I have always loved the poetry of Richard II. Lots of great lines.
“RICHARD II […] The accuser and the accusèd freely speak.
High-stomached are they both, and full of ire,
In rage, deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.”
(Act 1 scene 1)
Or:
“MOWBRAY […] The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation—that away,
Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay.
A jewel in a ten-times-barred-up chest
Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast;
Mine honor is my life, both grow in one;
Take honor from me, and my life is done…”
(ibid.)
In time and in style, Richard II is close to Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream—the verse is more regular, there is more rhyme—quite different from the knotty language of the later plays.
“RICHARD What says he?
NORTHUMBERLAND Nay, nothing, all is said;
His tongue is now a stringless instrument;
Words, life and all, old Lancaster hath spent.”
(Act 2 scene 1)
The play is full of great speeches—you know the famous “This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle” speech? It’s in this play.
Undeniably magnificent is the poetry of Richard II. And yet I have felt that I didn’t quite get the play, mostly because I didn’t quite get Richard.
When he’s back from Ireland, hearing about Bolingbroke’s uprising, he says:
“… Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an anointed king…”
(Act 3 scene 2)
Not long after:
“RICHARD But now the blood of twenty thousand men
Did triumph in my face, and they are fled;
And till so much blood thither come again,
Ave I not reason to look pale and dead?
All souls that will be safe fly from my side,
For Time hath seat a blot upon my pride.
AUMERLE Comfort, my liege, remember who you are.
RICHARD I had forgot myself: am I not King?...”
(ibid.)
He has seen himself as lost before getting defeated. He has let go before having to give up his crown.
Shakespeare gives him some great speeches.
“RICHARD […] For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed,
All murdered—for within 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,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and, humored thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!...”
(ibid.)
All is vanity. When Lear has lost everything, he realises at last there’s not much difference between a king and poor Tom. So does Richard.
“RICHARD […] Throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty.
For you 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?”
(ibid.)
More than any other Shakespeare play, Richard II examines what it means to be a king. In some way, the play makes me think of King Lear: in the abdication scene, for example, Richard repeats several times the word “nothing”, which recurs throughout King Lear; Richard says “I have no name, no title” and “know not now what name to call myself”, which is similar to Lear’s feeling of loss of identity when he has lost his power and gets treated abominably by his daughters. But Richard is not a larger-than-life character like Lear or Macbeth; he doesn’t have the stature and vitality of Lear or Richard III; he is small and becomes smaller and smaller as he withdraws more into himself towards the latter part of the play.
But look at the mirror moment:
“RICHARD […] Was this the face
That, like the sun, did make beholders wink?
Was this the face that faced so many follies,
And was at last outfaced by Bolingbroke?
A brittle glory shineth in this face,
As brittle as the glory is the face.
[Throws glass down]
For there it is, cracked in a hundred shivers,
Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport:
How soon my sorrow hath destroyed my face.”
(Act 4 scene 1)
Shakespeare does something brilliant here. This is a bad king, a corrupt king, a selfish and self-pitying and even self-dramatising king. And yet you can still feel his grief and see his tortured soul underneath all the self-dramatisation.
I have to think some more about his scene in prison and the “a generation of still-breeding thoughts” soliloquy.
I reread Richard II with my friends Michael and Himadri. Follow the discussion!
I love the poetry of this play, it’s just so perfect. Indeed, the poetry is especially musical in this play, and indeed (as so often in Shakespeare), music is mentioned multiple times in the play:
ReplyDeleteMOWBRAY. . . . And now my tongue’s use is to me no more
Than an unstringèd viol or a harp,
Or like a cunning instrument cased up,
Or, being open, put into his hands
That knows no touch to tune the harmony.
. . .
JOHN OF GAUNT. . . . Suppose the singing birds musicians,
. . .
JOHN OF GAUNT. O, but they say the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony:
. . . .
NORTHUMBERLAND Nay, nothing; all is said.
His tongue is now a stringless instrument;
. . . .
RICHARD. . . . . Music do I
hear?
