King Richard II - Par Gemina

Notes de lecture, recherches et relevé de citations de Gemina

Usual Pentameter system + variations in alexandrine

ACT I

General negative impression of Richard: yielding to subordinate, responsible for Glouce ‘s death, jealousy, callousness towards Gaunt, arrogance, farming of the lands) yet dramatizing of royal demeanour; Bolingbroke: contrasted too: courage and patriotism yet dubious loyalty, seems to threaten r to take his place

 

Scene 1

Richard central position as judge, Bolingbroke, Mowbray, Gaunt nostalgia for chivalric ideals of lost world of Ed III, Black Prince
Shift formal Thee (arcahism, medieval stiffness) to me /you: unformal; shows Richard’s volatility

King Richard is at Windsor Castle; he has just arrived to arbitrate a dispute between two noble courtiers, Bolingbroke (his cousin) and Mowbray (Duke of Norfolk). Bolingbroke accuses Mowbray of cloudy charges (Shakespeare’s deliberate dramatic strategy) embezzlement, conspiracy against the king and the death of Gloucester (=Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, Richard and Bolingbroke’s uncle). CAIN –revenge image As there is no possibility of reconciliation, Richard sets a date for a duel. His light attitude contrats with the opponants’passion

*Bolingbroke: -:Too good to be so, and too bad to live,
Once more, the more to aggravate the note,
With a foul traitor's name stuff I thy throat;
Mowbray-: The bitter clamour of two eager tongues

*Bolingbroke-...streams of blood ;
Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,
 Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,
To me for justice and rough chastisement;

*King Richard: How high a pitch his resolution soars!
-As he is but my father's brother's son,

*Mow: I am disgraced, impeached, and baffled here; => climatic progression, pilling up
Pierced to the soul with Slander's venomed spear => Prosopopeia
-Take but my shame,
-My dear dear lord => epizeuxis

*Bolingbroke-Ere my tongue
 Shall wound my honour
...my teeth shall tear
...And spit it bleeding in his high disgrace,
Where shame doth harbour => extravagantly bloody rhetoric: Elizabethan taste for gore details

 

Scene 2

Gaunt, Duchess of Gloucester Duchess’s wailfulness introduces tone of desolation and woe that will dominate the play

The Duchess of Gloucester urges Gaunt (Richard and Bolingbroke’s uncle too) to take revenge for his brother’s death. Gaunt refuses to as he knows that Richard has been involved in the murder and he believes that, the King being appointed by God, only the heavens can decide of the punishment. => orthodox doctrine of obedience: tenth HOMILY

-motive of the seven vials of Edward’s sacred blood

*Duchess of Gloucester -Edward's seven sons, whereof thyself art one,
 Were as seven vials of his sacred blood,
 Or seven fair branches springing from one root. => genealogical tree:Tree of Jesse (symbolic ancestry of Christ//Ed III):green-red; blood-vegetation interwoven themes
Some of those seven are dried by nature's course,
Some of those branches by the Destinies =>mythological Fates cutting the thread of life cut
-But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Gloucester,
One vial full of Edward's sacred blood,
One flourishing branch of his most royal root,
Is cracked, and all the precious liquor spilt
 Is hacked down, and his summer leaves all faded,
By Envy's hand and Murder's bloody axe. => Prosopopeia

*Gaunt:-..if wrongfully,/Let heaven revenge...”

*Duchess of Gloucester: unfurnished, unpeopled, untrodden... =>she uses rhyme and blank verse; effect of struggle bet breakdown and control in combination of styles

 

Scene 3

Lord Marshal, Duke of Aumerle, King Richard, Gaunt, Bushy, Bagot, Green, Mowbray,
Bolingbroke

At Coventry, Bolingbroke and Mowbray are fully armed, ready for their duel => formal pageantry and spectacle. But just before it starts, Richard throws his warder down, and, after consulting his advisors, announces banishment (King’s sentimental reduction of Boling’s because of Gaunt’s sadness: whim: “Plucked four away”) to both men.
 Both make their farewell to family before leaving.

*scene of farewell bet Gaunt and Bolingbroke: Gaunt’s images and play on words/Bolingbroke’s pragmatism and realism= stychomythic exchange:

-G: Call it a travel that thou tak’st for pleasure
-B:  My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,
Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.
-G:Teach thy necessity to reason:
Think...suppose...imagine...Suppose....=> positive thinking to cheer his son up
-Bol: O, who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking of the frosty Caucasus? =>refuses the powers of imagination: very unlike Richard.

