SOURCE: Bennett, Kenneth C. “Climax and Anti-Climax in Richard II.” Essays in Theatre 6, no. 2 (May 1988): 123-35.

[In the following essay, Bennett evaluates the dramatic structure of Richard II and contends that it depicts the two parallel tragedies of Richard and Bolingbroke.]

Every drama presents a problem in construction, and what Shakespeare had to face in dramatizing the origins of the Wars of the Roses was the anti-climax inherent in the deposition of Richard, a weak but an anointed king. The rise and fall of fortune's wheel in the de casibus tragedies from medieval times on up through the Mirror for Magistrates was likely to be anti-climactic, if not monotonously predictable, and Shakespeare must have been aware of the pitfall. While some critics have pronounced Richard II anti-climactic, most have been content to use words like “ceremonial”, “ritualistic”, and—rather to the same effect—“elegiac”. Much has been said, too, about the “lyrical” nature of Richard II, aligning it with Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, which were most likely written about the same time; but not so much has been said about the elaborate architectonics of the play, the dramatic force Shakespeare achieves by careful coordination of tragic patterns with scenic contrasts and parallels.¹ Yes, Richard II is elegiac, ceremonial, and ritualistic, but it is also a forcefully constructed tragedy that works through a singular articulation of unusual means to build up a strong sense of the disaster, both personal and national, caused by a multiplicity of tragic errors.

The most obvious device that Shakespeare employs to counteract the fall of Richard is the resurgence of the banished Bolingbroke, whose career seems to be a marked exception to the ineffectual attempts at rebellion that clutter the pages of English history before and after Richard's reign. Although the primary pattern is that Richard's weakness gives way to Bolingbroke's aggressive opportunism, this is cleverly undercut by Shakespeare insofar as Bolingbroke's ascension is marked immediately by a tragic catastrophe not unlike or unrelated to Richard's own. Both Richard and Bolingbroke are tragic figures in this play² in the traditional sense that they are exceptional figures—well above the mean—yet flawed; they both commit grievous errors which result in worse consequences than they foresaw (the classical peripeteia), come to a recognition (anagnorisis), and fall into a state of misery as a result. The fact that Bolingbroke's career has marked parallels to Richard's has not been a commonplace of modern criticism, nor, especially, has the fact that Bolingbroke's accelerated recapitulation of Richard's error is used by Shakespeare to intensify the tragic effect.

Those who find Richard II more poetic than dramatic are perhaps influenced by a number of forces: there is relatively little physical action in the play until Act V, the magnificence of Richard's speeches tends to be the most immediately impressive aspect of the play, and the rhyme bulks larger in this play than in any of the other serious dramas by Shakespeare—only Love's Labour's Lost and A Midsummer Night's Dream have more. While the lack of physical action should not really bother anyone who is used to the long speeches of either Shakespeare or Shaw or anyone acquainted with speech-act theory, it can be a problem for modern audiences. But it seems to me that the reduction of Richard to nothing but sheer physical rebellion against his fate is the most dramatic illustration of his attainment of increased stature despite his resignation of political power. When he was king he needed to take no physical action; his word was enough to make things happen, and he fell prey to thinking that no matter what he did, the name of king would always call up the forces necessary to sustain him in power. By Act V, Richard has recognized his mistake but the damage cannot be undone. However, instead of resigning himself, as before, to wretchedness, he lashes out in Act V, ironically just at the point where such self-defense is most futile. One interesting point in this respect is that Richard's closing lines show an implicit faith that he will go to heaven—a belief unchallenged either by anyone in the play or by its commentators. There seems to be a tacit assumption that although Richard has sinned, his repentance has resulted in absolution—such is the strength of emotion Shakespeare has succeeded in creating for this unhappy king.³