Ha, ha, keep time! How sour sweet music is
When time is broke and no proportion kept.
So is it in the music of men’s lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To check time broke in a disordered string;
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
Another interesting thing I noticed is this time round is the very musical repetition of figures, even phrases or images. Thus, above, Mowbray and Northumberland both use the images of unstringed or stringless instruments – Mowbray because he doesn’t know the language in foreign parties; Northumberland speaking of Gaunt’s death.
But there are other interesting figures that repeat, like echoes at very different points in the play:
Thus Mowbray and Richard, in very different contexts, say similar things about being commanders or kings of their own private feelings:
MOWBRAY. . . My life thou shalt command, but not my shame.
. . .
BOLINGBROKE. I thought you had been willing to resign.
RICHARD. My crown I am, but still my griefs are mine.
You may my glories and my state depose
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.
Duchess of York and Richard use the same phrases a few scenes apart:
DUCHESS
Dost thou teach pardon pardon to destroy?
Ah, my sour husband, my hard-hearted lord,
That sets the word itself against the word!
. . .
RICHARD. . . . The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermixed
With scruples, and do set the word itself
Against the word, as thus:
Gaunt and Richard on necessity:
GAUNT: . . . Teach thy necessity to reason thus:
There is no virtue like necessity.
. . .
RICHARD. . . . I am sworn brother, sweet,
To grim necessity, and he and I
Will keep a league till death.
I don’t think these are coincidences. The music of this play is such that themes reverberate throughout.
Another thing I notice is that Shakespeare gives Richard one of his great speeches about the universality of human experience – the same form of speech he so famously gives Shylock (“Hath not a Jew eyes…”), but also Emelia (“Let husbands know Their wives have sense like them”), and Henry V (“I think the king is but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me.”) Richard’s version of this speech is particularly sad, lonely and pathetic:
ReplyDeleteRICHARD. Throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you 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?
A question I always have about Richard is this – Why does he give up the fight so easily? Bolingbroke does not ostensibly return to take Richard’s crown. Why, in the base court, does he so readily give up his crown? He does so, seemingly without any reason; Bolingbroke certainly wasn't demanding it of him. Why does he essentially depose himself? Is he just bowing to “necessity”? Or is the secret in his initial line, early in the play: “We were not born to sue, but to command.” Richard cannot bear to be figurehead. If he cannot command, he doesn’t want to be king at all. But still, why does he make it so easy for Bolingbroke? Couldn’t he have resisted a little bit more – other than to whine and cry and complain about his misfortune? Once Richard returns home from Ireland, his weakness – his basic flaccidity of character, his lack of inner strength – overcomes him. The scene where he returns from Ireland, his mood oscillates wildly with every piece of news. He lacks all resolution, he lacks guts and will.
The one thing positive I suppose you can say of Richard is that he is not dishonest with himself, ultimately. He is a Lear like figure, as you note – in part because, notwithstanding his tyranny, weakness and corruption, he does ultimately come to an understanding of his own deficiencies as a king:
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To check time broke in a disordered string;
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
It’s a good question: why, indeed, does he give up the crown when abdication wasn’t demanded?
DeleteI’ll be in a better position to answer this when I’ve re-read the play in its entirety (I’m only in Act 2 right now), but from what I remember from my previous reading, Richard, like Lear in the later play, saw his identity as predicated upon the fact of his being a divinely ordained king, whose word was effectively the word of God himself, in John of Gaunt’s words, “God ‘s substitute, His deputy anointed in His sight”. And so, when he finds his authority gone, and himself effectively a prisoner, his very sense of his own identity collapses, and he can no longer go back to being king.
All this may be utter nonsense, of course: it’s been a long time since I last read this.
Thanks for both of your comments. Interesting points. That question bothered me too. You're probably right.
