KENT
Vex not his ghost; O, let him pass. He hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer.
EDGAR Q OQ he is gone indeed.
KENT The wonder is he hath endured so long;
315
He but usurped his life.
ALBANY Bear them from hence. Our present business
Is Q toQ general woe.
[to Edgar and Kent] Friends of my soul, you twain,
Rule in this realm and the gored state sustain.
KENT I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;
320
My master calls me, I must not say no.
EDGAR The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most; we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
325
FExeunt with a dead march.F
King Richard II
When this play first appeared in print in 1597 under the title The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, the episode showing Richard relinquishing his crown to Bolingbroke in 4.1 was omitted, as it was in subsequent editions until 1608. Scholars assume that this was because the deposition of a king was an inflammatory topic in Elizabethan England, and that the printed texts of the play (though not, apparently, the performances) were subject to political censorship. Such an assumption is supported by an anecdote recorded by William Lambarde in which Queen Elizabeth compared herself to Richard II, and by the incident in 1601 when the Earl of Essex paid for a special performance of a Richard II play, most likely Shakespeare’s, on the eve of his abortive rebellion, presumably hoping it would incite people to assist him in deposing the Queen.
Despite the fact that one of the Globe shareholders described King Richard II in 1601 as ‘so old and so long out of use that they should have small or no company at it’, the play is usually dated around 1595, partly because it makes use of Samuel Daniel’s The Civil Wars, of which the first four books were published that year. It must also have preceded the King Henry IV plays, which are dated 1596-7 on circumstantial evidence. The main source is Raphael Holinshed’s account of the last two years of Richard’s reign in his Chronicles, of which Shakespeare used the 1587 edition. He seems also to have consulted the translation of Froissart’s Chronicles by John Bouchier, Lord Berners, and possibly the anonymous play Woodstock (c. 1592–3) which focuses on the murder of the Duke of Gloucester (called ‘Woodstock’ by John of Gaunt in King Richard II at 1.2.1).
While King Richard II is the first of Shakespeare’s second tetralogy on English history, it goes back in time to the beginning of the events that led to the Wars of the Roses. In the first tetralogy, consisting of the three King Henry VI plays and King Richard III, Shakespeare had previously dramatized history from the death of Henry V through the long period of contention between the Houses of York and Lancaster to the death of Richard III and the establishment of the Tudor dynasty with the accession of Henry VII after the battle of Bosworth. The second tetralogy, consisting of King Richard II, the King Henry IV plays and King Henry V, forms a kind of extended prequel to the first by showing the deposition of Richard II and the usurpation of the throne by Henry Bolingbroke (who became Henry IV), Henry IV’s problems with incipient rebellion, and his son Henry V’s solution to the problem of unrest at home by taking his father’s advice to ‘busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels’ (2 Henry IV 4.5.213-14). As the final Chorus of King Henry V reminds us, this solution turns out to be a temporary one.
King Richard II seems to have been a popular play before the Civil War but ran into censorship problems during the Restoration and was little performed in the eighteenth century. In 1815 Edmund Kean reintroduced the play to the London stage, presenting Richard as a tragic hero rather than as an incompetent king, and interpretations of this kind, sometimes ending with the death of Richard, dominated the nineteenth century. As in the case of Hamlet, the twentieth century broadly continued this focus on the psychology of the individual hero at the expense of the play’s political issues.
The Arden text is based on the 1597 First Quarto, with the addition of the deposition scene (4.1.162–318) from the 1623 First Folio.
LIST OF ROLES
King RICHARD the Second
John of GAUNT, Duke of Lancaster
uncle to the King
Henry BOLINGBROKE, Duke of Hereford
son to John of Gaunt, afterwards King Henry IV
Thomas MOWBRAY, Duke of Norfolk
The DUCHESS of Gloucester
widow to Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester
The Lord MARSHAL
The Duke of AUMERLE
son to the Duke of York
Two HERALDS
Sir Henry GREENE
Sir John BUSHY
Sir John BAGOT
EDMUND of Langley, Duke of YORK
uncle to the King
Henry Percy, Earl of NORTHUMBERLAND
Lord ROSS
Lord WILLOUGHBY
Isabel, QUEEN
to King Richard
The Duke of York’s SERVINGMAN
Harry PERCY
surnamed Hotspur, son to the Earl of Northumberland
Lord BERKELEY
The Earl of SALISBURY
A Welsh CAPTAIN
The Bishop of CARLISLE
Sir Stephen SCROOPE
Two LADIES
attendant upon Queen Isabel
GARDENER
His MAN
Lord FITZWATER
LORD
The Duke of SURREY
The ABBOT of Westminster
The DUCHESS OF YORK
Sir Piers EXTON
His SERVANT
GROOM
of the stable to King Richard
The KEEPER
of the prison at Pomfret
Guards, Soldiers and Servants
1.1 Enter KING RICHARD, JOHN OF GAUNT, with other nobles and attendants.
RICHARD Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster,
Hast thou according to thy oath and band
Brought hither Henry Herford thy bold son,
Here to make good the boist’rous late appeal,
Which then our leisure would not let us hear,
5
Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?