A study of Shakespeare's possible sources, especially Woodstock, shows that Shakespeare could have painted Richard II in some of the same colors he used for Richard III, but he softens history and reduces Richard's errors to one or two, which clarifies the causality in the audience's eyes and palliates his substantial crimes. He may be behind Gloucester's murder—Gaunt clearly agrees with the Duchess of Gloucester on this point—but Shakespeare never makes us absolutely certain of it.⁴ Shakespeare chooses to focus on Richard's seizure of Gaunt's property as the culminating act of mismanagement. Here Richard's intentions are made as open and as lawless as Richard III's. Even when he might have been accused of other wrongs to his kingdom and his queen, Shakespeare chooses to exculpate him, at least partially, through the words of his harshest enemy, Northumberland, who blames Richard's failings on his associates.⁵ Henry himself surprises us when, at the end of the play, he says to Exton, “I hate the murderer, love him murdered” (V.vi.40); surely there is no need for Henry to express any love at all; he needs no Machiavellian lies at this point to win hearts. More convincingly, a lie at this point would be inconsistent with Henry's frank, impassioned tones in this scene. Here the irony is purely situational, i.e., dramatic: Henry now finds the murder of Richard as horrifying as the death of his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, was to his father, John of Gaunt. The final bit of stage action—the unexpected appearance of Richard's coffin—provides a climactic revelation and recognition for Henry that not only strengthens the ending but creates sympathy for the late king. Shakespeare makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for the audience to take a vindictive attitude towards Richard—or, for that matter, to Henry.⁶ It is clear that no matter what history might say, Exton is the scapegoat at this point. He has committed the unforgivable crime, and he will suffer the banishment of Cain. Henry is quick to realize that the guilt spills over onto him and stains him ineradicably.

Similarly, Shakespeare could have chosen to paint Bolingbroke blacker than he does throughout. Despite his pride, his opportunism, and ambition (all of which seem quite human flaws) he seems to be a person of sense (if not sensibility) who is concerned with justice as well as with power. The much-criticized quasi-comic scenes in the Aumerle episode are necessary to create this effect. If, as Socrates maintained, what man really wants is justice, then Bolingbroke is largely an appealing figure. His error, however, is clear: he overreaches himself in seizing the crown. Besides, even if he doesn't indirectly bring about the death of Richard, he must realize that his new role as usurper has made him accountable for this act. By the end of the play Bolingbroke has unintentionally fallen into some of the same unhappy traps that Richard did. In the gage-throwing episode in Act IV, Bolingbroke is confronted with the same rebellious dissension that Richard faced in Act I, and he must deal with even greater disorder, symptomatic of the rebellions that will increasingly plague his reign when he actually becomes king. Although Bolingbroke does not lose control in this scene, he can deal with the situation less effectively than Richard can simply because he is not legitimately the monarch. And even after he has ascended the throne, the sequence of scenes with the Duke and Duchess of York, as well as Aumerle, show him the same difficulties Richard faced when forced to hear conflicting cries of “Traitor!” Just as Richard is virtually forced to alleviate Bolingbroke's sentence of banishment for Gloucester's sake, so Bolingbroke is virtually required to pardon Aumerle for the sake of the Duchess' pleadings even though it means going against the frenetic, vengeful pleas of the ordinarily mild and indulgent York. (York, it will be noted, is quick to call his son a traitor even though he quite casually leaves Richard's side to go with Bolingbroke in Act III.) And at the last, Bolingbroke, now Henry IV, must deal with Exton, as we have seen, just as Richard had to deal with Mowbray, by a form of banishment. A further parallel between the two can be seen in Henry's concern over his son's wastrel ways. Do not these threaten to become the same ways that Richard followed? Is Henry IV, like Edward III, likely to be succeeded by a son most unlike him? History may seem to Henry to be repeating itself uncomfortably soon. The chief difference between his and Richard's careers is that for him events occur in a much more accelerated way.

The analogous patterns of tragedy then serve to strengthen what might have been anti-climactic if Shakespeare had chosen to follow only the fortunes of Richard in the latter part of the play. Both kings have the potential for heroism but each is lacking: Bolingbroke has the power but not the legitimacy; for Richard, just the opposite is true. Clearly Shakespeare implies what the essentials are for successful kingship, a simple but fundamental reality not less true in his time than at the end of the fourteenth century. But perhaps there is a subtle suggestion here that the proper use of power is more important than its legitimacy, that the administration of justice is more crucial than how the administrator came to power. Though Bolingbroke was banished, he returned to become not only Lancaster but king; and though he overstepped his power and suffers from guilt and an uneasy crown, his power, transmitted to his son, takes on new strength in the next generation. For his error, Henry is condemned to mental sufferings that culminate, in Henry IV, in death without undertaking his pilgrimage—in effect, a self-imposed banishment—to the Holy Land, where, ironically, his old enemy Mowbray had, according to the Bishop of Carlisle, attained a “pure soul” by fighting against “black pagans” under the colors of Christ (IV.i.92-100).

