Act 3, Scene 2

The coast of Wales. A castle in view.

[Flourish: drums and trumpets. Enter KING RICHARD, the BISHOP OF CARLISLE, AUMERLE, and soldiers.]
King Richard II
1352 Barkloughly Castle call they this at hand?
Duke of Aumerle
1353 Yea, my lord. How brooks your Grace the air
1354 After your late tossing on the breaking seas?
King Richard II
1355 Needs must I like it well: I weep for joy
1356 To stand upon my kingdom once again.
1357 Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,
1358 Though rebels wound thee with their horses' hoofs:
1359 As a long-parted mother with her child
1360 Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting,
1361 So weeping-smiling greet I thee, my earth,
1362 And do thee favours with my royal hands.
1363 Feed not thy sovereign's foe, my gentle earth,
1364 Nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense;
1365 But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom,
1366 And heavy-gaited toads lie in their way,
1367 Doing annoyance to the treacherous feet
1368 Which with usurping steps do trample thee.
1369 Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies;
1370 And when they from thy bosom pluck a flower,
1371 Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking adder
1372 Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch
1373 Throw death upon thy sovereign's enemies.
1374 Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords.
1375 This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones
1376 Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king
1377 Shall falter under foul rebellion's arms.
Bishop of Carlisle
1378 Fear not, my lord; that Power that made you king
1379 Hath power to keep you king in spite of all.
1380 The means that heaven yields must be embrac'd
1381 And not neglected; else, if heaven would,
1382 And we will not, heaven's offer we refuse,
1383 The proffer'd means of succour and redress.
Duke of Aumerle
1384 He means, my lord, that we are too remiss;
1385 Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security,
1386 Grows strong and great in substance and in friends.
King Richard II
1387 Discomfortable cousin! know'st thou not
1388 That when the searching eye of heaven is hid,
1389 Behind the globe, that lights the lower world,
1390 Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen
1391 In murders and in outrage boldly here;
1392 But when from under this terrestrial ball
1393 He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines
1394 And darts his light through every guilty hole,
1395 Then murders, treasons, and detested sins,
1396 The cloak of night being pluck'd from off their backs,
1397 Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves?
1398 So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke,
1399 Who all this while hath revell'd in the night,
1400 Whilst we were wandering with the Antipodes,
1401 Shall see us rising in our throne, the east,
1402 His treasons will sit blushing in his face,
1403 Not able to endure the sight of day,
1404 But self-affrighted tremble at his sin.
1405 Not all the water in the rough rude sea
1406 Can wash the balm off from an anointed king;
1407 The breath of worldly men cannot depose
1408 The deputy elected by the Lord.
1409 For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd
1410 To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,
1411 God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay
1412 A glorious angel: then, if angels fight,
1413 Weak men must fall, for heaven still guards the right.
[Enter SALISBURY.]
King Richard II
1414 Welcome, my lord. How far off lies your power?
Earl of Salisbury
1415 Nor near nor farther off, my gracious lord,
1416 Than this weak arm: discomfort guides my tongue
1417 And bids me speak of nothing but despair.
1418 One day too late, I fear me, noble lord,
1419 Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth.
1420 O! call back yesterday, bid time return,
1421 And thou shalt have twelve thousand fighting men!
1422 To-day, to-day, unhappy day, too late,
1423 O'erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune, and thy state;
1424 For all the Welshmen, hearing thou wert dead,
1425 Are gone to Bolingbroke, dispers'd, and fled.
Duke of Aumerle
1426 Comfort, my liege! why looks your Grace so pale?
King Richard II
1427 But now, the blood of twenty thousand men
1428 Did triumph in my face, and they are fled;
1429 And till so much blood thither come again
1430 Have I not reason to look pale and dead?
1431 All souls that will be safe, fly from my side;
1432 For time hath set a blot upon my pride.
Duke of Aumerle
1433 Comfort, my liege! remember who you are.
King Richard II
1434 I had forgot myself. Am I not king?
1435 Awake, thou coward majesty! thou sleepest.
1436 Is not the king's name twenty thousand names?
1437 Arm, arm, my name! a puny subject strikes
1438 At thy great glory. Look not to the ground,
1439 Ye favourites of a king; are we not high?
1440 High be our thoughts. I know my uncle York
1441 Hath power enough to serve our turn. But who comes here?
[Enter SIR STEPHEN SCROOP.]