Bolingbroke’s ref to Pilgrimage cf final words, here symbolical pilgrimage of life, death...
Also to “the falcon’s flight” + “ “lift me up to reach a victory above my head”: ambition
-King’s short farewell to Mowbray + doesn’t kiss him: prepares audience for loss of intesrest in Mowbray ‘s character

*lord Marshall: Stay! The King has thrown his warder down: coup de théâtre, R’s whim

*King R: And for we think the eagle-winged pride
Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts,
With rival-hating envy, set on you
To wake our peace...
With ...grating shock of wrathful iron arms, ...
Therefore we banish you our territories. = >seeks peace: was not thought to be kingly attitude; disapproval of his stopping a duel: much sought for spectacle: people’s grudge ag him

*King R: The hopeless word of 'never to return'
 Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.

*Mow: The language I have learnt these forty years,
My native English, now I must forgo...
Than an unstringed viol or a harp...
Within my mouth you have engaoled my tongue,
Doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips;
 And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance...=> asyndeton= pilling up of words
-And all too soon, I fear, the King shall rue =>  ominous forecasting.

*Boling= Four lagging winters and four wanton springs
End in a word: such is the breath of Kings

*Gaunt: My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light
Shall be extinct    

+ Blindfold Death (= Atropos the blind Fate)          =Vanitas (Closely related to the memento mori picture is the vanitas still life. In addition to the symbols of mortality these may include other symbols such as musical instruments, wine and books to remind us explicitly of the vanity (in the sense of worthlessness) of worldly pleasures and goods.)

-rhymes: light-night; son-done; death-breath= solemnity and sorrow

*Bol: Sweet soil, adieu-
My mother and my nurse...

 

Scene 4

King Richard, Bagot, Green, Duke of Aumerle

Aumerle ( R and B’s cousin, son of York) is back from having accompanied Bolingbroke out. Richard’s speech about Bolingbroke’s popularity among the common people shows that he feels something coming up. Richard announces he is about to leave for Ireland where the rebels are rising up (// same in Eliz’s times). He needs to rent out the realm of England to raise money= shameless confession of “liberal largess” and “blank charters” . When he learns about Gaunt’s next death, he hopes that he will die soon so that he can use his money to go to war: R appears as arrogant, mean, cruel

*King R: ...observed his courtship to the common people ...
What reference he did throw away on slaves...
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench...his supple knee...
“As were our England in reversion his,
And he our subjects’next degree in hope”

 

ACT II 

R still seen as arrogant, refusing good advice , heartless reaction to Gaunt’s death, confiscation of Boling ‘s inheritance; R at his lowest in audience’s sympathies as to boling: has already raised an army, violates his oath of fealty. Yet Queen ‘s love and York ‘s dilemna: king’s vulnerability, isolation; Boling = attractive humility but self assurance
Ambivalent responses have been meant to build up in the audience

 

Scene 1

Gaunt, Duke of York, King Richard, Queen, Aumerle, Bushy, Green, Bagot, Ross, Willoughby,Northumberland.

Gaunt  and York (brothers) discuss about the decay of England ( sombre colloquy, sentencious clichés) GAUNT’s “SCEPTRED ISLE” speech: England as postlapsarian Eden and the uselessness of Richard.

*Gaunt-My death’s sad tale may yet undeaf his ear. // the sad tale of dead Kings+ undeaf= Shak’s coinage: characterizes the play ‘s style: vocabulary of negation appropriate to tagedy about psychic annihilation+ motif of NOTHING

*G -This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This... this seat of Mars
This other Eden, demi-paradise
..this little world
This precious stone set in the silver sea
...in the office of a wall
...this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings
...As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world’s ransom (ie Christ)
...this dear dear land, ...
Is now leased out-

At Richard’s arrival, Gaunt (remains sat/King stands) and Richard only manage to have a conversation that leads nowhere but to hatred. (stychomythic exchange; R= careless, disrespectful irony, sarcasm/Gaunt=warning, scolding, wise sentncious tone, bitterness)
Gaunt: repetition and punning on : waste, health/illness, possessed, shame, law, land

*G- Old Guant indeed, and gaunt of being old...gaunt (anadiplosis)
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,
Whose hollow womb inherits naught but bones.