By repeating the tragic pattern of Richard in Bolingbroke and by accelerating its course so that Henry's recognition comes hard upon Richard's demise, Shakespeare doubles the dramatic impact. The endpoint of the play is not the death of Richard but the anagnorisis and peripeteia of Henry, when, just after he has reached the pinnacle of his success, the coffin containing Richard is borne in by Exton, and the usurper must face the consequences of his acts. Though the tragedy does not have the finality of King Lear, to which, incidentally, it is similar in showing the disasters attendant on arbitrary and selfish kingship, it gains strength by showing the cumulative and long-ranging effects of compounded tragic errors. Shakespeare also establishes a subtle symmetry by making Henry's tragic error echo that of his father, Gaunt, in Act I. Despite the fact that Shakespeare's Gaunt is portrayed as much more virtuous and less contentious and self-seeking than his counterpart, Shakespeare involves him very slightly but very clearly in his own tragedy. When in Scene iii Richard rightly wonders why Gaunt should take offense at the sentence of banishment passed on Bolingbroke, Gaunt replies,

You urged me as a judge, but I had rather
You would have bid me argue like a father.
O, had it been a stranger, not my child,
To smooth his fault I should have been more mild.
A partial slander sought I to avoid,
And in the sentence my own life destroyed.
Alas, I looked when some of you should say
I was too strict, to make mine own away.
But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue
Against my will to do myself this wrong.

(I.iii.237-46)

The whole exchange between Richard and Gaunt might have been handled more economically, but Shakespeare chose to place more than casual emphasis on Gaunt's involvement in his own misfortune. What develops is a rhythmic pattern in which, to use Eugene O'Neill's phrase, possessors are self-dispossessed: first Gaunt, then Richard, then Henry, give away what, they finally realize, is most important to them—a son's presence, the role of King, and peace of mind.

II

The scenic structure which Shakespeare establishes in Richard II seems almost calculated to aggravate the problem of anti-climax rather than to alleviate it. Scenes of pomp and colorful ceremony are followed by intimate, often static or stylized exchanges that might dissipate the impetus of action. Early on, the depiction of helplessness and personal sorrow seems inevitably to follow the scenes of public confrontation. But Shakespeare's handling of the device tends to heighten the dramatic tension and ultimately leads to a reversal of order in Act V that reinforces and harmonizes with the dual tragic patterns we have seen. The structure is not simple, as Tillyard claimed,⁷ but both complex and subtle; what appears to be anti-climactic can be a source of strength and intensity, what appears to be disunity can be dramatic shift of focus and reversal of tone.

In Act I the treatment of the first scene sets up the pattern of frustrated action that is to prevail: the high-sounding threats of Bolingbroke and Mowbray, the imperious commands of Richard, seem prelude to some decisive action; the gage-throwing seems only one step away from deadly physical contact. If, at the end of the scene, the audience feels let down, there is, at least, a sense that the combat will take place at a later date. Scene ii has only the barest connection with Scene i—chiefly the presence of John of Gaunt—but it shows immediately how much more pertinent truth can be revealed in one intimate exchange than in all the formal accusations at court. By contrast, the emotions here gain an intensity from their genuineness, not merely something straining to a pitch of rhetoric; and the motives are clear, not bewildering, as in Scene i. Besides the intensity generated, Scene ii, as short as it is, comes to a quick and decisive completion. John of Gaunt persuades the Duchess of Gloucester that she must leave vengeance to heaven, and in the process she runs the emotional scale from sharp reproach to Gaunt for not acting against Richard to resignation to her grief. Although she cannot be called heroic, she can be seen as a dignified tragic victim, the first in the play, for her lonely death is imminent. Because she is the first innocent bystander to be hurt by the action of an agent of the king, she is the emotional antecedent of Queen Isabel, who is similarly bereaved of her husband; in fact, she becomes the model for all the weeping women left destitute by the internecine Wars of the Roses.