DeleteOn reflection, two more examples of echoing motifs in the play:
ReplyDeleteGaunt regrets his part in counseling the exile of his son (“Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.“) and King Henry regretting the wished-for death of Richard (“They love not poison that do poison need, Nor do I thee: though I did wish him dead,”)
The dispute between Bolingbroke and Mowbry that starts the play is repeated in Aumerle’s dispute with various noblemen at the end. Both are over the same murder. In both, gages are thrown down, and indeed Henry (like Richard before him) tries to control the dissension by ordering Aumerle not to pick up the gage.
Great comments.
ReplyDeleteI did notice the music/ musical instrument motif too. In The Shakespearian Tempests, G. Wilson Knight has the idea that music represents good and harmony, and the other side is disorder and chaos.
Actually, he drew quite a complicated graph.
I only read a bit of it, because his reading of the plays along these lines is a bit distorted, especially in his interpretation of The Merchant of Venice. But the idea of music and harmony is still interesting.
What did you think about Richard's soliloquy in the castle?
One of my favorite speeches in Shakespeare. It’s one I’ve long been intending to commit wholly to memory. It actually encapsulates all of Richard’s strengths and weaknesses. His strength— an ability to be honest with himself about himself. He fully understands how he squandered his own privileges, how his own state was out of tune. His weaknesses— the man cannot stop complaining. His complaints are the highest of poetry, but once things stop going his way in the play, all he can do is lament. In the Arkangel version of the play I listened to (wonderful!), in the earlier scene where he asks for a looking glass, when Henry says “Go some of you and fetch a looking-glass,” it’s almost with a sigh, as if to say “very well, let’s have your little performance.” Henry is clearly tired of having to deal with his spoiled cousin.
DeleteIn this way, I think deeper wisdom escapes Richard. In the way Lear, or even Macbeth, seem to come to a true and deeper understanding of themselves and the world, Richard comes to it only partially. Shakespeare does give us a final redemption only in his death. He may be a moral coward in many ways, but he never lacks physical courage. Like Lear killing the captain who hangs Cordelia, he is able to boldly confront his own assassins.
Good point about physical courage.
DeleteI like that there's a shift, a change in Richard before and after he returns from Ireland. More interesting after, obviously, even though he gets smaller and smaller.
Isn't Richard the problem with the play? I've seen it twice and for all the beautiful lines, no matter how good the actors are, the play isn't dramatic. He is essentially passive. It's difficult to sympathise with him, as it to care for Bolingbroke.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a Tudor version of history is at fault, which saw Bolingbroke's usurpation as being the cause of England's subsequent troubles so he's not the hero of the story, but Richard, as king, lacks any admirable qualities to make us care about him?
I have never seen this play on stage, but from my reading, Richard does indeed, I agree, lack any admirable quality. Richard III lacks admirable qualities too, but his unmitigated and cheerful evil does have about it an energy and a tgeatrical vigour, whereas this Richard seems a small figure, both morally and spiritually. I would guess Shakespeare was - as he was frequently to do - setting himself a challenge.
DeleteHopefully I’ll have a bit more to say about this once I’ve finished re-reading this: it’s been a long time since I ladt read this, and it’s not a play I frequently return to.
Sorry for being so late with this, but I’m only in the middle of Act 2 now. However, a few comments on Act 1:
ReplyDeleteI still find it very surprising that a history play, a play that deals to a great extent with the very un-lyrical themes of political power and political machinations, should be written entirely in verse. And not just that: a surprisingly large proportion of the speeches are in rhymed couplets - of a kind one might expect to see in a romantic comedy, but not in a political play. As if this weren’t enough, a large number of the lines are end-stopped; and even when there are enjambments, the lines are written such that, despite the enjambment, the actor may signal the end of a line by pausing very briefly, or, at least, slowing down at the last word of the line. For instance:
Be Mowbray’s sins so heavy in his bosom
That they may break his foaming courser’s back
And throw the rider headlong in the lists, …
Each line is a self-contained unit, and may easily be delivered as such. In later plays, the line breaks are rarely so apparent as they are here. Compare:
Ah balmy breath that dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword!
No possibility here of the actor to signal that “persuade” is the last word of the line: the two lines here, when spoken, *have* to run on without a break. That is rarely the case in ‘Richard II” - not in Act 1 at least.