*G-A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown

KR= anger and threat:
*Thy tongue that runs so roundly in thy head
Should run thy head from unreverent shoulders!
G=accusation
*That blood already, like the pelican
Hast thou tapped out and drukenly caroused.
*Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!
These words hereafter thy tormentors be.

 *Northumberland -His tongue is now a stringless instrument;

Gaunt’s death is announced and Richard decides to take hold of Gaunt’s goods; York tries to dissuade him (compares him to his father and grandfather + points out at political consequences for Richard who willingly does not respect the law = PROPHECY

*York-“You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,
You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts” 

but Richard remains deaf. York is created Lord Governor of England.  Northumberland (Henry Percy), Ross and Willoughby (Lords) find themselves alone and discuss about the abuses made by Richard. They know that the kingdom is sinking. They obviously are on Bolingbroke’s side and when they hear that Bolingbroke is about to come back to England with ships and soldiers from France, they leave to join him.

*Northumb- The King is not himself, but basely led
By flattterers...

-More has he spent in peace than they (ie his ancestors) in wars.

- ...Even through the hollow eyes of Death
I spy life peering... another memento mori motif, typical of tragedies

 

Scene 2

=a private scene following a public scene, like in Act 1

The Queen, Bushy, Bagot, Green, York

The Queen is talking with Bushy about the pain she feels, without realizing that her pain is announcing Richard’s fate. Pressentiment of approaching disaster

*Queen- ...my inwars soul/With nothing trembles. =theme of substance, reality vs nothing, shadow, appearance; something/nothing

*Bushy-  For Sorrow’s eyes, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire in many objects,
Like perspectives, which, rightky gazed upon,
Show nothing but confusion; eyed awry,
Distinguish form.      =biased perspective//theatre on life

 Green comes in to announce that Bolingbroke has reached England’s shores at Ravensburgh and that the Percy family (Northumberland)has joined him, followed by all the people of the Royal House.

*Queen- So, Green, thou art the midwife of my woe,
And Bolingbroke my sorrow ‘sdismal heir.

York comes in and learns that his son, Duke of Aumerle, has gone to join Richard in Ireland and that the Duchess of Gloucester has just died (magnifies the tide of woes). York hesitates and doesn’t know what to do, the 2 opponents being members of his family that he both has to defend for different reasons.  Bushy and Green leave for Bristol castle and Bagot decides to join Richard.

*York- Come, sister-cousin, I would say-pray pardon me => “one of Shakespeare’s touches of nature” in transcribing York’s confusion with these hesitations

 

Scene 3

=shift from confusion and pessimisme to assured optimism

Bolingbroke, Northumberland, Harry Percy, Ross, Willoughby, Berkeley, York

Bolingbroke and Northumberland are riding their horses, on their way to Berkeley. Enters Harry Percy (=Henry Percy-Northumberland’s son, =Hotspur) who announces that the Earl of Worcester (=Northumberland/Percy’s brother, Thomas) has dispersed Richard’s household and that his lordship has been proclaimed a traitor. Hotspur is introduced to Bolingbroke. Enter Ross and Willoughby, and Berkeley. Bolingbroke insists on being called Lancaster (his father’s title= John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster).

*Boling – And I must find that title in your tongue

 York inquires about Bolingbroke’s return to England in Richard’s absence.

*York –Tut, tut!
Grace me no grace , and uncle me no uncle.=anthimeria/ derivatio= word coining, functional shift.

-Why have those banished and forbidden legs
Dared once to touch a dust of England’s ground?

-Why, foolish boy, the King is left behind
And in my loyal bosom lis his power.

Bolingbroke explains that he has only come to “claim his inheritance of free descent” but York does not agree with the principle and decides to remain neuter= Shakespeare’s addition, not without hosting them for the night.

 

Scene 4

=brief scene

Earl of Salisbury (R), A Welsh Captain

Salisbury ‘s gloomy forecast: “mirror scene 1” general truths reflected as in a glass
The Captain announces to Salisbury that, having heard nothing from Richard for ten days, people think that he is dead and the countrymen are going to disperse. Lots of signs (in Nature: bay trees withered, meteors; bloody moon; carnavalseque changes rich= sad vs ruffians= dance) are announcing a “fearful change”.

