, the other conspirators will be hunted down and condemned.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning of this scene, we hear King Henry IV\u2019s first mention of his troublesome son, Prince Hal, who will one day become one of England\u2019s most celebrated kings for his prowess in defeating the French at Agincourt in 1415. [33]<\/a> But just at the moment, the King\u2019s fond hopes for the young roustabout seem rather badly misplaced, as by the King\u2019s own telling, Hal \u201cdaily doth frequent \/ With unrestrain\u00e8d loose companions \u2026\u201d (541, 5.3.6-7). The distraught father calls his absentee son a \u201cyoung wanton and effeminate boy \u2026\u201d (541, 5.3.10). This is hardly what a king hopes for in his future successor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are no doubt being asked to understand that Bolingbroke\u2019s anxiety stems from the possibility that Prince Hal will turn out to be as reckless and irresponsible as Richard II, the man his father has just deposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The action that ensues is essentially comic, with the Duke of York adopting an attitude similar to that of the severe ancient Roman nobleman who, in the historian Livy\u2019s recounting, executed his own son rather than mitigate just punishment for the young man\u2019s crimes against the state. [34]<\/a> His wife, the Duchess of York, kneels for the principle that any mother must have tender feelings towards her child and that those feelings must be respected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confronted with this spectacle, which would make pretty good modern \u201creality TV,\u201d what does Henry Bolingbroke do? He generously sides with the Duchess and with Aumerle, although he decrees the execution of \u201cthe rest of that consorted crew\u201d (544, 5.3.138). Apparently, now that the feckless Richard II has been deposed, Henry plans to preside over a kinder, gentler court and England. The reign of King Henry IV lasted from late September 1399 to his death in March 1413. [35]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 5, Scene 4 (544-44, <\/strong>Sir Piers Exton, reflecting on King Henry\u2019s overheard wish that the still-living Richard of Bordeaux be dealt with once and for all, makes the fateful determination to carry out that wish.)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Henry II against Thomas \u00e0 Beckett a few centuries back in 1170, King Henry IV voices his desire to be rid of the person (Richard of Bordeaux) whose continued existence troubles him. And like Henry II, he is overheard by a supporter eager to do his bidding. This time, it\u2019s Sir Piers Exton, an ambitious knight. The similarity of the two kings\u2019 conduct indicates rough sailing ahead for the conscience of Henry IV. Henry II, students of history may recall, is said to have felt so guilty about Beckett that he ended up donning sackcloth and having himself scourged through the streets of London. [36]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 5, Scene 5 (544-47, Imprisoned at Pomfret, aka Pontefract Castle, Richard meditates on ambition, misfortune and death; he receives as visitors one of his former stable grooms as well as the prison warder; Sir Piers Exton and his gang of thugs enter bearing arms; Richard slays several of these men, only to be fatally stabbed by Exton.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the penultimate scene of Richard II, <\/em>Shakespeare provides a well-rounded, dramatic conclusion to the fallen King Richard II\u2019s life. He borrows the basic idea from Holinshed\u2019s Chronicles<\/em> that Richard was murdered by Exton, but there is no historical evidence that this is how Richard actually died. [37]<\/a> When we see the former king at the beginning of Scene 5, his speech is true to character: \u201cI have been studying how to compare \/ This prison where I live unto the world; \/ And, for because the world is populous \/ And here is not a creature but myself, \/ I cannot do it. Yet I\u2019ll hammer\u2019t out\u201d (544, 5.5.1-5).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So sits Richard of Bordeaux in his cell at Pomfret, philosophizing about himself, his surroundings, and the world. This is his particular way of practicing the medieval art of dying well, ars moriendi.<\/em> [38]<\/a> He examines the notion that so many other disgraced actors in the world have hit upon, which is simply that \u201cthey are not the first of Fortune\u2019s slaves, \/ Nor shall not be the last \u2026\u201d (545, 5.5.24-25). As always, Richard regards himself as an actor, so his take on this timeworn idea is, \u201cThus play I in one prison many people, \/ And none contented\u201d (545, 5.5.31-32).