Scene iii of Act I, by reassuming a formal tone and coming to a climax in aborted action like Scene i, sets up the alternating rhythm characteristic of the play as a whole: the public, then the private; the ceremonial, then the intimate. Once more physical violence is threatened, seems indeed more sure, but it ceases when Richard throws his warder down. This act, and Richard's descent from his throne, are the only physical actions taken by Richard in this scene, but though the motions are small and few (as they are in general throughout the drama), they are symbolic, and here they are proleptic of Richard's abdication in Act III. His act of self-dispossession has in effect begun. Richard's warder is his symbol of power as the official of the royal lists, and although the act is overtly authoritative, there are undertones of casually and voluntarily throwing away his command. (The latter is certainly true in that Richard has now missed two chances to deal effectively with Mowbray and Bolingbroke.) Richard's pattern of reversing himself continues with his mitigation of Bolingbroke's term of banishment so that even the passing of the sentence is touched with anti-climax. It is in the intimate sub-scene between Gaunt and his son and in the private conversation between Richard and his courtiers that the audience experiences the undisguised feelings of the opposing factions. As in Scene ii, the conversation between Bolingbroke and Gaunt renders, with considerable pathos, the feelings of father and son at point of separation. At the end of the scene, incidentally, Shakespeare prepares us for a later irony: Bolingbroke bids farewell to the soil of England, but later, when both he and Richard return to their native land, it is Richard, not Bolingbroke, who salutes it with his royal hand. Perhaps it is not coincidental, then, that many critics have sensed a shift in sympathy to Richard at this point. Scene iv is the most intimate and revealing of all: finally we are apprised of Richard's true feelings regarding Bolingbroke, particularly the disdain that the courtiers have for Bolingbroke's courtship of the common people. It is also notable because Richard takes his most decisive action—to enter in person into the Irish wars and “farm” his realm for revenue. The announcement of the imminent death of Gaunt makes Richard even more emphatic in his haste to raid Gaunt's coffers; thus here, at the end of the first act, Richard commits his chief tragic error. Richard certainly has committed many errors and continues to commit them, but this particular misjudgment is the crucial one structurally as the play is arranged, since it is clearly the chief cause of Bolingbroke's rebellion.

Act II begins with yet another closely focused subscene between Gaunt and his brother York (though Northumberland and others are present), a prelude to the ceremonial confrontation with Richard that forms the central body of the scene. Here Gaunt takes over the elegiac and prophetic role that the Duchess of Gloucester played in Act I, Scene ii, and it is York who tries to persuade him of the futility of his intent, as Gaunt persuaded the Duchess of the folly of revenge. It is worth noting that Shakespeare chose to place Gaunt's “sceptred isle” speech in this more intimate conversation, where indeed it seems almost like a soliloquy, before the entry of the King with his train. The public exchange between Gaunt and Richard with all its quibbles on Gaunt's name would seem pale by comparison, were it not for the increasing acerbity that Shakespeare develops in the conflict. In the middle of the scene Gaunt goes out, and his death is reported by Northumberland only nine lines later. The rest of the scene might have been anti-climactic, but Shakespeare gives it forward motion by having York take over as Richard's antagonist, and the public aspect of the scene ends with Richard's announcement that he will seize Gaunt's effects and lands, as anticipated in his private conversation at the end of Act I. After the King and his train exit, there is, following the established pattern, another subscene in which the lords Northumberland, Ross, and Willoughby give vent to their true feelings about the confiscation of Lancaster's estate. Though this segment of the scene has little of the color or the conflict of the preceding sections, it gives a forward thrust to the action by providing a quick insight into the conspiracy that is rising in response to Richard's corruption.