*Capitain: “These signs forerun the death or fall of kings”.

*Salis- Ah, Richard, ...
I see thy glory like a shooting star
Fall to the base earth from the firmament. // R descending in the BASE court

 

ACT III

2 consecutive scenes to present R & B each dramatizes their differences then confrontation in 3rd scene;
 R=emotional instability, careless indifferent has changed into richer, more complex personality even if ineffectual king= becomes a tragic hero

/ B’s icy and rigorous control, closed book
it appears that the political conflicts are inseparable from the psychological and moral complexity of the men

 

Scene 1

Bolingbroke = in total control of England; self-appointed judge; , Duke of York, Northumberland, Harry Percy, Ross, Willoughby + Bushy, Green (as prisoners)

*Boling –Bring forth these men. = curt opening, anomalous two-foot line, sets tone of dictatorial dispatch

Bolingbroke addresses to Bushy and Green and explains to them why he is having them condemned to death he “washes their blood from off his hands” by giving the motives for comdemning them= first occurence of Pontius Pilate image (2nd: in the end , his intended  pilgrimage + Richard uses this image about his deposers too). Boling use them as scapegoats: accuses them for his banishment.

*Bol- ...Till you made him misinterpret me,
...And sighed my English breath in foreign clouds,
Eating the bitter bread of banishment
...
This and much more, much more than twice all this =epanalepsis Figure of emphasis in which the same words both begin and end a phrase

  He mentions the Queen, asking York to make sure she is well looked after.

 

Scene 2

Sits upon he ground
HOLLOW CROWN speech
Shattered faith in divine protection of his title, questioning of integrity of king’s two bodies

Richard, Aumerle (shifting of his allegiances in favour of KR), Carlisle, Salisbury, Scoop

Richard returns to Wales, back from Ireland. He shows love for his earth but his speech shows fear of  the enemy.

*KR- Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand
...As a long-parted mother with her child
So weeping, smiling, do I greet thee , my earth,
And do thee favours with my royal hands. => self-conscious, aestheticized emotional patriotism;feminine feeling and tears fit the dominant tone; combination tears-smiles 

Calls up to the earthly powers to fight back his enemies=feed not; not...comfort; let thy spiders; venom; toads...doing annoyance; yield stinging nettles;a lurking adder ...a mortal touch= effect of futile fancy and impractibility; then becomes aware of his “senseless conjuration”.

Carlisle still believe that God will protect the king:
That power that made you king/Hath power to keep you king in spite of all

Richard’ recourse to the imagery of the sun which when it comes back stops the villains
His treasons will sit blushing in his face

- Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord.

Salisbury enters to tell him that he has lost all his fighting men in aid of Bolingbroke. Richard, losing his self-confidence, reduces himself as a subject and finally decides to go to Flint Castle, after having heard that Bushy and Green have been beheaded and that York is on Bolingbroke's side.

*Salis –One day too late, I fear me, noble lord,
Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth.

-Today, today, unhappy day too late

*KR- Time hath set a blot upon my pride.

-Awake, thou coward Majesty, thou sleepest!

...Are we not high?

Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we?

Scroop= imagery of flooding
+ Bolingbroke being threatful and having gathered all men:
...covering your fearful land/With hard bright steel and hearts harder than steel. Whitebeards; boys with women’s voices

*R-Too well, too well, thou tell’st a tale so ill.
About his suitors being killes, he things they have failes him:
Scroop’s ironical:
Their peace is made/ With heads and not with hands...graced in the hollow ground.

HOLLOW CROWN SPEECH:

*Let’s talk of grave, of worms, of epitaphs,
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.

*..let us sit upon the ground/And tell sad stories of the death of kings-
Some..., some..., some...

*For within the hollow crown...Keeps death his court; and there the antics sits, Scoffing...and grinning at his pomp,/Allowing him a breath, a little scene (brevity + triviality + thetricality= a common TROPE),/To monarchize...
...and fraewell, king!
*I live with bread like you, feel want,/taste grief, need friends. Subjected thus/ How can you say me I am a king?      Rhythm slows down: metrical anomaly: tetrameter lines, plain  style; “subjected”=paronomasia =Paronomasia is the use of words that sound similar to other words, but have different meanings= a pun; abjures his semi-divine body, identifies with mortal body sursauts:And yet not so... Proud Bolingbroke, I come...