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sum of such exercises, Richard finds, is not much compensation, but rather a melancholy admission that \u201cNor I, nor any man that but man is, \/ With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased \/ With being nothing\u201d (524, 5.5.39-41). Only death puts an end to suffering, and to speculation of the sort that is dear to Richard. Even the best of his reflections won\u2019t \u201ccompose\u201d him, won\u2019t give him peace or produce any change in his final predicament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard has been above all, he suggests, a waster of time, and he recognizes too late that time is bound to waste the waster in return: \u201cI wasted time, and now doth Time waste me; \/ For now hath Time made me his numb\u2019ring clock \u2026\u201d (545, 5.5.49-50). [39]<\/a> For Richard, as we follow his metaphor, time no longer flows like the sand in an hourglass; it is measured in and on his body like the movements of a ticking clock, and the passage of time\u2019s units consists of \u201csighs and tears and groans\u201d (546, 5.5.57), all while Henry Bolingbroke goes about his kingly affairs. [40]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The temporal figure Richard uses may be peculiar to him, but there is something typical about his musings at this point, an air or attitude that makes him sound like one of the ghostly speakers in A Mirrour for Magistrates, <\/em>with their sententiae<\/em> summing up the value of a life and the cost of grave mistakes. [41]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is clear that Richard, though humbled, is unable to arrive at the patience he seeks. He holds a brief conversation with a stable groom who used to dress the horse that Richard rode, only to see it bear Bolingbroke to glory. This is the last sympathetic voice that Richard hears, though, as the young man is ushered out by the Keeper, who so angers the former king by refusing to sample his food that he earns for it an outburst and a beating: \u201cThe devil take Henry of Lancaster and thee!\u201d (547, 5.6.102)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moments later, Richard\u2019s murderers make their entrance, and the ex-king dies courageously, even killing some of his assassins. Exton reminds us of the theological dimensions of what has just happened when he realizes he has purchased nothing but damnation by doing the new king\u2019s bidding: \u201cOh, would the deed were good! \/ For now the devil that told me I did well \/ Says that this deed is chronicled in hell\u201d (547, 5.5.114-16). The historical date of Richard\u2019s death was February 14, 1400. [42]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Act 5, Scene 6 (547-48, Henry IV learns that his enemies have been captured and executed; he pardons the Bishop of Carlisle; Exton brings Richard\u2019s corpse to Henry and is banished for his regicidal act; Henry makes plans to overcome further rebellion and distributes honors; the new king declares that he will undertake a crusade to the Holy Land to assuage his guilt over Richard\u2019s death.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

King Henry IV starts this scene by summing up the situation as it now stands: rebels have burned Cicester in Gloucester to the ground. But right away, in comes Northumberland (Henry Percy) to tell him that the main would-be assassins, the so-called Oxford conspirators who signed Aumerle\u2019s letter, have been captured and executed: Percy tells him, \u201cI have to London sent \/ The heads of Salisbury, Spencer, Blunt, and Kent\u201d (547, 5.6.7-8). Fitzwater adds a few more traitors to the list (Broccas and Sir Benet Seely).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of early 1400, the new King Henry IV has work to do in putting down rebellions against him\u2014disorders that will stretch forward to around 1408, and that begin with the Oxford Conspiracy that threatened to end his reign as soon as it began. [43]<\/a> Just now, however, Henry distributes honors to his supporters and pardons the Bishop of Carlisle, establishing a precedent of generosity and gratitude over against Richard II\u2019s venal, selfish, and corrupt administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exton, remover of Henry\u2019s worst fear, is rewarded only with his own guilt as the assassin of an anointed king. Henry curses him with the words, \u201cWith Cain go wander through the shade of night \/ And never show thy head by day nor light\u201d (548, 5.6.42-43). The new king\u2019s response to Exton\u2019s atrocity is of course hypocritical and yet somehow genuine. Henry believes that this \u201cpoison\u201d (38) was necessary, but hates the poisoner and still has some regard for the one poisoned\u2014Richard was, after all, his cousin, and the two had known each other since childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play ends with King Henry IV in a penitent mood, declaring openly his grief \u201cThat blood should sprinkle me to make me grow\u201d (548, 5.6.46). What he is now confronting is the brutal, proto-Machiavellian truth that not only