Like the second scene of Act I, the second scene of Act II depicts the vulnerable, this time focusing on the Queen instead of the Duchess of Gloucester. Although Bushy tries to cheer her up, her premonitions of grief are proven all too true by the news Green brings of the rebels' invasion of England, York's announcements of defections by both nobles and commons, and, finally, news that the Duchess of Gloucester has died. Yet again after the more public part of the scene, a subscene follows in which the even deeper fears of Bushy, Bagot, and Green are voiced, anticipating not only defeat but their own deaths. Ordinarily such a conversation might seem anti-climactic, but Shakespeare's skillful handling gives the drama an accelerated thrust towards the courtiers' catastrophe.

The third scene of Act II portrays the swelling progress of Bolingbroke towards complete command, a fact dramatized symbolically by the simple yet effective device of increasing the number of characters about him—first there is only Northumberland, but then Harry Percy appears and learns to recognize the future king.⁸ Then Ross and Willoughby enter, followed shortly by Berkeley. At first Berkeley appears to be an opponent, addressing Bolingbroke as “Lord of Hereford” rather than Lancaster, but he quickly switches to a submissive posture when Bolingbroke corrects him. The last figure to come on stage is York, to whom, quite ironically, Bolingbroke kneels. Ultimately, of course, it is York who capitulates despite his principles. Seeming to defy the rebels at first, York makes an anti-climactic—even casual—aboutface by inviting Bolingbroke to enter the castle. In his final speech here, York seems ready to reverse himself when he says, “For I am loath to break our country's laws” (l. 168), but, as he well realizes, it is too late to protest, so off goes the regent meekly with his nephew's train.

Once more the closing scene of the act is the most intimate and the most threatening. Although neither Salisbury nor the Welsh Captain has appeared in the play before, their brief exchange focuses on the continuing issue of Richard's decline in power. There is even the rumor of his death, and the whole force of the scene moves sharply downwards towards dispersal and ruin.

Act III begins with another brief scene in which Bolingbroke, now acting as the law though not yet king, brings Bushy and Green to judgment, and gives orders to execute them. The brisk action here is a dramatic contrast to the melancholy musings of Salisbury on the fate of Richard in the preceding scene. Bolingbroke's verdict on the “caterpillars of the commonwealth” is harsh and dismissive—prideful, too. By contrast, Bushy and Green bear themselves well when they hear orders for their execution. Bolingbroke, in some ways, seems to echo Richard's judgment of Gaunt, and his lines at the close sound similar to Richard's words when he, at the end of Act I, urges his adherents on to the Irish wars. Though Bolingbroke's actions are quite the opposite of Richard's in most ways, Shakespeare indicates by the verbal echoes the similarities of their ultimate tragic positions.

The motion of Scene ii is just the opposite of that in Act II, Scene iii, where Bolingbroke's forces were gathering strength. Here, with Richard's return to England, we see, through successive messengers, his supporters defecting from him; and the rise and fall of his emotions as he finds encouragement or discouragement in the news and in the reminders of his position by Aumerle and Carlisle. The oscillations between high and low, the motions from climax to anti-climax, reach their greatest frequency and intensity in this scene, and they continue like aftershocks into Act IV. Despite the debacle that threatens Richard, there is a new dignity about him.⁹ Though his external fortunes are failing, his spiritual nature seems to be rising, thus countering any anti-climactic tendencies towards pettiness or dishonor. Partly this stems from his concern for the kingdom. His salute to the earth, though physically he stoops, raises him in the audience's estimation—yet another example of Shakespeare's use of the ironic gesture. Richard's whole first lengthy speech gives him further luster, not only through its beauty but through its echoes of John of Gaunt's apostrophe to England. The positive impression is reinforced by the sun-king speech, which succeeds in affirming his right to kingship despite external evidence to the contrary. In such ways, Shakespeare begins to evoke pathos for Richard rather early in the drama, and though in the falling action of the scene he embraces despair, he does not lose his audience.

