Act 2, Scene 4

A camp in Wales.

[Enter EARL OF SALISBURY and a CAPTAIN.]
Welsh Captain
1284 My Lord of Salisbury, we have stay'd ten days
1285 And hardly kept our countrymen together,
1286 And yet we hear no tidings from the King;
1287 Therefore we will disperse ourselves: farewell.
Earl of Salisbury
1288 Stay yet another day, thou trusty Welshman;
1289 The King reposeth all his confidence in thee.
Welsh Captain
1290 'Tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay.
1291 The bay trees in our country are all wither'd,
1292 And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
1293 The pale-fac'd moon looks bloody on the earth
1294 And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change;
1295 Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap,
1296 The one in fear to lose what they enjoy,
1297 The other to enjoy by rage and war.
1298 These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.
1299 Farewell: our countrymen are gone and fled,
1300 As well assur'd Richard their king is dead.
[Exit.]
Earl of Salisbury
1301 Ah, Richard! with the eyes of heavy mind,
1302 I see thy glory like a shooting star
1303 Fall to the base earth from the firmament.
1304 The sun sets weeping in the lowly west,
1305 Witnessing storms to come, woe, and unrest.
1306 Thy friends are fled, to wait upon thy foes,
1307 And crossly to thy good all fortune goes.
[Exit.]

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Notes

TLN 1291cultural context
“The bay trees in our country are all wither'd”
In Elizabethan natural lore the bay (laurel) tree was believed to wither as an omen of disaster, especially the death of a king. The withering of bays is one of the prodigies the chroniclers attach to Richard II's fall, and the Welsh Captain reads the withered bays as a sign that Richard is already doomed.
historical The great chain of being (order and degree)historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 1292cultural context
“meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven”
Elizabethans divided the sky into two layers: the outermost sphere of fixed stars, which God had set in perfect order, and the lower region of air where unpredictable phenomena such as comets and meteors — called 'exhalations' — formed and moved. Meteors were read as warnings of war, plague, or the death of princes; their very irregularity made them signs of disorder threatening the fixed order above.
historical The great chain of being (order and degree)
TLN 1302classical allusion
“thy glory like a shooting star / Fall to the base earth from the firmament”
Salisbury compares Richard's sudden collapse to Phaethon, the reckless charioteer of classical myth who borrowed the sun-god's horses, lost control, and was hurled down from the sky by Jove's thunderbolt. A shooting star that falls 'from the firmament' to the 'base earth' traces exactly that arc. The play returns to Phaethon by name in 3.3, but the image is already present here in the omen Salisbury reads.
classical Phaethon and the chariot of the sun
TLN 1304historical topical
“The sun sets weeping in the lowly west”
Throughout Richard II the sun is the play's central emblem of kingship: Richard calls himself 'the searching eye of heaven' and speaks of the sun breaking through clouds to scatter rebels (3.2). Here Salisbury watches the literal sunset and reads it as the king's own grief — the sun 'weeping' means the sky is streaked red at sunset, understood as a blood-red or tearful sky presaging storms. The sun's descent into the west is Richard's own fall mapped onto the sky.
historical The king's two bodies
TLN 1307archaic vocab
“crossly to thy good all fortune goes”
'Crossly' means adversely, thwartingly, or athwart — working directly against you. Salisbury is saying that every stroke of fortune now runs contrary to Richard's interests: everything that should help him goes against him instead. The word comes from 'cross' in the sense of 'contrary' or 'opposing,' still current in phrases like 'cross-purposes.'