must a king deal with maintaining his \u201ctwo bodies\u201d in a productive relationship, but that even the supposedly glorious, corporate, symbolic body that is the monarchy itself is often obtained and kept by the bloodiest and most impure means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understandably, then, the stricken King Henry IV desperately wants to engage in a crusade to retake Jerusalem to expiate his guilt, but as it will turn out, he has far too much on his plate to indulge himself in the luxury of self-reproach. [44]<\/a> Although Henry had undertaken religion-based travels\u2014an expedition to Lithuania to aid the Teutonic Knights in 1390 and then, in 1392, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem\u2014before he became king, he never did undertake a crusade during his reign, which lasted from late 1399 to 1413. [45]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there is to be renewal in this Lancastrian dynasty, it will come only with the maturing of Henry IV\u2019s son Prince Hal, who is still a tavern-goer and an actor trying on many parts. In I and II Henry IV,<\/em> the Prince\u2019s role-playing is redeemed because it differs profoundly in its purpose from the self-absorbed poetical and dramatic inclinations that consumed Richard II and ultimately made him unfit to govern. [46]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final Reflections on Richard II<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard is at times a villain, especially early in the play. But he is also a reflective and poetical villain. Students of the play should probably, therefore, consider the extent to which the observations and moral sententiae<\/em> or summings-up he repeats with gathering pathos redeem him as a man with tragic insight into the nature of kingship. Does such language simply flow from, and amount to, self-pity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another question concerns the element of tragedy in Richard II. <\/em>The play is Henry IV\u2019s triumph, but it is Richard\u2019s tragedy. The question of tragedy in relation to Christianity is a vexed one since, of course, there\u2019s no question of positing a merely chaotic, senseless universe. Richard\u2019s fall was avoidable in that it wasn\u2019t simply \u201cfated\u201d (i.e. in the sense of there being some external power that had decreed it would be so) but was instead due to his rapacious disregard for feudal loyalties, prerogatives, and common decency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shakespeare doesn\u2019t follow any unitary model of tragedy\u2014he builds his tragic intensities and ideals circumstantially, from one set of dramatic materials to the next. In this way, he is able to bring out whatever makes excellent drama in his source material. A notion of tragedy as broad as \u201ca fall from good fortune to bad\u201d serves a playwright of his astonishing caliber as a sufficient point of departure, while in a lesser author, it might result in general insipidity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One possibility to consider: aside from political philosophy, perhaps the play could be read as an argument between a vision centered on ceremony, the sacred, and the aesthetic dimension of experience (a Catholic vision, if we don\u2019t mind the proleptic reference) and a mindset that tends strongly towards clarity and the practical consideration of how to get and hold power. That would be Bolingbroke\u2019s proto-Machiavellian approach, and we might also note in Henry the existence of a practical, iconoclastic, proto-Protestant sensibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tragedy, if we follow the Hegelian interpretation of that genre, must wrestle with competing sets of rights, as when Antigone, in the Sophocles play by that name, battles Creon over the granting of proper burial rites for her slain brother: both have a kind of right on their side. [47]<\/a> In the current play, it may be that we are to dismiss neither Richard\u2019s aesthetic and ceremonial sensibilities nor Henry Bolingbroke\u2019s businesslike understanding of power\u2019s imperatives. Would the perfect prince be the one who combines both?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bolingbroke is hardly liberated by his assumption of power from the sort of questions that nag at the deposed Richard. Indeed, he will return to just such questions from the moment he learns that his death-wish against Richard has been overheard and carried out. The blood on Bolingbroke\u2019s hands turns out to be as durable as the \u201canointed balm\u201d that Richard had claimed could never be washed from a king\u2019s sacred body, even by all the water in \u201cthe rough rude sea.