All this is a prelude to the central scene of the tragedy at Flint Castle, where Richard stands insecurely on the walls, all too ready to descend into the base court below. The paradox here is that for Richard the climax of the play, which is usually thought of as a rising motion, is, quite literally, a falling one. For Bolingbroke, however, it is a rising motion, though ironically he is the one who bends his knee. This is the most broadly public scene of the whole drama, taking place, as it does, outside the castle and in the fields surrounding it, and requiring the movement of Bolingbroke's army across the stage. Both factions are there in full force in a panoply unmatched by any other scene. Hence the sudden switch to the Queen and her ladies in the final scene of the act once again seems anti-climactic. There is no grand scale confrontation nor any histrionic abdication of power. The scene has been criticized as stylized and allegorical, but although it is both these things, the purpose seems to be to show in an intensely personal way the pathos of individual victims of large-scale political acts. The Queen's voluntary sadness seems to parallel Richard's self-destructiveness when she says to her lady, “But thou shouldst please me better wouldst thou weep” (l. 20). Like her husband, she anticipates the griefs to come, yet she must learn from overhearing the gardener what everyone else in the kingdom, she feels, already knows. The scene expertly portrays the sorrow spreading throughout the garden-land by showing the intensity of feeling not only in the Queen but in the gardener: although Isabel curses him for telling her the dreadful news, his spirit turns in sympathy to her. Incidentally, the scene itself is a miniature drama in four brief acts: the search by Isabel and her ladies for something to drive away care (the exposition), the overhearing of the gardeners' conversation concerning the decay of the land and the deposition of the king (the introduction of the problem), the clash of the Queen and the gardener over the bad news (the climax), and the final words of the gardener when the Queen and her ladies have gone (the denouement).

Act IV consists of only one long scene, but this can be subdivided into four parts, all public and ceremonial until the very last. The action takes place in Westminster Hall, the building recently constructed by Richard for the Parliament, whose first meeting there, historically, was to depose him. After Bagot's accusations against Aumerle, which result in a gage-throwing scene reminiscent of Act I, Scene i, the second section centers on the Bishop of Carlisle's protest against the deposition, which culminates in his arrest for treason. The Bishop takes over the role of John of Gaunt as truthteller in the drama, and, like him, suffers the extreme displeasure of the person in political power. Like Richard at the beginning of Act III, he echoes Gaunt's concern for the earth of England, the diction and the accents of his prophecy picking up those of Gaunt's as well. The tensions of the act build up, then, to the appearance of Richard, whose transfer of the crown to Bolingbroke is filled with the same oscillations up and down that marked his earlier speeches. Since Richard has already abdicated de facto, the whole action seems fated to be anti-climactic, yet once more Shakespeare's treatment of his materials makes even Richard's continuing vacillations climactic, most notably through the mirror scene, in which Richard destroys his “face”—his public image—by dashing down the glass. As he makes clear himself, from this point on he is in the paradoxical state of gaining more control over his situation now that he is no longer king:

I am greater than a king;
For when I was a king my flatterers
Were then but subjects; being now a subject
I have a king here to my flatterer.
Being so great, I have no need to beg.

(ll. 304-08)

Now it is Bolingbroke who is controlled by the crime he has committed, and now Richard, his subject, actually rises to become his superior. The court have all become “conveyors” in Richard's eyes, an opinion that carries such conviction that it gives Richard a new dignity. In the brief and final segment of this long scene, Shakespeare gives us another close conversation: just as Northumberland, Willoughby, and Ross could see some hope in rebellion in Act I, now Aumerle, the Abbot of Westminster, and his custodial prisoner, the Bishop of Carlisle, foment an uprising against the usurping king.

In Act V the scenic arrangement changes markedly: here the intimate scenes precede the public ones, and the climax builds to Richard's death in Pomfret Castle (Scene v) and Bolingbroke's recognition of guilt and consequent reversal of mental fortune in the sixth and final scene. The private conversations of Scenes i and ii contrast with the third, the court scene at Windsor. Scene i is an idyll of sadness, a transference of the mood of the garden scene at the end of Act III to the streets leading to the Tower of London. Although the essential motion of the scene is divisive, there is the suggestion of possible renewal. Queen Isabel sees her fair rose Richard withered, but she says,

Yet look up, behold,
That you in pity may dissolve to dew
And wash him fresh again with true-love tears.