*A king, woe’s slave, shall kingly woe obey.
... From Richard’s night to Bolingbroke’s fair day. (last line)

 

Scene 3

FLINT CASTLE: confrontation R&B; pivotal scene, major turning point, dramatically reversing the dynamics of power + visual symbolism.

Bolingbroke, York, Northumberland, Harry Percy, King Richard, Carlisle, Aumerle, Scroop, Salisbury

Bolingbroke arrives at Flint castle with York and Northumberland. They want to meet Richard to ask him to cancel Bolingbroke’s banishment and to allow him to have his lands back as his father is now dead. Richard agrees at once and yet reacts as if he was already vanquished.
B= efficient but exceeding authority, presents himself as the loyal proponent of justice ; R=sentimental side , deposed X4, attraction to martyrdom,like a specator to his tragedy

*Boling-Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle= just one word to convey imagery and symbolism
- ...my stooping duty tenderly shall show =hypocrisy, irony, sarcasm or humility
-B uses imagery of fire and water, he being the latter = shift in the usual submissive symbol of water; here; extinguishes fire and moisters , feeds the earth
- also the 4 symbols of traditional primacies: fire, sun, king, eagle.
-KR: multiplies royal “we”

Northumb- King R

*KR-For well we know no hand of blood and bone/Can grip the sacred handle of our sceptre, /Unless he do profane, steal or usurp.
*... England’s face,/Change the complexion oh her maid-pale peace/ To scarlet indignation, and bedew /Her pastor’s grass with faithful English blood.

*KR-What must the King do now? Must he submit?...Must he (=3rd person: division man-office + a king who “must”)  lose/The name of King? I’God’s name, let it go./ I’ll give...My...My...For a little grave, /A little, little grave, an obscure grave;

*becomes aware of his onstage audience and of his allowing himself to be carried away

*Most mighty prince, my Lord Northumberland,/ What says King Bolingbroke?= sarcasm

*to the base court: Down, down I come, like glist’ring Phaëton =young, incompetent son of Sun-God
In the base court? Come down? Down court, down king!

King R-Bolingbroke
*KR- Up cousin, up. Your heart is up, I know, /Thus high at least [indicates crown] although your knee is low.

 

Scene 4

=GARDEN SCENE (unhistorical)

Queen’s distress renews sympathy for R; his dethrownement//the Fall: a mythic, long-lasting national disaster; gardeners stresses how badly the fallen king had tended his sea-walled garden; usurpation of power= a sad necessity
Choric function of the scene: sustained allegory to reflect upon R’s misruling: gardeners (rare examplaries of the commons in the paly)= emblematic more than realistic; weel balanced 3 ladies/three gardeners

The Queen, two ladies, the gardener, two men

The Queen, who cannot hide she worries, eavesdrops a metaphorical talk between a gardener and two of his men, which announces that Richard’s fate is in Bolingbroke’s hands.
“mirror scene 2” (after Gaunt’s Eden speech Act 1): general feeling & political truths reflected as in a glass

*Queen-...here in this garden: information for a stage without scenery
-ladies propose “sports” but Q refuses them all: bowls/ the world is full of rubs; dance/my legs can keep no measure; tell tales/want of joy-too much sorrow; sing/hath no cause for it
-feeling of comin disaster:
*Q-...woe is forerun with woe.

*Gardener- (R= a young tree choked by up-starts) ...young dangling apricocks,...like unruly children...their prodigal weight
-Cut off the heads of too fast-growing sprays
-...I wil go root away/The noisome weeds
*Man-Why should we...keep law and form..When our sea-walled garden...Is full of weeds
fairest flowers: choked up
fruit trees:unpruned
hedges: ruined
knots: disordered
wholesome herbs: swarming with caterpillars
*Gard-(R= neglectful gardener) (now autumn has come) The weeds...Are plucked up, root and all, by Bolingbroke
ominous couplet-conclusion of sustained comparison: crown-down
*Q-Thou, old Adam’s likeness prototype of gardeners = echo of mythical ref to gardens of Eden; KR depossed//fall of Man, Adam expelled from garden

*2 buckets image //antcipates Richard’s in next scene

*Gardener:-In your lord’s scale is nothing but himself
And some few vanities that make him light;
But in the balance of great Bolingbroke, = lower but stronger
...are all the English peers,
...he weighs Richard down. = higher yet politically weighed down

Queen’s final speech ends with 3 couplets: incantatory effect; gardener sets a bank of rue where one of the Queen’s tear fell. (symbol of pity)

 

ACT IV

B’s de facto status as a king becomes clear (“we”); resolute attitude contrasts with R ‘s inability to make himself obeyed in ActI;
Contrast political/theatrical powers: B holds the reins of sovereignety yet R remains master of self-dramatization (his own triumph): rhetoric and metaphors, embarass enemies, ironic wit, evokes both pity and irritation, associates his suffering with the passion of Jesus (= almost blasphemy!)

