[In the following essay, Kelly studies the crucial role York plays in the dramatic and thematic developments of Richard II. Kelly contends that York's shift in attitude and loyalty, from Richard to Bolingbroke, encourages a parallel response in the audience.]

The thematic and dramatic development of Richard II depends on the pivotal role played by the Duke of York. While he guides audience response, structurally he is also a pivot upon which the transfer of power turns, and thematically he appears for a time to be a spokesman for the play's political lesson. Many scholars who have written on Richard II have been able to dispose of him with a sentence or two, usually to the effect that York is a pitiable old man who is simply caught in the middle of a political revolt.¹

Although the play's structure and theme have been the subject of critical debate, York is consistently ignored.²Richard II is, as I see the play, structured on three different turning points. As early as the second act Bolingbroke has led a successful invasion of England, and he is a de facto king, which he demonstrates in III.i, with an act of semi-regal authority, the execution of Bushy and Green. The “transfer of real power,”³ in the words of Peter Ure, has occurred. In IV.i, Richard's self-deposition accomplishes the de jure transfer of power. The power does not, however, pass directly from Richard to Bolingbroke, but passes from Richard to York to Bolingbroke. Between the de facto and de jure transfer of power York gradually moves from a position as a staunch though fearful ally of the diminishing Richard to a new role as a loyal supporter of Bolingbroke. And while York moves, he carries the audience with him, i.e., his shift in attitude stimulates a similar response in the audience. He likewise becomes a spokesman for the nation. Thus while the central focus of the play is on Richard's decline, Shakespeare makes the audience aware of the political implications of the action, namely that the doctrine of divine right may be inadequate. As a pivotal character York affects what this play has to say about politics and how we respond to what it has to say.

The significance of York is initially suggested by the gradually developed contrast between him and Gaunt. In the opening of I. ii, when the Duchess of Gloucester is urging Gaunt to seek justice for the death of her husband, Gaunt indicates his unwillingness to cooperate with her:

God's is the quarrel—for God's substitute,
His deputy anointed in His sight,
Hath caused his death; the which if wrongfully,
Let heaven revenge, for I may never lift
An angry arm against His minister.(4)

(11. 37-41)

The expression of faith in the divine right is mirrored frequently by Richard and Carlisle, and enacted by Gaunt himself in II. i as he is about to die. This latter scene demonstrates most vividly the difference between Gaunt and York. The following exchange occurs at the opening of II. i:

GAUNT.
Will the King come, that I may breathe my last
In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth?
YORK.
Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath;
For all in vain comes counsel to his ear,

(11. 1-4)

and he concludes his comments to Gaunt:

Direct not him whose way himself will choose:
'Tis breath thou lack'st and that breath wilt thou lose.

(11. 29-30)

Although York says nothing in these lines to indicate that he will shift allegiance, he reveals himself as a man of more realistic perception than Gaunt, who performs the limited role of spokesman for divine right. York's realistic attitude enables him in the later stages of the play to accept Bolingbroke, though he ultimately accepts him on other grounds. After the encounter between Richard and Gaunt and after Gaunt is removed, Richard announces his intent to confiscate and use the whole estate of Gaunt. At this point York himself delivers his lament:

How long shall I be patient? ah, how long
Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?
Not Gloucester's death, nor Hereford's banishment,
Nor Gaunt's rebukes, nor England's private wrongs,
Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke
About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,
Have ever made me sour my patient cheek
Or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign's face.

(11. 163-170)

York is, of course, speaking for himself, but the grievances he cites are generally such that they touch all England. Richard has, in effect, violated the justice for which the King should stand. In this speech, a ritualistic lament with its repetition and parallelism, York achieves symbolic value as a spokesman for a suffering England, and he sustains this value through the rest of the play. This scene is also extremely important in that York here gains audience sympathy and acceptance as a wise and realistic man, in effect a moderator of audience response.

Further on in this same scene York pointedly tells Richard that by seizing Gaunt's estate he has violated the principle of succession, the principle on which his own kingship rests (11. 186-208). (York is later able to ignore this principle in his support of Bolingbroke, whose possession of the crown does not depend upon proper succession but power.) York warns Richard where he stands in the kingdom and in his personal estimation:

You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,
You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts,
And prick my tender patience to those thoughts
Which honour and allegiance cannot think.

(11. 205-208)

He senses that his allegiance to Richard is weakening and in his comment foreshadows his coming shift. The logic does not affect Richard, but it does convince the audience.

