ACT V
SCENE i
The Queen awaits Richard on his way "To Julius Caesar's ill-erected
tower" (V.i.1-2) -- though this is another anachronism since "It was
only a century after the time of this play that kings and queens began
to die in the Tower" (Asimov 306). The guard brings Richard forth, and
he advises Isabella "To think our former state a happy dream" (V.i.18).
He recommends that she enter a convent in France. The Queen bemoans
Richard's defeatism:
Northumberland says that Henry has changed his mind and wants to send
Richard to Pomfret instead of the Tower; Isabella is indeed to be sent
to France. Richard tells Northumberland that Henry used him in his
pursuit of the throne and that there will come a falling out:
SCENE ii
A few months later York relates the earlier events to his wife the
Duchess, including the arrivals of Richard and Henry in London when
the crowds cheered Henry and humiliated Richard: "rude misgoverned
hands from windows' tops / Threw dust and rubbish on King Richard's
head" (V.ii.5-6). York uses a theatrical analogy:
The couple's son, Aumerle, arrives sulky and disinterested in York's
curiosity about the intended jousts at Oxford. York notices his son
is hiding something and grabs a sealed document from Aumerle. He reads
it and declares his son a traitor in an assassination conspiracy. York
prepares to alert the new king despite mom's defense of Aumerle. She
even plays the "bastard" card, illogically, accusing York of thinking
she was "disloyal to thy bed" (V.ii.105). She commands Aumerle to race
to the King "And beg thy pardon ere he do accuse thee" (V.ii.113).
SCENE iii
King Henry IV complains to Harry Percy that his own "unthrifty" son
(the future Henry V) is an irresponsible lout (V.iii.1), wasting his
time with lowlife companions "'mongst the taverns" (V.iii.5). "As
dissolute as desperate, yet through both / I see some sparks of
better hope, which elder years / May happily bring forth" (V.iii.20-22).
This is partly preparation for the Henry IV plays ahead.
Aumerle rushes in and begs for blind forgiveness. York arrives, bangs on
the door, and accuses Aumerle of treason. Mom York arrives shrieking and
appeals to the King on behalf of her son. The scene approaches comedy in
its family goofiness, the quibbling between York and his wife about
French vs. English (V.iii.119f), and the Duchess' kneel-down strike.
Henry pardons Aumerle but will have the other conspirators put to death.
SCENE iv
Some months later still, Sir Pierce Exton speaks with his servant about
something Henry said: "Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?"
(V.iv.2). Since "he wishtly look'd on me / As who should say, 'I would
thou wert the man / That would divorce this terror from my heart'"
(V.iv.7-9), Exton interprets this as meaning that he should kill Richard
at Pomfret: "I am the King's friend, and will rid his foe" (V.iv.11).
"There may well be a resonance, too, with Henry II's famous query
about Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170:
'Will no man rid me of this meddlesome priest?'" (Garber 268).
SCENE v
Richard in isolation soliloquizes elaborately about prison, his
brain and soul, his thoughts themselves.
A kind and loyal former servant, a groom of the stable, comes to the cell
and tells Richard of Henry riding on Richard's former horse. Richard
begins to rail at the horse but catches himself. The knowledge of horses
is another of Shakespeare's countless specialities (Ogburn and Ogburn 473).
Richard is brought a meal and refuses to eat it until it is tasted, as
usual. But the keeper says Exton "commands the contrary" (V.v.101).
Richard attacks the keeper, who calls for help. Exton enters with his
cronies and Richard is able to kill a couple of them.
SCENE vi
A few days later, Henry tells York about rebels in a town of Gloucester.
Northumberland reports the elimination of enemies to the new (usurped)
crown: "Salisbury, Spencer, Blunt, Kent" (V.vi.8). Their heads have been
sent to London. "We thank thee, gentle Percy," responds Henry (V.vi.11).
The five quarto editions list Oxford, who is eliminated in the Folio.
Lord Fitzwater has a couple more severed heads from so-called traitors
due in. The Abbot of Westminster is dead but Harry Percy escorts in the
Bishop of Carlisle who is to be imprisoned for life since Henry perceives
some "High sparks of honor" in him (V.vi.29).
Exton interrupts, presenting Henry with "Thy buried fear ... / The
mightiest of thy greatest enemies, / Richard of Burdeaux" (V.vi.31-33)
in his coffin. "The 'living fear' of Henry IV's rhetorical exclamation
is now safely 'buried,' Exton suggests. But Henry's 'buried fear' is
in fact something else entirely, a secret, unrevealed fear of guilt
and blood upon his hands, so that the death of Richard creates, rather
than lays to rest, a 'living fear' that cannot be alleviated" (Garber
269).
Henry is peeved: "I thank thee not, for thou hast wrought / A
deed of slander with thy fatal hand / Upon my head and all this
famous land" (V.vi.34-36). Exton tries to explain that Henry's own
words.... Nope. "Though I did wish him dead, / I hate the murtherer,
love him murthered" (V.vi.39-40). Exton is exiled to wander with Cain.
Henry puts on a show of sorrow, an "absurd hypocrisy that closes the
play" (Bloom 270): "Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe / That
blood should sprinkle me to make me grow" (V.vi.45-46). He vows to
"make a voyage to the Holy Land" (V.vi.49), which he never will do.
And by the way, the word is "pilgrimage," but he doesn't use it; the
Chaucerian era is over.