 

Scene 1

-RENUNCIATION scene;

-the TWO buckets: B =high, empty , careless- R= low with grief and sacred tradition;

- shattered MIRROR scene: climatic coup de théâtre ;
symbol of fragility and impermanence of life //hollow crown

Bolingbroke, Northumberland(B), Harry Percy(B), Fitzwater(B), Carlisle(R), Aumerle(R),
Salisbury(R), Surrey(R), Abbot of Westminster(R), Bagot(R) in Westminster Hall

Bagot, Fitzwater and Harry Percy are accusing Aumerle of having taken part in Gloucester's murder (= same dispute as Act I, scene I: Bolingbroke-Mowbray). On his side is only Surrey. Aumerle denies it, setting off a gage-throwing chain reaction which eventually involves six people. High-flown, conventional language of challenge Bolingbroke decides to recall Mowbray in order to ask him to witness. But we learn of this latter's death (was crusading on the Holy Land).  Bolingbroke decides to wait for the trial.eager to show a firm yet magnanimous attitude; premature use of royal “we”

 Enters York who announces that Richard will agree to yield his sceptre to Bolingbroke, with what Carlisle disagrees strongly= divine-right protest. Carlisle is arrested by Northumberland (Boling’s strong-arm as the one who draws animosity: shift from Boling) and Richard brought into the room.

*York-Ascend his throne, descending now from him
And long live Henry, of that name the fourth!
Bol-In God’s name I’ll ascend the regal throne. =baldness, no legal justification, not crowned.

Carlisle’s protest:prelude to Deposition” scene: calculated to enlist sympathies of Eliz audience on behalf of fallen monarch

*Car-And who sits here that is nit Richard’s subject?
-...so heinous, black, obscene a deed Asyndeton =>Figure of omission in which normally occurring conjunctions are intentionally omitted in successive phrases, or clauses; a string of words not separated by normally occurring conjunctions.

-I speak to subjects, and a subject I speak. => chiasmus
-compares England to Golgotha, where Christ was crucified AND a place of skulls, a graveyard => prepare for Richard’sown use of comparison with Christ’s Passion

-O, if you raise this house against this house...

*Boling- (first hints at possible treason/disloyalty from his court/peers)
Little are we beholding to your love
And little looked for at your helping hands.

Renunciation scene/ self-divestiture scene:pageant of self-unkinging: endows it with cosmic significance: fractioning of ancient order with king as sacred link in chain connecting eatrh and heavens;
 asserts sacred inviolability of his office while divesting himself;
desacralizes the symbols of kingship; his anoinment and consecrations: impossible to annul;

CONTRAST B= “silent king”;
Emphasis on Richard’s extravagantly volatile personality + his verbal domination while being politically defeated;

 Richard refuses to read a statement  presenting all the faults he committed.

-typical anticipation of events; speaks as if already deposed;
-R recognizes loss of command yet still feels like a king;
-typical self-indulgent hyperbole; painful nostalgia;

*R-...I well remember/The favours of the se men..../So Judas did to Christ, but He in twelve/ Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none.
- God save the King! Will no man say “Amen”?
- Here, cousin, seize the crown...
On this side my hand, and on that side thine. => parison (parallel structure)
Now is this golden crown like a deep well... beg of two buckets comparison= represents the instability of Fortune; R as a Fortune’s victim in medieval de casibus tradition vs Boling= Machiavellian virtù capacity to rise above Fortune

-The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen and full of water. Opposite of Gardener’s image

-Boling= blunt, short lines to insist for R’s resigning without fuss vs Richard enjoying this last power he has= personal hurt and verbal ingenuity; “CARE” X 9: play on words, parisons

*Rich- Ay, no. No, ay; for I must nothing be.
Therefore no “no”, for I resign to thee.
Now mark me how I will undo myself:

Follow a successive deposition of his royal apparel with words starting with un- and “unnaming” of them= annuling them, depossing them of their value
Crown: heavy weight
Sceptre:unwieldy sceptre
Repetition, anaphora: With my own X 4

*R-With my own tears I wash away my balm...