In a later scene the test of York's honor and allegiance is more fully delineated in the conflict between duty which binds him to Richard and conscience which would lead him to support Bolingbroke. Near the end of II. i, after York has warned Richard of impending disaster, the king appoints York Lord Governor of England while he goes to the war in Ireland. This appointment is significant for several reasons. First, York's role as symbol of England is underscored as he becomes an official representative of England. Second, he is acting in an official capacity for Richard which is later balanced by his acting officially for Bolingbroke. When Richard makes the appointment, he does so because York “is just and always lov'd us well” (1.221). His appointment of the “just” York mirrors one of the larger ironies of Richard's character, his failure to carry thought into action, as he here implicitly recognizes the necessity for justice but in his own behavior acts unjustly. The fact of York's appointment should dispel the view of York as a doddering old man. Donald Reiman, commenting on this question, notes that “Richard, contrary to popular opinion, is not behaving foolishly when he creates York lord governor during the King's absence in Ireland, for he recognizes that York, despite his reservations about Richard's reign, will do all in his power to fulfill his oath to defend the kingdom and York is the only man whom the king can trust, who has any support among the country at large.”⁵

York next appears in II.ii, where he is described by Richard's Queen as entering “with signs of war about his aged neck” (1. 73), as he is now aware of what the arrival of Bolingbroke at Ravenspurgh bodes for his country. York comments in woeful tones:

Here am I left to underprop his land,
Who weak with age cannot support myself.
Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made,
Now shall he try his friends that flatter'd him.

(11. 82-85)

York's self-deprecating comments ought not be taken as a literally accurate description of himself. Certainly York is old, but he does have a strength of character which he reveals in his confrontation with Bolingbroke, and he has a strength of body which enables him later to make a furious ride to the king to accuse his son of treason. He is able to support himself, though the overwhelming burden of supporting the reign of Richard in its “sick hour” arouses in him a sense of weakness. York further laments his difficulties:

God for his mercy, what a tide of woes
Comes rushing on this woeful land at once!
I know not what to do. …

(11. 97-99)

The final statement of this passage is one of the first real statements of the ambiguity of York's situation as well as the hopelessness of it. He enlarges upon this ambiguity a few lines later, echoing his earlier statement on honor and allegiance:

                                                  Both are my kinsmen:
Th' one is my sovereign, whom both my oath
And duty bids defend; th' other again
Is my kinsman, whom the King hath wrong'd,
Whom conscience and my kindred bids to right.

(11. 111-115)

In this comment York is clearly going beyond the blind and unthinking acceptance of divine right as expressed earlier by Gaunt. Yet he cannot easily resolve this conflict by making an abrupt shift in allegiance. His loyalty is not easily displaced, but all he can do is say, “Well, somewhat we must do” (1. 115), and he orders Bushy, Green, and Bagot to “muster up your men” (1. 117). York's refusal to relinquish his role as Lord Governor and to give up the cause of opposing Bolingbroke underscores his basic loyalty to Richard and emphasizes the significance of his coming shift in allegiance. Even the men who have been the flatterers and false counselors of Richard admire York's constancy and sympathize with his plight as Green comments after York has left the scene:

Alas, poor Duke! The task he undertakes
Is numb'ring sands and drinking oceans dry;
Where one on his side fights, thousands will fly.

(11. 144-146)

Green's estimate of York's situation is, of course, accurate. The images of “numb'ring sands” and “drinking oceans dry” help to draw audience sympathy to him as an impossible underdog who in spite of overwhelming odds is willing to enter the fray. Of course he never really fights, but he is nonetheless the most sympathetic character on the scene. Richard at this point gets no sympathy, since he has put York in this unenviable position of defending a defenseless country.

York next appears in an encounter with Bolingbroke in II.iii, when he comes to learn Bolingbroke's intent. When York enters, Bolingbroke kneels to him as the Lord Governor, but York, seeing the pretense immediately, upbraids him:

Show me thy humble heart, and not thy knee,
Whose duty is deceivable and false.

(11. 83-84)

When Bolingbroke later asks York what his offence is, York unhesitatingly tells him treason and rebellion. Even after Bolingbroke declares as his sole intent the regaining of his stolen inheritance, York remains adamant, helpless as he is to back up his words with act:

My lords of England, let me tell you this:
I have had feeling of my cousin's wrongs,
And labour'd all I could to do him right.
But in this kind to come, in braving arms,
Be his own carver, and cut out his way,
To find out right with wrong—it may not be.
And you that do abet him in this kind
Cherish rebellion, and are rebels all.