(ll. 8-10)

Richard himself vows, too late, to change: “Our holy lives must win a new world's crown / Which our profane hours here have thrown down” (ll. 24-25). Like Gaunt and Carlisle before him, Richard now turns prophet, warning Northumberland against the contention for a divided realm that will occur in Henry IV, Part 1. Like Gaunt, too, who must offer comfort to the banished Bolingbroke in a strained and futile fashion, Richard must console his queen, though both of them sense that their state is, finally, inconsolable. Richard's humility has bred resignation, and relinquishing his role as king of beasts (“If aught but beast / I had been still a happy king of men” [ll. 35-36]) has elevated him, made him capable of dispassionate insight. Instead of snuffing Richard out, then, or letting him decline into abject misery, Shakespeare allows Richard to recover and rise from his extremity of weakness in Act IV.¹⁰

Scenes ii and iii, the Aumerle episode, have been criticized as digressive or superfluous, but they show in their continuous rising action how the divided loyalties of the two generations in the York family over the plot to kill Henry IV at Oxford burst into the public scene and present a considerable problem in dispensing justice for the new king. The Duke of York is so nervously loyal to Henry that he wishes to expose his own son's treachery, whereas the Duchess is more loyal to her family and determines to save her son by begging mercy. Their private quarrel that develops with accelerating energy in Scene ii is taken posthaste to the King in Scene iii and settled there in almost comic fashion by the wryly benign forgiveness of Henry. But this rather boisterous play within a play is not without its undertones. We learn that Henry, like York, has a problem son who may threaten the smooth continuation of power and peace of mind he strives for. Ironically, Henry pardons his cousin Aumerle at the emotional pleas of his aunt, the Duchess, as Richard cut short the banishment of his cousin, Henry himself, at the sadness expressed by his uncle Gaunt in Act I. Even the Duchess of York's “A god on earth thou art” (l. 135) echoes Bolingbroke's earlier “such is the breath of kings” (I.ii.215). And there is an echo of the regenerative note sounded by Richard and his queen in the first scene when the Duchess concludes the miniature comedy by saying to Aumerle, “Come, my old son. I pray God make thee new” (l. 145).

The fourth scene, a brief eleven lines, between Sir Piers of Exton and his man is the last onward-thrusting conspiratorial dialogue in the play. The threatening tone of the urgent questions and answers shifts the dramatic key from the almost comic interlude preceding and propels the play into the denouement. Richard's soliloquy, which constitutes the first segment of the fifth scene, shows his vulnerability to the threat proposed by Exton, thus increasing the fear the audience feels for his safety. Throughout this most private section of the play, Richard's recognition of his past wastefulness, his sensitivity to broken time and music, and most of all his Lear-like concern for nothingness, make him rise in our estimation, as does his democratic tone with the groom in the next episode concerning his horse Barbary. When the murder does occur, then, Richard's ascension is amply prepared for. It is only Richard's fleshly shell that he leaves behind.

Mount, mount, my soul. Thy seat is up on high,
Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward here to die.

(ll. 111-12)

The sixth and last scene is once again public and ceremonial, but after hearing news of the defeat and beheading of various rebels and the pardoning of the Bishop of Carlisle, Henry must confront Exton bearing the coffin containing Richard. Suddenly, at the climax of his triumph, he is forced to deal with the unpleasant truth and overwhelming guilt attendant on his usurpation. The swiftness of the conclusion is no detriment to the full realization of Henry's own tragedy. In the end his story and Richard's converge to create a doubly powerful effect. By concluding the fifth act with two public scenes, Shakespeare reverses the pattern he has used in the preceding four; in both, he uses a swelling action, the fifth scene culminating in the onrush of Exton and his men, the sixth, after the successive entrances of various lords, in the appearance of Exton with the coffin. This strategic shift of pattern creates a cumulative energy at the end, and serves as a climactic close to the rhythm of alternating public and private scenes that works to such dramatic effect throughout the rest of the play. The tragedies of Richard and Bolingbroke thus flow together, linked externally by the villainous action of Piers of Exton, but tied ultimately by their underlying prideful errors, their failures to set limitations on their powers. Just as Queen Isabel has assumed the role of grieving widow from the Duchess of Gloucester, so Bolingbroke assumes the roles of both Gaunt and Richard: like Gaunt, he repents his own complicity in his misery, and like Richard, he feels keenly the stings of guilt for his own behavior.