FINAL PERSPECTIVE
"The play seems to invite speculation about its underlying genre. Is
it first and foremost a tragedy or a history play, the tragedy of
Richard or the first episode in the chronicle of Henry IV?" (Garber
266). "Always experimenting, Shakespeare composed Richard II
as an extended metaphysical lyric.... Richard is a bad king and an
interesting metaphysical poet; his two roles are antithetical" (Bloom
249). "Richard's imagination is trapped solipsistically in the prison
of his petulant self" (Bloom 250). The Euphuistic traces in the play
further confirm an early 1580s origin (Ogburn and Ogburn 397).
The elder Ogburns think Richard is part Elizabeth, part Oxford:
"his tendency toward thought rather than action," the poetic gift,
and "something of the morbid bitterness of Timon" (Ogburn and Ogburn
436). Richard is a better actor or philosopher-poet than king: he is
"a philosophical poet-king and proto-Hamlet" (Anderson 331). But Henry
has almost no detectable inwardness -- he just marches through the play
concerned with politics and power. The real Henry IV gets no sympathy
from me. The bastard was a slimy administrator and pre-dated the
documents suggesting that Chaucer's financial relationship with the
court was sound -- he actually kept Chaucer waiting for half a year,
and Chaucer didn't have that kind of luxury in money nor time by that
point. And Terry Jones, the medievalist of Monty Python fame, thinks
Chaucer was executed by the new regime (Who Murdered Chaucer?).
"Bolingbroke places faith in persona, or role, in malleability and
self-creation; Richard in essence or identity" (Garber 251).
Henry's hypocrisy in the end leaves a bad taste which needs
sweetening (which will come with Falstaff). "Consider the many names
by which Bolingbroke is known in the course of the play -- Bolingbroke
who is this play's shape-shifter, a man of many roles, who seems to
progress not only from name to name but also from identity to identity"
(Garber 248) -- another effect Shakespeare learned from Chaucer,
appropriately enough [see my article, "'Heryng th'effect' of the
Names in Troilus and Criseyde," Chaucer Review 34.4
(2000): 351-371]: Hereford, Bolingbroke, Derby, Lancaster, Henry IV.
The elder Ogburns think the play was revised late in Oxford's life
at which time Richard II came to depict Southampton (Ogburn and Ogburn
867).
The lion dying thrusteth forth his paw,
But Richard dismisses her to France and preaches a nostalgic perspective,
as if the 1390s had been a kind of Camelot.
And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage
To be o'erpow'r'd, and wilt thou, pupil-like,
Take the correction, mildly kiss the rod,
And fawn on rage with base humility,
Which art a lion and the king of beasts?
(IV.i.29-34)
Thou shalt think,
Regarding his parting with his queen:
Though he divide the realm and give thee half,
It is too little, helping him to all.
. . .
The love of wicked men converts to fear,
That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both
To worthy danger and deserved death.
(V.i.59-68)
Doubly divorc'd! Bad men, you violate
The Queen begs to be allowed to go with Richard, but that's
considered "little policy" (V.i.84). Richard and Isabella
kiss and part.
A twofold marriage -- 'twixt my crown and me,
And then betwixt me and my married wife.
(V.i.71-73)
As in a theatre the eyes of men,
He claims that despite the pitiful scene, heaven has influenced all
these political events. "To Bullingbrook are we sworn subjects now,
/ Whose state and honor I for aye allow" (V.ii.39-40).
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious,
Even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes
Did scowl on gentle Richard. No man cried "God save him!"
(V.ii.23-28)
Why does he pardon the man who has conspired against his life? It is not
mercy. It is an attempted purchase of indulgence in advance for the murder
of Richard, against whose life he is conspiring, precisely as his sparing
of Carlisle's life is a begging of indulgence after that deed. (Goddard,
I 158)
Thus play I in one person many people,
He occasionally hears music, which now annoys him:
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....
(V.v.31-35)
How sour sweet music is
He compares himself with a clock and rails dejectedly about Henry.
"The elaborate conceit of the deposed king turned into a timepiece is
Richard's last and finest metaphysical image for himself, perhaps because
it is much the most destructive, provoking him to the series of trapped
rages that conclude his life" (Bloom 270). "But none of the roles in
which he casts himself satisfies him, because each recalls its opposite"
(Wells 139). "There is a new toughness about his language in his last
scene; he speaks like a man who has come through suffering rather than
being vanquished by it. He has developed, we might say, from a lyrical
to a metaphysical poet" (Wells 139).
When time is broke, and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
. . .
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me....
(V.v.42-49)
The plain implication of the play up to this point has been that a
sentimental pacifism is nothing but violence in disguise and is likely
to be converted into it at a moment's notice. The death scene is a
stunning translation of that truth into act.... Strangely, Richard's
ultimate act has often been admired as bravery, a final burst of
courage from a coward. It is nothing of the sort. We die as we have
lived. It is just the reflex action of a man without self-control in
the presence of death.... It is a fury of desperation pure and simple,
a particularly ignominious and ironic end for a king who pretended to
believe that everything from stones to angels would come to his rescue
in the hour of need. (Goddard, I 159)
But Exton strikes Richard down. Richard curses Exton:
Exton, thy fierce hand
Richard dies, and Exton frets afterwards about killing an anointed
king: "As full of valure as of royal blood!" (V.v.113).
Hath with the King's blood stain'd the King's own land.
Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high,
Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.
(V.v.109-112).
The real cause of Richard's death remains a mystery. He may have been
killed, of course, at Bolingbroke's orders, but one good possibility
is that he died of starvation. He may have been deliberately starved
(that leaves no marks for suspicious eyes searching for evidence of
murder and can be represented as a wasting illness) or perhaps he
starved himself, either out of a desire to avoid lingering out a
life of imprisonment or out of a morbid fear of poison. (Asimov 312)