(11. 139-146)

In addressing himself to the “lords of England,” he is extending his accusation, and in the formal introduction to his speech he is acting as the Lord Governor. Yet York, as we have already seen, is a realist. He understands the character of Richard and knows he is deaf to any sound advice. He understands the situation confronting him:

Well, well, I see the issue of these arms.
I cannot mend it, I must needs confess,
Because my power is weak and all ill left.
But if I could, by Him that gave me life,
I would attach you all, and make you stoop
Unto the sovereign mercy of the king;
But since I cannot, be it known unto you
I do remain as neuter.

(11. 151-158)

Here, for the first time, York makes a definite shift in his position going from loyalty to Richard to neutrality. He realistically recognizes that he can do nothing against Bolingbroke but nevertheless tells him what he would do if he could. At the close of this scene York agrees to go with Bolingbroke to Bristow Castle, but he is still unwilling to commit himself to Bolingbroke's position:

It may be I will go with you; but yet I'll pause,
For I am loath to break our country's laws.
Nor friends, nor foes, to me welcome you are.
Things past redress are now with me past care.

(11. 167-170)

In his adoption of neutrality York is abdicating his authority as Lord Governor and recognizing that Bolingbroke is the de facto king. He is now “loath to break our country's laws,” but he sees that they are going to be broken. Through his eyes we see the situation as unfortunate but unavoidable. York's course of action is the only one, or at least we are made to think so.

By the end of Act II, York has gone from simple loyalty to a loyalty in ambiguity, to neutrality. He appears next at Bolingbroke's camp at Bristol in III.i, in which Bolingbroke orders the execution of Bushy and Green. York plays no role and voices no opinions, but by his silent presence he acknowledges Bolingbroke as the de facto king. De jure, York himself possesses the power which Bolingbroke is exercising, but in his silent acceptance he gives proof of his neutrality and abdication of authority. In III.ii Richard returns to his kingdom only to find himself all but dispossessed. After vacillating between hope and despair, he seems to gain control of himself:

This ague fit of fear is overblown;
An easy task it is to win our own.
Say, Scroope, where lies our uncle with his power?

(11. 190-192)

This optimism is promptly dispelled by Scroope who, after an ominous preface, responds to Richard:

Your uncle York is join'd with Bolingbroke,
And all your Northern castles yielded up,
And all your southern gentlemen in arms
Upon his party.

(11. 200-203)

York's shift in allegiance has finally occurred and the news of it is a crushing blow to Richard's hope, as he is now no longer able to generate within himself even the false hope of success, nor do his followers, Carlisle and Aumerle particularly, make any attempt to rouse him to defend his position. In reaction to Scroope's information he simply says. “Thou has said enough” (1. 203). Richard seems to recognize the significance of York's change of allegiance. When the man of whom he said earlier, “he is just and always lov'd us well” (II.i. 221), has deserted him, he no longer can hope for success. Richard concludes III.ii with a despairing lament:

                                                            He does me double wrong
That wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue.
Discharge my followers; let them hence away,
From Richard's night, to Bolingbroke's fair day.

(11. 215-218)

Richard at this point abdicates de facto his role as king of England, almost simultaneously with his knowledge of York's shift of loyalty from Richard to Bolingbroke.

In the next scene, III.iii, Richard and Bolingbroke meet before Flint Castle where Richard gives himself over into the power of Bolingbroke. But before Richard enters York makes several relevant comments. Northumberland, in addressing Bolingbroke, says, “Richard not far from hence hath hid his head” (1. 6). York immediately picks up the mode of reference to the King and says:

It would beseem the Lord Northumberland
To say “King Richard.” Alack the heavy day
When such a sacred king should hide his head.

(11. 7-9)

Even though York has joined Bolingbroke, he still maintains respect for the King as divinely anointed. His shift has been political and not philosophical, as is later revealed more fully in his comments on the necessity for loyalty to Bolingbroke. The tone of regret in York's statement significantly places him in contrast with others, notably Carlisle, who continue in their rhetorical proclamations of divine right. When Richard does appear later in the scene, York again expresses a similar sentiment:

Yet looks he like a king. Behold, his eye,
As bright as is the eagle's, lightens forth
Controlling majesty. Alack, alack, for woe,
That any harm should stain so fair a show!