Coming as I am to “Richard II” straight from “Coriolanus”, a late play, I can’t help but notice how much simpler, how much less knotty, the language is here. In the later play, Shakespeare manipulates language in often very strange ways. In English, it is quite easy to use a noun as a verb, but Shakespeare in “Coriolanus” takes that to extremes: at one point, for instance, Coriolanus speaks of Menenius as having “godded” him. (Has anyone else, I wonder, ever used “god” as a verb?) But there is nothing like that in “Richard II”. And so, in complete contrast to “Coriolanus” (and to many other of his late works), we have here language that is syntactically quite straight-forward (the syntax in “Coriolanus” is frequently tortured), fluent, and mellifluous. The terse ambivalance and the linguistic tension of the later play is almost entirely absent: instead, there is a straight-forwardness, a clarity: everyone says what they mean to say.
ReplyDeleteBy the end of Act 1, we know surprisingly little about the protagonist. Mowbray and Bolingbroke have both spent much time hurling accusations and defiance at each other, but we know surprisingly little about them too. We don’t even get to find out whether Bolingbroke’s accusations are well-founded, or motivated merely by malice. I frankly find all this a bit odd. In Scenes 1 and 3 - the court scenes - Richard’s role has been formal: he hears out Bolingbroke and Mowbray, and, instead of adjudicating between the two, or seeking to uncover evidence, banishes them both (though Mowbray’s banishment is more severe than Bolingbroke’s). Why he does this is not clarified either. The first time we do enter Richard’s mind is towards the end of the act, where, fat from expressing sorrow at the impending death of John of Gaunt, he actually expresses a delight that he will now be able to get his hands on his uncle’s property. Of course, a bad man can easily be a protagonist: Shakespeare had already written “Richard III”, after all. But unmitigated evil has a theatrical dash and vigour, whereas this Richard’s cupidity and meanness of spirit merely suggests soneone who is morally and spiritually very small. It does seem a strange decision on Shakespeare’s part to choose such a small man as protagonist.
The scene that injects dramatic conflict into the proceedings is not either of the big court scenes, but the brief second scene, where John of Gaunt admits that Richard is a bad king, but nonetheless refuses to oppose him, on the grounds that he rules by “divine right”, and that to oppose him would be to oppose God. This conflict between serving the interests of justice and of the country on one hand, and acceding to the divine right of kingship on the other, will become, of course, one of the major themes of the play.
So cogwheels are certainly set in motion that will create the drama in the rest of the play. But the lyrical presentation of this material; the refusal - in the first act, at least - to delve into the characters’ minds; and, above all, perhaps, the smallness of the protagonist, both spiritual and dramatic, remain puzzling, although this is clearly what Shakespeare had intended.
Yes, the language is remarkably different here. It is quite close to Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream in style. The fact that the whole play is in verse and has no comic relief marks it, however, very different from the Henry IV plays that follow. Is that not interesting?
ReplyDeleteI want to hear your thoughts on Richard after you've reread the whole play.
A rather odd feature of the play’s structure:
ReplyDeleteIt opens with a big confrontation scene. A great many words are spoken by both adversaries. Coming as this does right at the start of the play, we may reasonably expect this conflict to set in motion the rest of the drama. But it doesn’t. It is resolved by the end of the act; one of the adversaries disappear from the rest of the play; and none of this is referred to again.
Of course it leads to the banishment of Bolingbroke, but it seems a cumbersome way just to set that up. If the whole point was the banishment of Bolingbroke, that could easily have been done in a few lines - especially as we aren’t even told *why* Bolingbroke is banished. Is it just an arbitrary act on Richard’s part? Is it a ruse to allow Richard to lay claim to Bolingbroke’s inheritance once John of Gaunt dies? Surely this is important if we are to understand tge protagonist, but we end Act 1 knowing virtually nothing of Richard: virtually the entire act has been soent depicting a conflict that simply fizzles out, and plays no further part in the drama. It’s very strange.
Yeah, I was also puzzled by the first few scenes. Not sure what to make of them.
Delete