One of the interesting qualities of Elizabethan playwriting is the seamless connection between thought, word, and action. What makes the art of the soliloquy work, for example, is the lack of division between what the character is thinking and what the character is saying: They do not form their thoughts into words, but rather their thoughts leap directly to their tongues and into the ears of the audience. (Which is why Hamlet can advise his players, “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.”) In a very real sense, the heightened reality of the verse essentially gifts the audience with telepathy: In watching Shakespeare, you are looking straight into the mind and soul of the character as it is stripped bare upon the stage.

In a related fashion, Elizabethan plays often rely upon choric speech: Sequences in which the description of an action becomes the action itself as the words of the actor are transformed through the imaginative powers of the audience. In fact, such sequences can often be even more powerful than the action would be in a direct presentation. In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud speaks of closure of as “the phenomenon of observing the parts and perceiving the whole”, and when a work of art demands of its audience that act of closure they become “silent accomplices”, “willing and conscious collaborators”. So, too, the Chorus of Henry V says:

Think when we talk of horses that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth;
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: For the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history.

It is a technique which turns a passive audience member into an active participant in the drama itself.

In the character of Richard II, Shakespeare weds the principles of the choric to the mold of the soliloquy in a series of transformative speeches which chart the fall of England’s king. It begins in Act III, Scene 3 as Richard speaks to Northumberland:

A’God’s name, let it go:
I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads:
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage:
My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown:
My figured goblets for a dish of wood:
My sceptre for a palmer’s walking staff:
My subjects for a pair of carved saints,
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little little grave, an obscure grave;
Or I’ll be buried in the King’s highway,
Some way of common trade, where subjects’ feet
May hourly trample on their sovereign’s head;
For on my heart they tread now whilst I live:
And buried once, why not upon my head?

The sequence of exchanges described by Richard are intensely choric in their nature: His description of those physical acts force the audience to “deck the king” (or, rather, undeck the king) as they specifically create for themselves the specific reality of those actions.

Of course, the actions in question are not real: They are, at best, a future possibility which Richard conjures up for both Northumberland and the audience of the play. But more than that, they are a metaphor for Richard’s shifting self-image. The change from Divine King to Holy Hermit is not merely a swap of costuming, but rather a fundamental change in Richard himself.

Which all sounds wonderfully abstract and soullessly intellectual, but here’s what the speech boils down to in practical effect: Physical transformation becomes a metaphor for mental transformation, and in the process the telepathic power of the soliloquy is coupled to the audience participation of the choric.

As an audience, we are not only gifted with an incredibly intimate vision of Richard’s thoughts, but we are also invited to participate in Richard’s process of transformation. Just as Richard himself is both the agent of his destruction and the victim of his destruction, we as witnesses are simultaneously both the agents and the victims of that destructive process.

THE CHORUS OF THE MOMENT

Shakespeare uses a similar and yet subtle variation of this technique in the next of Richard’s transformative speeches, which can be found during his deposition in Act IV, Scene 1:

Now, mark me how I will undo myself.
I give this heavy weight from off my head,
And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,
The pride of Kingly sway from out my heart.
With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duteous oaths;
All pomp and majesty I do forswear:
My manors, rents, revenues I forego;
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny:
God pardon all oaths that are broke to me,
God keep all vows unbroke that swear to thee.
Make me, that nothing have, with nothing griev’d,
And thou with all pleas’d, that hast all achiev’d.
Long may’st thou live in Richard’s seat to sit,
And soon lie Richard in an earthly pit.

Here the elements of the soliloquy become muted, but they are not completely discarded: The physical actions of Richard undoing himself are still serving as metaphors for mental revelation, and thus the passage, like a soliloquy, is still a baring of Richard’s innermost thoughts.

What’s particularly fascinating here, however, is that the choric elements of the speech are amplified by their immediacy: Richard is performing the action in the very moment he’s describing it as the Chorus. And make no mistake, it is a Chorus: Because they’re metaphors, Richard is not literally performing any of the actions he’s describing. Which means that the audience is forced to create those actions in their mind’s eye.

Richard creates a ritual in which the rites and duties of his office are systematically stripped away. The process is both a transformation of identity and the loss of identity. But by invoking that intensely personal ritual in the form of physical metaphor, Richard forces his audience (both the audience of the play and the audience of nobles within the play) to become his partners in the act.

THE FINAL TRANSFORMATION

Which brings us to the last of Richard’s transformative speeches in Act V, Scene 5. (A speech which is also Richard’s only true soliloquy in the play.) The speech is long enough that I won’t quote it in full here, but its major framework looks like this:

I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it: Yet I’ll hammer it out;
My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father, and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts:
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humors like the people of this world:
[…]
Thus play I in one person many people,
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,
Then am I king’d again, and by and by
Think that I am unking’d by Bullingbrooke,
And straight am nothing.

The same basic structure of self-transformation is pursued, but in an almost transcendant fashion: Richard transforms himself into the world, the world into himself, and ends himself in nothing. It culminates a sequence in which Shakespeare’s language literally transforms Richard before our eyes from one state of being to another. (And in a play with multiple references to caterpillars, no less.)