(11. 68-71)

Saddened though he is, implicit in his statement, “Yet looks he like a king” and his phrase “so fair a show,” is York's recognition that the image of the king is not sufficient to meet the demands of political necessity, or, as Traversi states it, his consciousness “of the gap that already separates appearance from reality.”⁶ In saying this York is again controlling audience response. Certainly it is regrettable that Richard has lost his power; York even encourages our sympathy. Yet he has made us aware that Bolingbroke's ascendancy is an unavoidable political reality.

York next appears in IV.i, after Bolingbroke has for the moment settled the contention between Bagot and Aumerle. He enters in an official capacity to address Bolingbroke:

Great Duke of Lancaster, I come to thee
From plume-pluck'd Richard, who with willing soul
Adopts thee heir, and his high sceptre yields
To the possession of thy royal hand.
Ascend his throne, descending now from him,
And long live Henry, fourth of that name!

(11. 107-112)

York functioned as Lord Governor of England in the absence of Richard, thus acting for Richard. In the above passage he is functioning as a mediator between Richard and Bolingbroke, thus acting for both men. Later in this same scene, Bolingbroke asks that Richard be brought in and York offers to “be his conduct” (1. 157). In making this suggestion, he is offering himself to the service of Bolingbroke. When Richard and York re-enter, Richard asks why he has been sent for and York again responds, as a spokesman for the new king:

To do that office of thine own good will
Which tired majesty did make thee offer:
The resignation of thy state and crown
To Henry Bolingbroke.

(11. 177-180)

York's shift in allegiance is now complete. And he has brought the audience to the same point, namely a recognition that Bolingbroke's rise and Richard's decline have been the necessary product of the political situation created by Richard himself. In Act II he had solemnly warned Richard of what lay ahead if he pursued his intended course. York's subsequent actions as representative and mediator have kept him before us, and they have grown out of his premise that Richard's behavior has pricked his “tender patience to those thoughts / Which honour and allegiance cannot think” (II.i. 207-208).

In the final act of the play, York enacts his loyalty to the new king. Previously he has given only vocal or official support, but in Act V he tries to have his own son Aumerle executed for his treasonous plot. Even before this, however, York appears with the Duchess of York in his castle describing the triumphant entry of Bolingbroke into London at a “stately pace,” “Whilst all tongues cried ‘God save thee, Bolingbroke!’” (V.ii. 11). The tone of this description is, of course, an indication of his admiration of the new king, and it also amplifies the relationship between York and the people of England. He has seen Bolingbroke from the same point of view as the common people, and his tongue seems to be one with theirs as they cry “God save thee, Bolingbroke!”

After describing Bolingbroke, York comments on how dust was thrown upon Richard's “sacred head” (1. 30). In a passage highly relevant to the thematic issues of the play, York continues:

Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off,
His face still combating with tears and smiles,
The badges of his grief and patience,
That had not God for some strong purpose steel'd
The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted
And barbarism itself have pitied him.
But heaven hath a hand in these events,
To whose high will we bound our calm contents.
To Bolingbroke are we sworn subjects now,
Whose state and honour I for aye allow.

(11. 31-40)

This speech emphasizes, on one hand, one of the central paradoxes of the play, namely that while Richard is losing his royal and official stature, he simultaneously gains sympathy, ironically through York. While inducing audience sympathy, York is also attempting to hold a providential view of history in which the deposing of a rightful monarch by power politics can be regarded as a working out of a divine plan for England. The sympathy expressed is York's, not the commoners' of England, because “God for some strong purpose steels / The hearts of men.” In his further comments York again explicitly states his new allegiance and his motivation. Earlier he seemed to act out of political necessity as a part of the working of God's “high will.” In adopting this position York places himself in a dilemma. He desires to have both the old and the new, a king to whom loyalty is divinely required, but also a king who has achieved his crown through political power and military force. Even in his ambiguous position, York acts contrary to the orthodox Tudor doctrine in his support of a king who has gained his throne by deposing a divinely ordained king. Yet it is at this point that York disqualifies himself has a spokesman for the play. He sees Bolingbroke perhaps as the nation saw him, but seemingly not as Shakespeare saw him.