Sir Stephen Scroop
1442 More health and happiness betide my liege
1443 Than can my care-tun'd tongue deliver him!
King Richard II
1444 Mine ear is open and my heart prepar'd:
1445 The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold.
1446 Say, is my kingdom lost? Why, 'twas my care,
1447 And what loss is it to be rid of care?
1448 Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we?
1449 Greater he shall not be: if he serve God
1450 We'll serve him too, and be his fellow so:
1451 Revolt our subjects? That we cannot mend;
1452 They break their faith to God as well as us:
1453 Cry woe, destruction, ruin, loss, decay;
1454 The worst is death, and death will have his day.
Sir Stephen Scroop
1455 Glad am I that your highness is so arm'd
1456 To bear the tidings of calamity.
1457 Like an unseasonable stormy day
1458 Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores,
1459 As if the world were all dissolv'd to tears,
1460 So high above his limits swells the rage
1461 Of Bolingbroke, covering your fearful land
1462 With hard bright steel and hearts harder than steel.
1463 White-beards have arm'd their thin and hairless scalps
1464 Against thy majesty; and boys, with women's voices,
1465 Strive to speak big, and clap their female joints
1466 In stiff unwieldy arms against thy crown;
1467 Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows
1468 Of double-fatal yew against thy state;
1469 Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills
1470 Against thy seat: both young and old rebel,
1471 And all goes worse than I have power to tell.
King Richard II
1472 Too well, too well thou tell'st a tale so ill.
1473 Where is the Earl of Wiltshire? Where is Bagot?
1474 What is become of Bushy? Where is Green?
1475 That they have let the dangerous enemy
1476 Measure our confines with such peaceful steps?
1477 If we prevail, their heads shall pay for it.
1478 I warrant they have made peace with Bolingbroke.
Sir Stephen Scroop
1479 Peace have they made with him indeed, my lord.
King Richard II
1480 O villains, vipers, damn'd without redemption!
1481 Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!
1482 Snakes, in my heart-blood warm'd, that sting my heart!
1483 Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas!
1484 Would they make peace? Terrible hell make war
1485 Upon their spotted souls for this offence!
Sir Stephen Scroop
1486 Sweet love, I see, changing his property,
1487 Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate.
1488 Again uncurse their souls; their peace is made
1489 With heads, and not with hands: those whom you curse
1490 Have felt the worst of death's destroying wound
1491 And lie full low, grav'd in the hollow ground.
Duke of Aumerle
1492 Is Bushy, Green, and the Earl of Wiltshire dead?
Sir Stephen Scroop
1493 Ay, all of them at Bristol lost their heads.
Duke of Aumerle
1494 Where is the Duke my father with his power?
King Richard II
1495 No matter where. Of comfort no man speak:
1496 Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
1497 Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
1498 Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
1499 Let's choose executors and talk of wills;
1500 And yet not so—for what can we bequeath
1501 Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
1502 Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's.
1503 And nothing can we can our own but death,
1504 And that small model of the barren earth
1505 Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
1506 For God's sake let us sit upon the ground
1507 And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
1508 How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
1509 Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd,
1510 Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
1511 All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
1512 That rounds the mortal temples of a king
1513 Keeps Death his court; and there the antick sits,
1514 Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;
1515 Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
1516 To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks,
1517 Infusing him with self and vain conceit
1518 As if this flesh which walls about our life
1519 Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus,
1520 Comes at the last, and with a little pin
1521 Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!
1522 Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
1523 With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
1524 Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty;