\u201d [48]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard II is deeply flawed, but we can\u2019t easily dismiss him. The Richard who suffers and dies at the play\u2019s end can\u2019t be facilely reduced to the sum of the acts that brought him to his sorrow. Richard II <\/em>is partly about a gruff, ugly transfer of power, but Richard, by his own qualities and intelligence, himself calls upon us to consider the value of an essentially poetical way of seeing and being that stretches beyond the kingly circumstances of his own existence and into the realms of ultimate meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edition.<\/strong>\u00a0Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors.\u00a0The Norton Shakespeare: Histories + Digital Edition.<\/em>\u00a03rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93859-3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9 2012, revised 2025 Alfred J. Drake<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Document Timestamp: 2\/18\/2026 5:08 PM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ENDNOTES<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Henry Bolingbroke was the son of John of Gaunt, King Edward III\u2019s third-eldest surviving son. Thus, Henry was Richard of Bordeaux\u2019s first cousin. Both men were born in 1367. Henry was a high-ranking \u201croyal,\u201d but there is a great difference between being the son of Edward III\u2019s third-oldest <\/em>son and being son of his eldest <\/em>son, as Richard was. \u201cSo close, and yet so far,\u201d as the saying goes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Richard of Bordeaux\u2019s grandfather was King Edward III<\/a>, and his father was the illustrious Edward the Black Prince<\/a> (aka Edward of Woodstock), heir to the throne but for his untimely death. Whatever his flaws, King Richard II of England was as \u201clegitimate\u201d as a sovereign can be, at least in terms of birthright. Britannica.com. Accessed 1\/17\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Indeed, Bolingbroke and Mowbray were junior members of the so-called \u201cLords Appellant,\u201d who saw it as their prerogative to interfere with King Richard II\u2019s freedom to set policy during the 1380s. See \u201cRichard II of England<\/a>\u201d (Worldhistoryencyclopedia.com) for an outline of Richard\u2019s troubled reign. Accessed 1\/17\/2025. For fuller studies of Richard\u2019s life and career, see Nigel Saul\u2019s Richard II <\/em>(Yale UP, 1997) and, more recently, Helen Castor\u2019s The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV <\/em>(Avid Reader Press\/Simon & Schuster, 2024).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Edward III\u2019s five adult sons were as follows, in order of seniority: 1) Edward the Black Prince, aka the Prince of Wales, heir apparent; 2) Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence; 3) John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; 4) Edmund of Langley, Duke of York; and 5) Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> See Romans 12:19<\/a>. Geneva Bible 1599. Biblegateway.com. Accessed 1\/4\/2025. St. Paul was drawing from Deuteronomy 32:35<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> See Bate, Jonathan.  <\/strong>Soul of the Age, A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare. <\/em>New York: Random House, 2010, pp. 61-63. See also Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture: A Study of the Idea of Order in the Age of Shakespeare, Donne and Milton.<\/em> New York: Vintage, 1959. Orig. pub. 1943. ISBN-13: \u200e978-0394701622. See pg. 17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The History of Henry the Fourth. <\/em>Aka The First Part of Henry the Fourth.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories,<\/em> 3rd ed. 629-95. See 669-70, 3.2.60-84.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> Richard II undertook two expeditions to Ireland, in 1394 and 1399 respectively. See \u201cThe Reign of Richard II, 1377 to 1399<\/a>.\u201d BBC History. Accessed 1\/17\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a> See Norton footnote 6 for pg. 501, which refers in part to \u201ctax farming\u201d by medieval royal administrations, which meant contracting out for tax collection services, or to leasing crown land for rent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a> See Sumption, Jonathan. The Hundred Years War I: Trial by Battle.<\/em> U of Pennsylvania Press, 1999 and The Hundred Years Warr II: Trial by Fire. <\/em>U of Penn. Press, 2001. See also Green, David. The Hundred Years War: A People\u2019s History. <\/em>Yale UP, 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a> John of Gaunt was just shy of 59 years of age at his death in Feb. 1399, but that was considered a robust lifetime in late-medieval England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12]<\/a> David Mitchell makes this point with good humor in discussing the early history of Britain in his recent history of England\u2019s rulers, Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England\u2019s Kings and Queens. <\/em>New York: Crown, 2023. See in particular pp. 28-29.