POWER AND IMPOTENCE

There is more to be found in this theme of transformation, however. The ability for power to enforce transformation is suggested heavily from the very beginning of the play (Act I, Scene 1):

RICHARD Rage must be withstood,
Give me his gage; Lions make Leopards tame.

MOWBRAY Yea but not change his spots: Take but my shame
And I resign my gage…

Mowbray may resist this change, but he is nevertheless forced to it.

There is a degree to which the play can be seen as an abstraction of the old query: Can God create a rock so large he cannot move it? Can the king’s power to force transformation be used to transform the king into something other than the king?

Viewed through this lens, Richard’s struggle to give up the crown is not merely the mortal struggle of a man who doesn’t want to give up his power; it is a literal struggle between potence and impotence. Richard says:

We thought ourself thy lawful King: (…)
If we be not, show us the Hand of God
That hath dismiss’d us from our stewardship.

Only the Hand of God can remove divinity from the King and thus remove the King from his right. But while the king himself can be said to act as the hand of God, if he tries to take that power from himself does he not take the very power which would let him take it?

BULLINGBROKE Are you contented to resign the crown?
RICHARD Aye, no; no, aye.

Shakespeare presents us with an immovable object and an unstoppable force; he forces Richard to face a crisis both human and divine. And then he gives to the actor both “aye, no” and “no, aye”: The opportunity to express both the mortal and immortal dimensions of the problem (or vice versa) in four simple syllables.

Originally posted on September 29th, 2010.

One of the more difficult passages to untangle in Richard II is found in Act II, Scene 1. Immediately following the death of the Duke of Lancaster, Richard announces that he’s claiming all of Lancaster’s property for himself in order to pay for the Irish wars:

RICHARD And for these great affairs do ask some charge,
Towards our assistance we do seize to us
The plate, coin, revenues, and moveables
Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess’d.

The Duke of York’s response is immediate:

YORK How long shall I be patient? Ah how long
Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?
Not Gloucester’s death, nor Herford’s banishment
Not Gaunt’s rebukes, nor England’s private wrongs…

And he continues in this vein for 23 lines, laying out a point-by-point lamentation of Richard’s tyrannies, before at last exclaiming:

“Oh Richard: York is too far gone with grief,
Or else he never would compare between.”

And in response to this extraordinary tirade, Richard says:

RICHARD Why, uncle, what’s the matter?

It doesn’t seem to make much sense, and it causes York to deliver 22 lines in which he pleads with Richard to change his tune. Richard’s still having none of it when he responds:

RICHARD Think what you will, we seize into our hands
His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.

York responds by leaving the stage and Richard moves on to formally announcing the beginning of his Irish campaign, going on to specify:

RICHARD And we create in absence of ourself
Our uncle York lord governor of England;
For he is just and always loved us well.

… wait a minute. Did Richard just watch the same scene we did?

It’s a challenge routinely faced by actors playing Richard II: How do you listen to York rant at you for 50+ lines and then act as if (a) you didn’t hear him and (b) it didn’t actually happen?

Many critics have judged Richard’s trust in York as an act of folly and point to this moment as proof of its foolhardiness. But there’s a rather large line between “making a mistake” and “being completely disconnected from reality to the point that it shatters the audience’s suspension of disbelief”, and Richard seems to be rather firmly crossing that line.

THE PUBLIC SOLILOQUY

When something doesn’t make sense to me in Shakespeare I find it helpful to assume that I’m the one making a mistake. Shakespeare wasn’t always perfect, of course, but I’ve often found it valuable to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that I’ve either overlooked something or based my conclusions on a poor assumption.

Which brings us back to the root of the problem: How can Richard possibly hear everything York says and then respond the way he does?

Maybe he doesn’t.

One of the truths in working with a Shakespearean text is that most of the stage directions are missing. Even basic entrances and exits are often omitted, and finding a description of the internal action of the scene is a little like discovering buried treasure. Without those stage directions, we’re often left looking for clues in the text to guide our understanding of how a scene is supposed to be played.

So what if our common sense is misguiding us here? What if York isn’t talking to Richard (who just finished speaking), but to himself?

Saying, “Why, uncle, what’s the matter?” is absurd if you’ve just listened to York deliver a 23-line speech describing exactly what the matter is. But it’s completely different matter if you’ve suddenly become aware that your uncle is in some sort of distress on the opposite side of the stage.

First, is this staging possible? Yes. Richard has just issued a formal decree that Lancaster’s possessions are to be seized. It proved remarkably easy for Richard and his nobles to immediately “huddle up” to discuss the details of the plan, move up stage, and leave York alone to speak with the audience.