1525 For you have but mistook me all this while:
1526 I live with bread like you, feel want,
1527 Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
1528 How can you say to me I am a king?
Bishop of Carlisle
1529 My lord, wise men ne'er sit and wail their woes,
1530 But presently prevent the ways to wail.
1531 To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,
1532 Gives, in your weakness, strength unto your foe,
1533 And so your follies fight against yourself.
1534 Fear and be slain; no worse can come to fight;
1535 And fight and die is death destroying death;
1536 Where fearing dying pays death servile breath.
Duke of Aumerle
1537 My father hath a power; inquire of him,
1538 And learn to make a body of a limb.
King Richard II
1539 Thou chid'st me well. Proud Bolingbroke, I come
1540 To change blows with thee for our day of doom.
1541 This ague fit of fear is over-blown;
1542 An easy task it is to win our own.—
1543 Say, Scroop, where lies our uncle with his power?
1544 Speak sweetly, man, although thy looks be sour.
Sir Stephen Scroop
1545 Men judge by the complexion of the sky
1546 The state in inclination of the day;
1547 So may you by my dull and heavy eye,
1548 My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say.
1549 I play the torturer, by small and small
1550 To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken:
1551 Your uncle York is join'd with Bolingbroke;
1552 And all your northern castles yielded up,
1553 And all your southern gentlemen in arms
1554 Upon his party.
King Richard II
1555 Thou hast said enough.
[To AUMERLE.]
King Richard II
1556 Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth
1557 Of that sweet way I was in to despair!
1558 What say you now? What comfort have we now?
1559 By heaven, I'll hate him everlastingly
1560 That bids me be of comfort any more.
1561 Go to Flint Castle; there I'll pine away;
1562 A king, woe's slave, shall kingly woe obey.
1563 That power I have, discharge; and let them go
1564 To ear the land that hath some hope to grow,
1565 For I have none. Let no man speak again
1566 To alter this, for counsel is but vain.
Duke of Aumerle
1567 My liege, one word.
King Richard II
1568 He does me double wrong
1569 That wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue.
1570 Discharge my followers; let them hence away,
1571 From Richard's night to Bolingbroke's fair day.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 1353archaic vocab
“How brooks your Grace the air”
'Brooks' means 'endures' or 'tolerates.' Aumerle is asking how Richard is bearing the sea crossing — the rough Atlantic passage from Ireland — after being so long at sea.
TLN 1357rhetorical device
“Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand”
Richard kneels and actually touches the Welsh soil on his return from Ireland. The extended apostrophe — a speech addressed to an entity (here, the earth itself) as though it can hear and respond — runs from here through TLN 1374. Richard commands the earth to poison and sting his enemies, treating England as a loyal subject who should defend its sovereign.
historical The king's two bodies
TLN 1365cultural context
“spiders, that suck up thy venom, And heavy-gaited toads”
Elizabethans believed spiders were themselves venomous and drew their poison from the earth, and that toads were toxic to the touch. Richard invokes both as natural weapons to defend the soil against Bolingbroke's troops — 'heavy-gaited' means slow and lumbering, which makes the toad an obstacle rather than a swift predator.
TLN 1374archaic vocab
“Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords”
'Senseless' here means 'addressed to something that has no senses' (i.e., the earth), not 'foolish.' 'Conjuration' means a solemn appeal or summoning, not magic — Richard is formally calling on the earth as on a being capable of obeying. He pre-empts the lords' skepticism by naming the oddness of the act himself.
TLN 1378historical topical
“that Power that made you king Hath power to keep you king”
The Bishop of Carlisle invokes divine right: God made Richard king, and no earthly rebellion can unmake him unless God wills it too. This is the doctrine that an anointed king is God's deputy, answerable to God alone — the foundation of the play's political theology.
historical The divine right of kings
TLN 1388rhetorical device
“searching eye of heaven is hid, Behind the globe”
Richard compares himself to the sun: just as thieves roam at night when the sun is below the horizon ('behind the globe'), Bolingbroke has 'revelled in the night' while Richard was absent ('wandering with the Antipodes'). Now that Richard has returned — like the sunrise — Bolingbroke's treasons will be exposed to daylight. The conceit runs fourteen lines and is the most sustained piece of kingship-as-sun imagery in the play.
TLN 1405historical topical
“Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm off from an anointed king”
'Balm' is the sacred oil rubbed on a king's forehead, palms, and breast at his coronation — the act that made him 'anointed' and set him apart from ordinary men as God's deputy. Richard declares that no earthly power can undo what that consecration did. The claim is also a rebuke to Bolingbroke, who washed off nothing by raising an army.
historical The divine right of kings
TLN 1409archaic vocab
“every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown”
'Press'd' means conscripted — forced into military service by a legal press warrant. 'Shrewd steel' means dangerous, cutting swords. Richard is saying that for every soldier Bolingbroke has drafted to fight him, God has one angel standing by to defend the crown.