Later in V.ii York questions Aumerle about the letter protruding from his garment. When Aumerle refuses to respond to York's satisfaction, he snatches the letter and, upon reading it, reacts violently with “Treason, foul treason! Villain! Traitor! Slave!” (1. 73). The spontaneity of this reaction to the letter is indicative of his new kind of acceptance of Bolingbroke. Earlier in the play he gives evidence of an emotional attachment and affection for Richard, but until this point he has offered primarily an intellectual acquiescence to Bolingbroke. His response to the letter suggests that now he possesses a similar kind of wholehearted, emotional devotion to his new ruler. His response is not, as Coleridge suggested, one of “abstract loyalty,”⁷ however misguided the loyalty may be. In the ensuing action York vows to reveal the treasonous plot to Bolingbroke, but his wife makes an emotional appeal to York as the father of Aumerle. He is deaf to all such appeals and responds:

Away, fond woman! Were he twenty times my son,
I would appeach him.

(11. 101-102)

York's willingness to have his son executed implies, of course, that his confused loyalty is destructive, but the great irony here is that his loyalty is to a man who is king not by virtue of his being divinely anointed but of his possessing political and military power. Yet the basis of York's loyalty is something akin to divine right, the working of God's “high will.”

The ensuing scene in which York and his Duchess alternately appeal to the king for justice and mercy is a ritual enactment, superficially of York's new loyalty and, more profoundly, of the confusion of York's position. He demands of his son a complete loyalty to Bolingbroke. Aumerle is, in a sense, doing the same thing Bolingbroke has done, except that Aumerle is attempting to place Richard, the divinely anointed, back on the throne. York is condemning the very action he himself has only shortly before condoned. Thus, York's answer to the question of the right to depose is ambiguous. The answer of the whole play is correspondingly ambiguous since at the play's end Bolingbroke has brought some greatly needed stability and strength to the throne, but the ominous warnings of Carlisle (IV.i. 115-149) and Richard (V.i. 55-60) temper any optimism about a glorious and peaceful reign for Henry IV.

Some significance may also be attached to the fact that, in this same scene, Bolingbroke gives York an official function in the new government. After granting pardon to Aumerle, he orders York:

Good uncle, help to order several powers,
To Oxford, or where'er these traitors are.

(11. 140-141)

Whereas earlier York had acted for Bolingbroke in a ritualistic capacity in speaking for the court at Richard's deposition, he now assumes an active role in the defense of the new king. He thereby balances his earlier role as Lord Governor without means to fulfill his function. Now as a deputy for Bolingbroke he is again in the role of the defender of his country, but, we may assume, with the necessary means.

This analysis of the multiple and interdependent functions of York in Richard II provides both some new insights into the complexities of that play, and also some insights into Shakespeare's dramatic art. Shakespeare's handling of York demonstrates, I believe, his concern with how an audience responds to character and action. In a general sense, York is some indication of Shakespeare's intention while still being an integral part of the action.

Notes

1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare, etc. (London: Everyman Library, 1907), pp. 116-117; Peter Ure, intro., King Richard II (Cambridge, Mass.: Arden Shakespeare), p. lxxiii; Derek Traversi, Shakespeare from Richard II to Henry V (Stanford, 1957), p. 45.

2. Lily B. Campbell in Shakespeare's Histories (San Marino, 1947), p. 211, sees the central issue of the play as the deposition of a king and the central scene as the deposition scene, a scene of sacrilege which produced the War of Roses. E. M. W. Tillyard in Shakespeare's History Plays (London, 1944), p. 261, views the play primarily as a struggle between Richard and Bolingbroke climaxed in the deposition scene, and he concludes that “in doctrine the play is entirely orthodox.” Irving Ribner in The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (Princeton, 1957), p. 156, observes that “when Shakespeare came to write Richard II he could regard the deposition of Richard as an historical fait accompli which was sinful and which ultimately resulted in the horror of the War of Roses, … but which in its immediate effects was good for England because it replaced a weak and ineffective king with a strong and efficient one.” Peter Ure, in his introduction to the new Arden Richard II, commenting on the structure of the play, notes that the political climax of the play occurs when the news arrives that Bolingbroke has gained control of the land.

3. Ure, p. lxii.

4. All quotations from the play are from King Richard II, ed. Peter Ure (Cambridge, Mass.: Arden Shakespeare, 1956).

5. “Appearance, Reality, and Moral Order in Richard II,” MLQ, [Modern Language Quarterly] XXV (1964), 36.

6. Traversi, p. 35.

7. Coleridge, p. 117.