R wishes his rival “many years of sunshine days”:bitterly applies sun image to his rival

R to Northumb –Must I do so?... Gentle Northumberland... irony; Northumb seen in ugly light when insists on fallen king to read out his crimes + Must for a former king

-Pilate image again: ...yet you Pilates/ Have here delivered me to my sour cross
*R-Mine eyes are full of tears; I cannot see./ ...But they can see a sort of traitors here cf Queen awry eye

+ adds he is a traitor himself as he has made his Glory: base; hi Sovereignety: a slave; his proud Majesty : a subject; his State : apeasant

*R- No lord of thine,.../Nor no man’s lord! I have no name, no title-/ No, not that name was given me at the font- =>undoing of himself + characteristic hyperbole

*O’ that I were a mockery king of snow,
standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water-drops!

 Richard asks for a mirror in which he wonders aloud about his own identity; he then asks one favour to Bolingbroke: that he be allowed to go away freely from the court.  But he is taken to the Tower of London instead. Hints at plots already (Abbot, Aumerle, Carlisle)
 -mirror= wisdom, self-knowledge, historical truth OR vanity, narcissism, false counsel, death

*R- Was this (face) the face...? X 3
...That was at last outfaced by Bolingbroke?
-As brittle as the glory is the face! (shatters glass)
for there it is, cracked in an hundred shivers.
Mark, silent King, the moral of this sport (ie, he ackowledges his performance)...

-play on words about shadow/reality; appearance/substance// SHADOWS for actors

*R- These external manners of lament/ Are merely shadows to the unseen grief/ That swells (HYPERBOLE) in silence in the tortured soul./ there lies the substance.

*R-Conveyers are you all/That rise thus nimbly by a true king’s fall. De casibus

*Abbot- A woeful pageant have we here beheld. Theatricality + tragedy and woeful tonality

 

ACT V

quieter episode; still player king yet sincere farewell to his Queen; self-conscious language remains

 

Scene 1

The Queen, King Richard, Northumberland

The Queen meets Richard near the Tower of London. She is angry to see him looking weak and helpless thinks his resigned passivity unroyal (image of his emblem: the white hart// his heart + the lion) , but he tells her to go back to France, in some religious house, and to tell tales about "the deposing of a rightful king". Northumberland comes in, says that Richard will be taken to Pomfret, and asks them to part. Richard forecasts Northumb treason on new King. They separate after long loving farewells (largely Shak ‘s invention)

*Queen-My fair rose wither.
*Richard_ Think I am dead.. // Gaunt with Boling before he left
- Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal/ The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne.../Shall break into corruption.

Couple farewells: weeping; woe; weep; sighs; groans; moans; groan; heavy heart; Sorrow; grief;

*R-Go count thy way with sighs, I mine with groans.

 

Scene 2

Duke of York, Duchess of York, Aumerle

York is telling his wife about Bolingbroke's triumphant entrance into town and sad Richard at his sides (historically unrealistic: to evoke pathos for the fallen king). York’s resignation, chiefly choric role: emphasizes the main theme: the tragic currents of political change lie outside the control of men;one of the most popular passage of the play with Guant’s speech on England.

*York- As in a theatre the eyes of men,
Aftre a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next.

-His face still combating with tears and smiles

 Enters Aumerle, on whom York discovers a seal (Shak’s invention) and tries to find out what it is. Despite Aumerle's objection, he takes it and finds out about the plot against Bolingbroke on Oxford. Angry, as he has pledged for his truth in Parliament, York takes his horse to go and tell Bolingbroke (now King Henry IV) about the treacherous conspiracy against his person. Aumerle (called Rutland now) follows him after the Duchess' advice.scene which dramatizes the divided loyalties and instability aftre new king’s accession. +comical elements with the “servingman” Farcical elements, ridiculous contradictory orders and servant’s awkward position = welcome to the audience
*a lot of metrical irregularities here to convey agitation
*image of the violets for the new favourites = short-lived flowers; + new-come spring following and rhyming with “new-made king”
*York-Treason, foul treason! Villain, traitor, slave!

