Shakespeare, Richard II

“Richard’s defeat is the necessary pre-text [for the rest of the Henriad], and Richard seems obsolete and doomed. To wish Richard had kept his throne is to resist history’s progression and the plays’ focus.” 

The volume of pre-Shakespearean texts is not equal to the volume of post-Shakespearean texts; we have arrived not at the midpoint of our reading list, but something like the close of the first third. Like Dante before him, Shakespeare represents a ledge in our climb: a lookout point upon which to pause and consider how far we’ve come—and how far we still have to go.

It is out of necessity no less than enjoyment that we will be spending many weeks doting upon the Bard. Of his 37 extant plays, we will read 23; of his poetry, we will be reading all of the sonnets and at least one of his longer poems. The majority of these texts will be new to me. If I am forced to commit to the metaphor of the ledge, we will not be spending our time picnicking; this will be work. 

We begin with the histories, which I have never touched before. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I maligned all things historical as part of an extended joke with my father (one that I have not informed him I’m still playing). So not only are the plays new to me, but the history which they narrate. The Henriad—encompassing the plays Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, and Henry V—tells the story of the events leading up to the War of the Roses. Today’s entry on Richard II deals with Henry IV’s deposition of Richard and his ascension to the throne. Richard was the rightful king by divine succession, the process whereby a new king is selected through a lineage instituted by God [citation needed], and Henry’s challenge of that lineage ushers in a period of turmoil, in which many struggle for the throne.

To speak broadly about the histories for a moment, the above quote seems particularly relevant. For us, and for Shakespeare’s original audience, Richard’s divine right to kingship is meaningless in the face of historical fact. Though playwrights take liberties with the truth—and Shakespeare is no exception—it was known that Henry would triumph over the king, and the force of history that drives the action of the play is ineluctable. Which leads us to a consideration: the deposition of Richard represents a rift in history, a point at which the divine order of the world is supplanted by force, both physical and political. Northrop Frye says that it would have been highly unlikely for Shakespeare to have read Machiavelli, but the parallels between the politics of the histories and the Italian’s advice loom large in the landscape of the play. Henry, through his might, unkings Richard; the former exile becomes the monarch, while Richard becomes withdrawn, introspective, and ultimately, a great poet. 

Office Space

The changing titles become a literal representation of what [preface writer] called the “profound uncertainty created by political upheaval.” We would do well to remember Kafka and his world characterized by shifting offices. As the play goes on, the character formerly known as “King” becomes “Richard;” “Henry,” “King.”

Yet more than its heavenly or political association, the identity of king is, like so many of Shakespeare’s offices, “a role to be played.” In the same fashion, the role of the deposed monarch is played to a T by Richard, who seems to gain the ability to wax poetic (in some of Shakespeare's most incredible monologues, in my opinion). “Richard, the consummate actor, must bear the humiliation of being perceived as the lesser performer, who follows ‘a well-graced actor’ on the stage and whose ‘prattle’ is found, in comparison, ‘tedious.’”

Richard, though, seems far more suited to the office of king than Henry. Sure, Henry is the better politician and perhaps even the better leader. But when it comes to divinity, Richard has Henry beat. Consider the evidence. Richard has a deep connection to the earth: he returns to the shores of England, greeting them as “a long-parted mother with her child.” Moreover, he refuses to prune and weed his garden, despite his gardeners pleas. And his dying words anticipate his own afterlife: “Mount, mount, my soul! Thy seat is up on high; / Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.” In falling from kinghood, Richard achieves transcendence. (Also, remember what John of Gaunt says: It doesn’t matter what people have done in their lives; the most weight will be placed on their last words.)

Man of Sorrows

Yet perhaps our exaltations of Richard are due to his receipt of the most powerful form of "dramatic currency", sympathy. Though we hear much of how poor a king he is, we see it rarely compared to the long and supremely poetic speeches we hear him give. 

Perhaps it is an indication of how long it’s been since I’ve read Shakespeare, but I loved Richard II most for its powerful statements of sorrow. As we discussed, it is the sorrow of Richard over his deposition and imminent death that leads him to become a great poet. His lines will come later; first let us see how other characters deal with sorrow.

Henry and Mowbray duel over the latter's alleged treason, but both are exiled by Richard, Henry for ten years and Mowbray for life. Henry’s sentence is then commuted to six years by the “breath of kings” (that is, Richard's words).

When Mowbray is allowed to speak, he laments not the family and friends that he will leave behind, but something much more personal: his language. “And now my tongue’s use is to me no more / Than an unstringed viol or a harp / … / What is thy sentence then but speechless death, / Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?” His exile is tantamount to death, for he has lost the breath of life. (Note also the double meaning of "sentence.")

Though Henry’s six years are a drop in the bucket compared to Mowbray’s sentence, there is another factor: Henry’s father, John of Gaunt, is very old and will likely die before Henry returns (spoiler: he does). For Gaunt, his son may as well have been sentenced to die, for “blindfold death” will not let him see his son. First the dumbness of Mowbray, now the blindness of John of Gaunt.