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[13]<\/a> See the entry Ravenspurn<\/a> at Wikishire. This seaside town has long since sunken under the ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[14]<\/a> In reality, Queen Isabella of Valois, sister to the same Catherine of Valois who would later become Henry V\u2019s bride, was not a mature woman in the 1390s but a very young girl. She was born in 1389, and was married at the age of six to Richard in 1396. The marriage was never consummated since she was too young and Richard was deposed in 1399, when Isabella was a few months away from her tenth birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[15]<\/a> That connection will end with the rebellious Hotspur dead, killed by King Henry IV\u2019s son Prince Hal during the climactic battle at Shrewsbury, which in Shakespeare\u2019s I Henry IV <\/em>occurs in Act 5, Scene 4. See Shakespeare, William. The History of Henry the Fourth. <\/em>Aka The First Part of Henry the Fourth.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories,<\/em> 3rd ed. 629-95.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[16]<\/a> See E. M. W. Tillyard\u2019s standard study, The Elizabethan World Picture: A Study of the Idea of Order in the Age of Shakespeare, Donne and Milton<\/em><\/a> <\/em>(Vintage, 1959, first pub. 1943), on the most common among the cultural and other assumptions  made by Shakespeare\u2019s fellow citizens during the Elizabethan Era. Arthur O. Lovejoy\u2019s book The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea<\/em> (Harvard UP, 1976. First published 1933) goes into great detail about the \u201cgreat chain\u201d figure by which so many people figured the boundaries and ultimate nature of the universe. See also Scala Naturae: Great Chain of Being<\/a> and Great Chain of Being, R. Fludd, 1619 (Wikimedia)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[17]<\/a> While the editors of the latest Oxford edition lay claim for Shakespeare to the historical play \u201cKing Edward II,\u201d to this commentator it seems unlikely that Shakespeare would so directly represent a same-sex intimate relationship between the King and his court favorite, Gaveston. He seems more circumspect than that about such matters when it comes to royalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[18]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. King Lear.<\/em> Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840. It is often said that the Fool\u2019s mockery keeps our pity for Lear within healthy bounds, even as he instills pity for the old king.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[19]<\/a> Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King\u2019s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. <\/em>Princeton UP, 2016. Orig. published in 1957. ISBN-13: 978-0691017044. In his chapter on Shakespeare\u2019s Richard II, <\/em>Kantorowicz details, in an analysis of Act 3, Scene 2 (on the Welsh Coast), Act 3, Scene 3 (Flint Castle), and Act 4, Scene 1 (Richard\u2019s elaborate resignation of the crown, a kind of self-deconsecrating), how Richard II tries to hang on to some semblance of his sacramental and mortal duality, only to fail and be confronted with his mere humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each time, in Kantorowicz\u2019s reading, he slides or tumbles precipitately from a regard for the divinity within him to a mere name, a \u201cnominal entity\u201d so to speak, and finally to a suffering, dying human being who, in the end, represents nothing but what poor shards remain of himself. See pp. 24-41.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[20]<\/a> Richard\u2019s observation here is similar to what King Lear says in Act 4, Scene 6 of King Lear: <\/em>\u201cThey told me I was everything. \u2019Tis a lie. I am not ague-proof\u201d (823, 4.6.104-05). Both Lear and Richard have been told that they are something more than human, and they find out to their grief how false that claim is. This is a traditional theme\u2014fear or self-interest will lead counselors to delude the powerful about their true circumstances and nature. In this sense, power is an obstacle to understanding, not an advantage. See Shakespeare, William. King Lear.<\/em> Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[21]<\/a> The King\u2019s theatrical nature makes him rehearse again and again both the heights of power and the inevitability of a great fall, as if he has always seen himself as an actor in a tragedy. Like any educated medieval man, Richard seeks the consolation of philosophy by patterning his own life after moral exempla. <\/em>But his temperament is too mercurial to permit him to draw the necessary sustenance for long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[22]<\/a> Herodotus offers an anecdote about the Corinthian ruler Periander, who sent a messenger to the despot Thrasybulos of Miletos. This despot led Periander\u2019s messenger into a field of wheat, and kept cropping the tallest stalks as he passed by, leaving only the middling stalks. The messenger didn\u2019t understand the gesture, but Periander did, and he thus learned how to deal with potential rivals. The Histories, vol. 2<\/a><\/em>. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 1\/4\/2025. Another such story comes to us from the Roman historian Titus Livius. \u201cLivy\u201d explains how the Etruscan King Tarquinius Superbus got across through a messenger what he wanted his son Sextus Tarquinius to do in Gabii. Livy says that he \u201cwent into the palace-garden, deep in thought, his son’s messenger following him. As he walked along in silence it is said that he struck off the tallest poppy-heads with his stick.\u201d Today, this eliminate-the-most-eminent-ones theory is usually called \u201cthe tall poppy theory.\u201d Livy. The History of Rome, Book 1.54<\/a><\/em>. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed 1\/4\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[23]<\/a> Mowbray died in Venice on Sept. 22, 1399. See \u201cThomas Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk<\/a>.\u201d Britannica.com. Accessed 1\/17\/2025. See also the Wikipedia entry for Thomas Mowbray, First Duke of Norfolk<\/a>. Accessed 9\/27\/2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[24]<\/a> King James I considers the theory of the divine right of kings in Basilikon Doron<\/em><\/a> and The True Law of Free Monarchy<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[25]<\/a> As mentioned above, much in Act 4, Scene 1 responds well to Kantorowicz\u2019s reading, which is that Richard tries desperately and successively, but in vain, to hold together \u201cthe king\u2019s two bodies\u201d within his own identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[26]<\/a> In The King\u2019s Two Bodies <\/em>(see note above), Kantorowicz mentions Walter Pater\u2019s remarks on this moment in \u201cShakespeare\u2019s English Kings\u201d from Appreciations, with an Essay on Style<\/a>. London: Macmillan, 1889, repr. 1924. Pater refers to the play as \u201cthe most touching of all examples of the irony of kingship\u201d (196). Then on 205, he writes, \u201cIn the Roman Pontifical, of which the order of Coronation is really a part, there is no form for the inverse process, no rite of \u2018degradation\u2019\u2026. It is as if Shakespeare had had in mind some such inverted rite, like those old ecclesiastical or military ones, by which human hardness, or human justice, adds the last touch of unkindness to the execution of its sentences \u2026.\u201d It\u2019s worth remarking, though, that it is Richard II himself who insists on performing this rite, thereby stretching out the intended cruelty of the whole affair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[27]<\/a> We may be reminded here of a similarly striking image in The Comedy of Errors. <\/em>Antipholus of Syracuse refers to his search for his lost family, saying, \u201cI to the world am like a drop of water \/ That in the ocean seeks another drop, \/ Who, falling there to find his fellow forth, \/ Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself\u201d (282, 1.2.35-39). See Shakespeare, William. The Comedy of Errors.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 278-321.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[28]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. <\/em>Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. Combined text 358-447. See 365, 1.2.85-86.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[29]<\/a> See footnote 3 to pg. 532 Norton. The editors say that the deposition scene was probably cut from the original for some years since it only shows up in 1608, well over a decade from the time of writing. The Norton editors refer to the politically sensitive nature of staging or describing the deposition of a king.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[30]<\/a> In using this figure, Richard anticipates Sir Francis Bacon\u2019s line in his essay \u201cOf Great Place<\/a>,\u201d \u201cAll rising to great place is by a winding stair\u2026.\u201d Bartleby.com. Accessed 1\/17\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[31]<\/a> The historical Isabella went on to marry the Duke of Orl\u00e9ans, but she died of childbirth at the age of nineteen. Her sister, Catherine of Valois, married Henry IV\u2019s son and successor, Henry V. They were married in 1420, but the marriage lasted only two years since Henry V, one of the most illustrious of England\u2019s kings due to his victory over the French at Agincourt in October 1415, died in 1422. See Britannica\u2019s entry \u201cCatherine of Valois<\/a>.\u201d Accessed 1\/17\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[32]<\/a> A timely quote by Sir John Harington (circa 1560-1612) speaks to the issue of switching sides after a conflict: \u201cTreason doth never prosper, what\u2019s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.