 

Scene 3

King Henry IV= 1st time as crowned monarch, Harry Percy

-King Henry discusses with Harry Percy about his son Henry (future Henry V + hints at Shakes’s next play), Prince Hal) who, apparently, spends his time in London taverns and doesn't really care about his role.palys down B’s cold-hearted political realism.
-Aumerle comes in suddenly and asks to speak to Henry in private. But York comes in and asks Henry to open the door, followed by the Duchess (functional role added by Shakes). She begs Henry to forgive Aumerle, so well that he does end up doing it.
*Duchess- A begger begs that never begged before. Comic effect of polyptoton and alliteration + kneeling of each suppliants+ battle of sentencious phrases and proverbs + strained mataphor “Or in thy piteous heart plant thou thine ear”; then to jingling rhymes to blank verse= back to seriousness

 

Scene 4

brief transition scene= prepares us for the death scene;a favourite stage structure of Shakespeare’s: a small group of conspirators remain on stage while the other characters have left.

Exton et 2 servants

Exton tells the servants the words Henry IV pronounced earlier ("Have I no friend will rid me of that living fear?"). He feels he has to relieve the King of that pain by going to Pomfret. Exton “And speaking it,, he wishtly looked on me”

 

Scene 5

PRISON SOLILOQUY

King Richard, a Groom, Keeper, Exton, Servants

1)Richard is alone in his cell at Pomfret castle and he soliloquizes.
Freely invented by the dramatist to increase sympathy even in defeat; emphasis on royal dignity rather than on terror and horrors of the last part (// Holingshed and Marlowe: Richard’s death by starvation)
 Long meditation on identity, time harmony;
 his island has shrunk to a prison cell = need for an audience; creates one;+ mise en abyme cell= head
 fugitive ideas, associations; see-sawing movement

*KR-My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul... and these two beget
 A generation of still-breeding thoughts.
And these same thoughts people this little world.

List of different sorts of short-lived thoughts:
-Thoughts of things divine: fear of not going to Paradise
-t tending to ambition: wish to evade: flying away from his cell-ribs-body
-t tending to content: beggar king: many have sit there
-t of kingship and poverty

* nothing repeated 3 times

Intrusion of music
* How sour sweet music is/ When time is broke and no proportion kept.

-chain of complex wordplay on time: musical, lifetime, season, ...
-Discorded string... R has played his part out of time and result: breaking of the cocord=harmony
*I wasted time, and now doth Time waste me; chiasmus

Very complex metaphor/strained conceit of his body as a “numb’ring clock”: poetic
 Ingenuity
-thoughts=minutes jarring with sighs
-eyeas= numbers=watches+ insomnia
-finger= a dial’s point+ wipping tears away
-groans= mark the hours
-heart= bell
 He says he is Bolingbroke’s “Jack o’the clock”, fooling here

Enters one of his former grooms, still faithful to him

then a Keeper, who refuses to taste the food he brought for Richard. Richard gets wary and attacks him. “Patience is stale and I am weary of it” [Attacks keeper]= violent resistance conforms to Queen’s idea of how a king should die

 Exton enters/rushes in with men. Richards ends up being murdered. only scene of physical violence
*KR- Exton, thy fierce hand
Hath with the King’s blood stained the King’s own land.
Mount, mount, my soul! Thy seat is up on high,
Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward here to die. [Dies]
 Exton immediate regrets.

 

Scene 6

King Henry, York, Northumberland, Harry Percy, Carlisle, Exton

-At Windsor, Northumberland and Fitzwater announce to the King that some rebels are setting fire to some towns, but also that the main conspirators against King Henry's life have been beheaded. // Act 3, scene 2= successive messengers

 -Carlisle is presented to the King for his sentence, and he is told to remain discreet and keep a low profile.= King wants to be seen as merciful.
- Exton then enters with the coffin “Thy buried fear” echo (invented). Henry denies that he ordered the murder and repudiates Exton

*King Henry- They love not poison taht do poison need,
Nor do I thee.
calls him CAIN so R= Abel//Christ, vowing a pilgrimage to the Holy land.
*That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow.
* I’ll make a voyage to the Holy land
To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.

Processional exit following coffin + muffled drums= traditional end of Elizabethan tragedies.

 

Dernière mise à jour le samedi 6 mai, 2006 8:19