Henry gives his most powerful speech here, as well: 

“Nay, rather every tedious stride I make / Will but remember me what a deal of world / I wander from the jewels that I love. / Must I not serve a long apprenticehood / To foreign passages and, in the end, / Having my freedom, boast of nothing else /But that I was journeyman to grief?” 

Journeyman to grief. John of Gaunt tries to comfort his son, telling him to think of the foreign countries he will see, and that he must “teach [his] necessity to reason thus: / There is no virtue like necessity.” Gliding past that pregnant Shakespearean statement, Henry continues his lament: 

“O, 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? / Or wallow naked in December snow / By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat? / O, no! The apprehension of the good / Gives but the greater feeling to the worse. / Fell sorrow’s tooth doth never rankle more / Than when he bites, but lancet not the sore.”

John of Gaunt’s sorrows do not end with his son’s departure, because soon after, surprise, he’s dying. Richard says some things to him that may or may not be comforting (take a guess), but when he tells Gaunt encouragingly that he (Gaunt) will live for many years, Gaunt replies, “But not a minute, king, that thou canst give.” Despite “the breath of kings” adding years to Henry’s life, it has proved artificial in the face of a much more powerful and imperious force.

For yet another beautiful example of sorrow from the beginning of the play, we turn to the Queen, Richard’s wife. The queen's attendant tries to comfort her about Richard's future by telling her that her worries are not founded in reality, that they are mere shadows: 

“Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows, / Which shows like grief itself, but is not so; / For sorrow’s eye, glazed with blinding tears, / Divides one thing entire to many objects, / Like perspectives, which rightly gazed upon, / Show nothing but confusion – eyed awry, / Distinguish form.”

Of course such words of comfort are no balm to the Queen’s heart. She responds just as shrewdly: 

“It may be so; but yet my inward soul / Persuades me it is otherwise. Howe’er it be, / I cannot but be sad – so heavy sad / As, though on thinking on no thought I think, / Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink.”

When her servant argues that it is nothing but conceit (that is, imagination), the Queen, heavy sad, responds:

“’Tis nothing less. Conceit is still derived / From some forefather grief. Mine is not so, / For nothing hath begot my something grief, / Or something hath the nothing that I grieve. ‘Tis in reversion that I do possess; / But what it is, that is not yet known – what, / I cannot name. ‘Tis nameless woe, I wot.”

‘Tis nothing less, she says. This brief sentence carries two possible meanings. First, it could be that her feeling is indeed nothing less than conceit; yet, she continues, conceit comes from reality. Alternatively, she could mean that by calling her emotion conceit, he has not reduced it in any way (i.e., “‘tis nothing less” for being called conceit). Regardless of the meaning, the queen asserts the power of imagination to wreak great havoc on her soul.

(Also, as an aside, holy shit what an incredible few lines. “For nothing hath begot my something grief, / Or something hath the nothing that I grieve.” Either her grief, which is real, has come from nothing, from conceit; or she is grieving over something that exists yet has not been identified yet, for it is only “in reversion”, i.e., hindsight, that a vague presentiment becomes reality.)

“Comfort’s in heaven, and we are on the earth.”

Since the play relies heavily on the difference between the divine king Richard and the earthly power of Henry, we see considerable celestial imagery throughout the play. It will come up more often in the two parts of Henry IV, but we see beginnings in Richard II. Salisbury comments that Richard’s glory reminds him of “a shooting star / Fall[ing] to the base earth from the firmament.” Richard is like a heavenly body that has descended to the earth from on high.

One thing I would love to research is whether Shakespeare was influenced by the science of the time. In the 1400s, Copernicus put forth his theory that the earth revolved around the sun, inspiring scientists like Kepler and Galileo to investigate; Thomas Kuhn in his book, The Copernican Revolution, does a masterful job of explaining its significance. But one interesting facet of this debate was the theological twist it received. For centuries, astronomy had been working to reconcile Aristotle’s cosmology with Biblical descriptions of heaven, achieving its most influential representation in Dante’s Inferno. Suddenly, science and religion were inseparable (weird, huh?) and casting doubt on one was tantamount to rejecting both. The order of Dante’s cosmos, unfortunately, stands in stark contrast to the way the real universe works. How aware was Shakespeare, or his England in general, of Copernicus and heliocentricity? Did it influence his writing? 

We will return to these questions in the Henry IVs, but for now, they are interesting to consider.

Woe’s Slave

It is often said that the protagonist of the Henry IV plays is either Falstaff or Prince Hal; in the past, Hotspur was considered the main role; rarely does anyone think that the titular king is the focus of the play. Perhaps people consider the soon-to-be-king Henry the main character of Richard II in the same way he is not the main character of his plays; but if we are talking about compelling characters, Henry would be very, very low on the list. And to me, Richard ranks very, very high. When he is to be deposed (as his stage name changes from “King” to “Richard”), he finds words to match his sorrow. As he comes to terms with his fate—“A king, woe’s slave, shall kingly woe obey,” he laments—he also becomes the unexpected hero of the play. 