\u201d Sir John Harington, \u201cOf Treason,\u201d The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington\u2026,<\/em> ed. Norman E. McClure, book 4, epigram 5, p. 255 (1977). Harington\u2019s epigrams were published in 1618, just a few years after Shakespeare\u2019s death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[33]<\/a> Agincourt, or Azincourt, is in the northern sector of France, i.e. Hauts de France. In 2013, Scott Manning posted a detailed report on the battlefield as it lies today. See \u201cIf you visited Agincourt today\u2026.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[34]<\/a> For an account of the consul Titus Manlius Torquatus executing his son for disobeying an order not to engage with the enemy, see Titus Livius, The History of Rome, Books 1-8<\/a>. <\/em>Gutenberg e-text. See Book 8, paragraph 7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[35]<\/a> Henry IV\u2019s reign is covered in Shakespeare\u2019s two plays Henry IV, Pt. 1<\/em> and Henry IV, Pt. 2, <\/em>although the focus in them is on Prince Hal, not the King himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[36]<\/a> With regard to King Henry II\u2019s act of penance in 1174, see \u201cThomas Becket, Henry II, and Dover Castle<\/a>.\u201d English-heritage.org.uk. Accessed 1\/17\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[37]<\/a> See \u201cShakespeare\u2019s King Richard II: <\/em>Drama Versus History<\/a>.\u201d J. M. Pressley, the Shakespeare Resource Center. Accessed 1\/17\/2025. It\u2019s thought that Richard was starved to death, which is probably a worse fate than being stabbed by an ambitious knight and dying forthwith. See also the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust\u2019s brief gloss, \u201cShakespeare\u2019s Richard II: <\/em>Myth or Reality?<\/a>\u201d by Wahseem Ahmed, August 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[38]<\/a> On the ars moriendi<\/em> tradition, see, for example, William Perneby\u2019s 1599 treatise, A direction to death: teaching man the way to die well, that being dead, he may live ever \u2026.<\/em><\/a> <\/em>This text is representative of the ars moriendi <\/em>genre in English. As the main speaker says, \u201ca man is to prepare himselfe to die ere euer hee comes to die, because the greatest worke a man hath to finish in this worlde, is to die\u2026.\u201d London: Thomas Man, 1599. Oxford Text Archive. Accessed 3\/21\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[39]<\/a> Shakespeare\u2019s representation of time is noteworthy on more than this occasion. See, for example, Feste\u2019s figure of a child\u2019s spinning top as he admits his part in the mean prank played against Malvolio: \u201cAnd thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges\u201d (797, 5.1.363).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[40]<\/a> See Norton footnote 6 for pg. 545.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[41]<\/a> See A Mirror for Magistrates, Vol. 1<\/a><\/em> and Vol. 2<\/a>. HathiTrust. Accessed 1\/17\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[42]<\/a> On this account\u2019s provenance and almost certain falsity, see Saul, Nigel. Richard II.<\/em> Yale English Monarchs Series. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1997. 424-28. Saul\u2019s view of the evidence is that the former king was starved to death by his jailers at Pomfret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[43]<\/a> See “Epiphany Rising 1400<\/a>.” Thehundredyearswar.co.uk. Accessed 8\/26\/2025. The rebellions faced by Henry IV will, of course, spread across the two Henry IV <\/em>plays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[44]<\/a> See Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/a>. <\/em>Gutenberg e-text. The narrator says in Chapter VIII, \u201cThere is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[45]<\/a> On Henry Bolingbroke\u2019s early 1390 military adventure in Lithuania and then his 1392 pilgrimage to Jerusalem, see \u201cAdventures of a Future King\u2014Henry Bolingbroke and the siege of Vilnius 1390<\/a>.\u201d Lost Fort Blog, Gabriele Campbell. Accessed 1\/17\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[46]<\/a> Shakespeare\u2019s portrayal of Prince Hal\u2019s misconduct is temporally adjusted\u2014the Prince was 14 years old when his father became King Henry IV, and therefore he was a bit too young to be up to no good with Sir John Falstaff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[47]<\/a> On Georg Hegel\u2019s theory of tragedy, see \u201cHegel, Theory of Tragedy<\/a>.\u201d Britannica.com. Accessed 1\/17\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[48]<\/a> See current Norton edition 519, 3.2.49-50: \u201cNot all the water in the rough rude sea \/ Can wash the balm from an anointed king.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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