TLN 1411biblical allusion
“God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay A glorious angel”
Richard claims that for each of Bolingbroke's troops God has an angel on the royal payroll. The idea that God deploys angelic armies to protect the righteous comes from biblical tradition, especially 2 Kings 6:17, where the prophet Elisha's servant sees the hills full of 'horses and chariots of fire' defending them, and Matthew 26:53, where Jesus says his Father would give him more than twelve legions of angels.
TLN 1420rhetorical device
“O! call back yesterday, bid time return”
Salisbury's speech peaks on an adynaton — a rhetorical figure declaring something impossible as a way of asserting that what has been lost cannot be recovered. Calling back yesterday is impossible; therefore the twelve thousand Welsh soldiers are irrecoverably gone. The line became proverbial.
TLN 1427syntax grammar
“blood of twenty thousand men Did triumph in my face”
Richard means: the healthy color in my face (the blood flushing his cheeks) once represented twenty thousand armed men loyal to him — and they are now gone. His pallor is literal (he has just heard terrible news) and metaphorical: his complexion no longer has those troops behind it. 'Triumph in my face' = 'show itself gloriously in my complexion.'
TLN 1436historical topical
“Is not the king's name twenty thousand names? Arm, arm, my name!”
Richard argues that 'the king' is an office with a power all its own, distinct from the man who holds it — the mere word 'king' should be enough to mobilize armies. He is talking himself back into confidence by leaning on his title rather than his troops. Within a few lines the strategy collapses when Scroop arrives with more bad news.
historical The king's two bodies
TLN 1463rhetorical device
“White-beards have arm'd their thin and hairless scalps Against thy majesty”
Scroop catalogues the breadth of the revolt by listing its most unlikely soldiers: old men, boys whose voices have not broken, and women wielding bills (a bill is a pole-weapon with a hooked blade). The list moves from the most socially elevated (old men of rank) through adolescents to women — each more improbable as a warrior than the last. The rhetorical device is incrementum (a scale of ascending extremity) designed to overwhelm Richard with the totality of the uprising.
TLN 1483biblical allusion
“Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas”
Judas Iscariot was the disciple who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, leading soldiers to arrest him with a kiss. Richard calls Bushy, Green, and Wiltshire 'Three Judases' because they have made peace with Bolingbroke — betraying their king, in Richard's eyes, just as Judas betrayed Christ. The allusion also quietly positions Richard as a Christ-figure, a comparison the play develops through the rest of Act 3 and in the deposition scene.
TLN 1488wordplay
“their peace is made With heads, and not with hands”
Scroop gently corrects Richard's rage with a bleak pun: the favourites made 'peace' with Bolingbroke not by shaking hands (submitting and swearing allegiance) but by losing their heads — they were executed. 'Heads' and 'hands' are the two instruments of making a deal, but here 'heads' means decapitation.
TLN 1493historical topical
“all of them at Bristol lost their heads”
Scroop confirms that Bushy and Green (and the Earl of Wiltshire) were captured when Bolingbroke took Bristol Castle and were executed there without a formal trial. This happened historically in August 1399 as Bolingbroke moved south. It was the first use of naked force against the old regime.
TLN 1506historical topical
“let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings”
Richard invites the group to sit on the ground — a posture of defeat for a king who should be on a throne — and catalog how all kings end: deposed, slain, haunted, poisoned, murdered in their sleep. The gesture is theatrical self-pity, but it also invokes a specific literary genre that Shakespeare's audience knew well: the 'de casibus' (fall of princes) tradition, books of famous men brought low by Fortune.
historical The fall of princes (de casibus tragedy)classical Fortune and her wheel
TLN 1511rhetorical device
“within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court”
Richard imagines Death as a monarch who holds court inside the crown itself — the very symbol of royal power is Death's throne room. The 'antick' (TLN 1513) is Death personified as a jester or grotesque fool (a common image in medieval art called the 'Dance of Death'), who mocks the king's pomp, lets him play at power for a little while, and then kills him with a pin through his castle wall. The passage is one of the most famous in Shakespeare.
historical The fall of princes (de casibus tragedy)historical The king's two bodies
TLN 1564archaic vocab
“To ear the land that hath some hope to grow”
'Ear' here is a verb meaning to plow or till — to cultivate the land. Richard is releasing his followers to serve whoever can offer them a future: 'go plow for someone with a harvest ahead.' The verb (to ear = to plow) was common in the sixteenth century but is now obsolete.