Two major speeches showcase his newfound way with words. When he learns about the rebellion effort led by Henry, he becomes despondent, while his supporters urge him to fight. Yet Richard, like a petulant child, does not want to fight; he wants to “sit upon the ground / And tell sad stories of the death of kings!” He continues by describing the burden that comes with wearing the king’s “hollow crown”:

“And there [in the king’s crown] 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! / Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood / With solemn reverence. 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?”

Reverence is a mockery of humanness. Respect is to be cast aside. How can your heart not break when the king of England says “I live with bread like you”? 

His supporters are not so dramatic. The response to his lament?

“My lord, wise men ne’er sit and wail their woes, / But presently prevent the ways to wail. / To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength, / Gives, in your weakness, strength unto the foe, / And so your follies fight against yourself. / Fear, and be slain – no worse can come to fight; / And fight and die is death destroying death, / Where fearing dying pays death servile breath.”

Is this not an answer worthy of Machiavelli? Did we not discuss how the Italian urged people not to accept fate but to “prevent” chance from interfering in their lives at all? Perhaps that is the right advice. But like the attendant's advice to the Queen, it falls upon deaf ears. For how can grief be overcome by wisdom? You simply can’t get there from here. 

Harold Bloom writes that Richard II is unique in its changes in tone, similar to those in Romeo and Juliet, part of a triad of lyrical plays including Rick 2 and A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, whereas the tone shifts in R&J are "overwhelming," those in Richard II seek to "distance us from pathos as far as possible." 

Indeed, watching a performance of the play magnifies the alienation we feel from Richard, whose theatricality is surprising to his friends and flatterers—and to us. Richard is woe's slave, he has no vizier to bear his burdens, and more to the point, he is absolutely unlike the others in the play: he is nearly divine. Henry approaches the kingship with pragmatism, beginning his reign by planning for wars in the Holy Land (which was a sensible thing, apparently), but Richard—who may have once been pragmatic, we don't know—ends his reign with a bang and a whimper.

Bear with me for the following digression. One of the few things I like about the television show The Big Bang Theory is Jim Parsons, who plays the king of social ineptitude, Sheldon Cooper. While the women on the show are the most likable characters, and the other men are by degrees annoying and comically one-dimensional, Sheldon is the only one who is truly weird: weird to his friends, weird to himself, and most importantly, weird to strangers. The episodes where he interacts with the public at large—I'm thinking particularly of "The Egg Salad Equivalency," where he talks with the university's sexual harassment counselor—are the only worthwhile parts of the show. To see how his strangeness is received by those who are not used to it is excellent, and Parsons plays the role admirably.

So too with Richard. While his speeches are incredible, and the cast of characters generally interesting, it is the way others react to him that is so fascinating. In the BBC version of the play, starring Derek Jacobi as Richard, we see the king giving the above speech—and boy does he look out of place. The monarch sitting upon the ground like a child and begging his counselors to sit with him and tell him tales.

Let's close this entry with Richard's final soliloquy. It is direct: he speaks in the first person, unlike Hamlet’s third-person musings on nonbeing. It is concrete, comparing his prison to the world at large. We see him struggling; he is not as effortlessly brilliant as Falstaff, or Prince Hal. Nor is he Prince Hamlet, but his speech is a great matter. Let’s listen in:

"I have been studying how I may 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'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father; and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermix'd
With scruples and do set the word itself
Against the word:
As thus, 'Come, little ones,' and then again,
'It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a small needle's eye.'
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders; how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls,
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune's slaves,
Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars
Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame,
That many have and others must sit there;
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortunes on the back
Of such as have before endured the like.
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented: sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I king'd again: and by and by
Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing. Music do I hear?

Music

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 cheque time broke in a disorder'd 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;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours: but my time
Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy,
While I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock.
This music mads me; let it sound no more;
For though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me it seems it will make wise men mad.
Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me!
For 'tis a sign of love; and love to Richard
Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world."

Stray Observations

• We will talk about Henry IV in our next post, but here’s a preview of who this guy is as king. When his hired gun Exton kills Richard, Henry refuses to thank him, saying: “They love not poison that do poison need, / Nor do I thee. Though I did wish him dead, / I hate the murderer, love him murdered.” What a dick.
• Aumerle: “Comfort, my liege. Remember who you are.” Richard: “I had forgot myself.”
• John of Gaunt’s wife, the duchess of Gloucester: “Yet art thou slain in him. Thou dost consent / In some large measure to thy father’s death / In that thou seest thy wretched brother die, / Who was the model of thy father’s life. / Call it not patience, Gaunt; it is despair. / In suff’ring thus thy brother to be slaughtered / Thou showest the naked pathway to thy life, / Teaching stern murder how to butcher thee. / That which in mean [common] men we entitle patience / Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.” This invective against patience is really fascinating.
• A late-breaking addition: Samuel Coleridge writes that "the Play throughout is an history of the human mind, when reduced to ease its anguish with words instead of action... the characters all talking high, but performing nothing." We might be tempted to say that many of Shakespeare's plays emphasize words over action; not so with the histories (or at least with the portions of the Henriad that I've read so far), for history is full of action. Yet in this (chronologically) first play about a long struggle for the crown, how is the king deposed? Almost voluntarily. There is no battle, little violence. Richard surrenders the crown.