GAUNT I have, my liege.
RICHARD Tell me, moreover, hast thou sounded him,
If he appeal the Duke on ancient malice,
Or worthily as a good subject should
10
On some known ground of treachery in him?
GAUNT As near as I could sift him on that argument,
On some apparent danger seen in him,
Aim’d at your Highness, no inveterate malice.
RICHARD Then call them to our presence; face to face,
15
And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear
The accuser and the accused freely speak.
High-stomach’d are they both and full of ire,
In rage, deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.
Enter BOLINGBROKE and MOWBRAY.
BOLINGBROKE Many years of happy days befall
20
My gracious sovereign, my most loving liege!
MOWBRAY Each day still better other’s happiness
Until the heavens, envying earth’s good hap,
Add an immortal title to your crown!
RICHARD We thank you both, yet one but flatters us,
25
As well appeareth by the cause you come,
Namely, to appeal each other of high treason:
Cousin of Herford, what dost thou object
Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?
BOLINGBROKE
First – heaven be the record to my speech!
30
In the devotion of a subject’s love,
Tend’rin
g the precious safety of my prince,
And free from other misbegotten hate,
Come I appellant to this princely presence.
Now Thomas Mowbray do I turn to thee,
35
And mark my greeting well; for what I speak
My body shall make good upon this earth,
Or my divine soul answer it in heaven.
Thou art a traitor and a miscreant,
Too good to be so, and too bad to live,
40
Since the more fair and crystal is the sky,
The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly;
Once more, the more to aggravate the note,
With a foul traitor’s name stuff I thy throat,
And wish – so please my sovereign – ere I move,
45
What my tongue speaks my right drawn sword may prove.
MOWBRAY Let not my cold words here accuse my zeal.
’Tis not the trial of a woman’s war,
The bitter clamour of two eager tongues,
Can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain;
50
The blood is hot that must be cool’d for this.
Yet can I not of such tame patience boast
As to be hush’d and nought at all to say.
First, the fair reverence of your Highness curbs me
From giving reins and spurs to my free speech,
55
Which else would post until it had return’d
These terms of treason doubled down his throat;
Setting aside his high blood’s royalty,
And let him be no kinsman to my liege,
I do defy him, and I spit at him,
60
Call him a slanderous coward, and a villain,
Which to maintain I would allow him odds,
And meet him were I tied to run afoot
Even to the frozen ridges of the Alps,
Or any other ground inhabitable
65
Where ever Englishman durst set his foot.
Meantime, let this defend my loyalty –
By all my hopes most falsely doth he lie.
BOLINGBROKE
Pale trembling coward, there I throw my gage,
Disclaiming here the kindred of the king,
70
And lay aside my high blood’s royalty,
Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except.
If guilty dread have left thee so much strength
As to take up mine honour’s pawn, then stoop.
By that, and all the rites of knighthood else,
75
Will I make good against thee, arm to arm,
What I have spoke, or thou canst worse devise.
MOWBRAY I take it up; and by that sword I swear,
Which gently laid my knighthood on my shoulder,
I’ll answer thee in any fair degree
80
Or chivalrous design of knightly trial;
And when I mount, alive may I not light,
If I be traitor or unjustly fight!
RICHARD
What doth our cousin lay to Mowbray’s charge?
It must be great that can inherit us
85
So much as of a thought of ill in him.
BOLINGBROKE
Look what I speak, my life shall prove it true:
That Mowbray hath receiv’d eight thousand nobles
In name of lendings for your Highness’ soldiers,
The which he hath detain’d for lewd imployments,
90
Like a false traitor, and injurious villain;
Besides I say, and will in battle prove,
Or here, or elsewhere to the furthest verge
That ever was survey’d by English eye,
That all the treasons for these eighteen years
95
Complotted and contrived in this land
Fetch from false Mowbray their first head and spring;
Further I say, and further will maintain
Upon his bad life to make all this good,
That he did plot the Duke of Gloucester’s death,
100
Suggest his soon-believing adversaries,
And consequently, like a traitor coward,
Sluic’d out his innocent soul through streams of blood,
Which blood, like sacrificing Abel’s, cries
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth
105
To me for justice and rough chastisement;
And, by the glorious worth of my descent,
This arm shall do it, or this life be spent.
RICHARD How high a pitch his resolution soars!
Thomas of Norfolk, what say’st thou to this?
110
MOWBRAY O, let my sovereign turn away his face,
And bid his ears a little while be deaf,
Till I have told this slander of his blood
How God and good men hate so foul a liar.
RICHARD Mowbray, impartial are our eyes and ears.
115
Were he my brother, nay, my kingdom’s heir,
As he is but my father’s brother’s son,
Now by my sceptre’s awe I make a vow,
Such neighbour nearness to our sacred blood
Should nothing privilege him nor partialize
120
The unstooping firmness of my upright soul.
He is our subject, Mowbray; so art thou:
Free speech and fearless I to thee allow.
MOWBRAY Then, Bolingbroke, as low as to thy heart
Through the false passage of thy throat thou liest.
125
Three parts of that receipt I had for Callice
Disburs’d I duly to his Highness’ soldiers;
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 291