Notes

1. Dr. Johnson, who in his Preface to Shakespeare criticized Shakespeare's haste in concluding his plays, said of Richard II specifically, “… it is not finished at last with the happy force of some other of his tragedies nor can be said much to affect the passions or enlarge the understanding” (The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 7, ed. Arthur Sherbo [New Haven, 1968], p. 452). Those that praise the play, like Pater, tend to find its impressiveness more in its poetic than its dramatic qualities: “… in fact, the play of Richard the Second does, like a musical composition, possess a certain concentration of all its parts, a simple continuity, an evenness in execution, which are rare in the great dramatist.” (Walter Pater, Appreciation: With an Essay on Style [London, 1889], p. 210.)

2. It is well to remember that this play was titled The Tragedy of King Richard the Second until the First Folio appeared, when it became, rather palely, The Life and Death of King Richard the Second.

3. Richard's detractors are in a distinct but very vocal minority. The extremely harsh criticism of Richard seems to have begun in the nineteenth century with the severe moral strictures of Gervinus and Kreyssig, quoted and echoed by Edward Dowden—see his Shakespeare: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art (London, 1875), pp. 193-95, 203. This opinion has not completely died in the twentieth century; see, for example, A.P. Rossiter, Angel with Horns (London, 1961), pp. 24-25, and Robert Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage: The Achievement of Shakespeare's History Plays (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), pp. 113-17.

4. Though the accusation that Richard has caused Gloucester's murder comes from Gaunt, to whom Shakespeare gives something of the role of seer, Richard never confesses to this, never suffers remorse as he might in Act V. One might well argue that Gaunt, on this point, is influenced by his affection for his son. For the contention that Richard is plainly guilty, see Samuel Schoenbaum, “Richard II and the Realities of Power,” Shakespeare Survey, 28 (1975), 1-13. I feel that Shakespeare purposely leaves some shadow of doubt, just as he does regarding the complicity of Henry IV in the murder of Richard.

5. See II.i.240-41: “The King is not himself, but basely led / By flatterers. …” This and all other quotations are taken from the New Penguin Shakespeare edition, King Richard the Second, ed. Stanley Wells (Harmondsworth, 1982).

6. If Richard is seen as a murderer, he is seen as less a one than Macbeth, yet Macbeth commands considerable sympathy from audiences.

7. E.M.W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's History Plays (London, 1944), pp. 244-45.

8. The idea of an incremental scene is discussed by James Hirsh, who makes a substantial argument for eliminating the traditional act divisions, and simply numbers the scenes (James E. Hirsh, The Structure of Shakespearean Scenes [New Haven, 1981], pp. 167-74.) I agree that the scene divisions are more important, but would include subscenes and segments as significant units of dramatic meaning. Hirsh in effect does this, for example, when he treats Bolingbroke's judgment upon Bushy and Green (pp. 129-31).

9. John Russell Brown provides a good description of what happens here: “The scene of [Richard's] return (III.ii) is antithetical to that of Bolingbroke's: Richard is joined by other friends, as his rival had been, but they bring bad news and not an easy courtesy; and, whereas the rebel's course was clear, the King's is makeshift. Yet from this point to his death the dramatic focus grows more and more intent upon Richard for his own sake, whenever he appears; the audience sees progressively deeper into his consciousness. Sometimes the more stable Bolingbroke is a potential rival for attention in the centre of a crowded stage, but after his opponent has surrendered he says very little: he assumes the crown, but never mentions his intention to do so; he deposes Richard, but leaves most of the business and persuasion to Northumberland and York. The audience is continually aware of Bolingbroke's presence, but he seems to stand further away from them than Richard, or than he himself had done formerly. Such is the cunning of stage perspective.” (John Russell Brown, Shakespeare's Plays in Performance [London, 1966], pp. 120-21.)

10. Note that Bolingbroke has now committed the same crime that he accused Bushy and Green of (III.i), namely separating Richard from his queen, thus reinforcing the parallel between his own and Richard's reign. See Hirsh, pp. 129-30.