Second, is the staging plausible? In the case of Richard’s response, we can see that that this staging actually helps to make sense of his line. But is it consistent with what York is saying? This is a more complicated question. On the one hand, York begins by speaking of Richard in the third person (“… have ever made me sour my patient cheek or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign’s face”), which would be consistent with a soliloquy. But then he begins to speak in the second-person as if addressing Richard directly: “I am the last of noble Edward’s sons, of whom thy father Prince of Wales was first.” This language certainly leads one into the more traditional interpretation of direct confrontation. On the other hand, it’s not unusual for Shakespeare’s characters to address others rhetorically even when they aren’t available for a response. (For example, when Hamlet says, “Remember thee? Aye, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat in this distracted body.” We don’t need to assume that the Ghost didn’t actually exit several lines earlier, as indicated in the text, in order for the line to make sense.)

(In the rehearsal room we also experimented with York talking to someone other than Richard in a private conversation, but when we did we found the rhetorical device of referring to Richard in the second person without Richard being present stopped working. Not all experiments are destined to succeed.)

Third, are there any textual clues that strongly support our interpretation? Here we find nothing definitive, but in our exploration we spotted a few elements of the text which certainly proved very effective for our purposes.

For example, York closes his first speech by saying:

Oh Richard: York is too far gone with grief,
Or else he never would compare between.

Shakespeare’s “O” (or “Oh”) is generally a large moment. It’s an open syllable that can be easily extended to any length while allowing an actor to pour an immense amount of emotional content into it. If York is speaking to himself, then we need a large and clearly delineated moment at the end of his speech which can draw Richard’s attention from across the stage. And Shakespeare, in building York’s anguish to this “Oh”, has given us such a moment and coupled it directly to Richard’s name.

Richard’s line, of course, is the driving force behind our concept. And it is followed by the beginning of York’s next speech:

“Oh my liege, pardon me if you please; if not,
I please not to be pardon’d, am content with all:”

In general, one would expect to ask forgiveness for something already said or request pardon for something they about to say. It’s possible that York is trying to do both here, but it’s interesting how naturally this reads like a response to an honest question of concern from Richard. (“Since you’ve asked, I’ll tell you. But please forgive me for what I’m about to say.”) And perhaps some clue to its nature as preamble can be found in that colon which so neatly launches the actor into the speech to come.

In short, we found this approach extremely effective in the rehearsal room. In the process we began referring to it as a “public soliloquy” ““ a speech in which we find a character expressing their innermost thoughts using the same techniques as the soliloquy, despite the fact that they aren’t truly alone onstage. In doing so, we inadvertently unlocked a deeper understanding of the play as a whole: These public soliloquys can be found throughout the entirety of Richard II, often emphasizing a character’s frustration, impotence, or humiliation. Richard, in particular, engages in the act of public soliloquy frequently, but (as we can see here) he’s not the only one. (They even arguably manage to find their way offstage, if one interprets Bullingbrooke’s “Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?”, reported by Sir Exton in Act V, Scene 5, as the public expression of a private thought.)

Thus, interpreting this passage as a public soliloquy not only helps to solve an immediate textual problem, but also proves to be consistent with both the theme and structure of the play as a whole.

Originally posted on September 28th, 2010.

ASR’s script for Richard II is based primarily on the first Quarto of the play as it was published in 1597 (Q1). The decision to use Q1 as the source text of the play is based primarily on the relationship between the original texts as described by A.W. Pollard in 1916.

RICHARD II — FULL SCRIPT

RICHARD II — CONFLATED SCRIPT

Pollard was able to demonstrate (by tracing the inheritance of typographical errors from one edition to the next) that each quarto after the first was based entirely on the printed copy of the previous quarto: Thus Q2 was printed from Q1; Q3 from Q2; and so forth. (Richard II actually proved to be one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays in quarto. Other than Pericles, it is the only play to receive two quarto printings in the same year.)

The exception to this rule is Q4 in 1608, which adds a version of the deposition scene to the play. The leading theory is that the deposition, despite its central importance to the structure of the play, was simply too controversial in the waning years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign for it to be printed. (Another book regarding the usurpation of Richard II’s throne by Henry Bullingbrooke had already become the center of a major political scandal.)

The other text to consider is the First Folio (F1). Textual evidence seems to indicate that the F1 text was based on one of the later quartos, but it also includes additional stage directions (suggesting access to the theater’s prompt script) and a superior version of the deposition scene than the one found in Q4 (which reportedly shows signs of memorial reconstruction). But the exact nature of F1’s source text is a matter of considerable debate which can basically be broken down into two separate issues:

(1) Which quarto is the F1 text based on? (Some point to Q3. Others to Q5. Many to some combination of Q3 and Q5. But was it a single text assembled from a part of Q3 and a part of Q5, or did the typesetters have both a Q3 and Q5 laying around and simply consulted whichever was most convenient?)

(2) Was the quarto text being used as a promptbook (with stage directions being added to the printed copy and, thus, added to the F1 text)? Or was the promptbook being consulted separately with its stage directions and perhaps other corrections being incorporated into a text being set from the printed quarto?

To these questions we can add:

(3) What was the source of the Q4 deposition? (Memorial reconstruction is often one suggestion, but not a completely compelling one.)

(4) From what source was F1’s deposition scene (and possibly other corrections) taken from?

I have accepted the general scholastic conclusion that F1 is the superior source for the deposition scene, but since the F1 text is at least partly derived from a quarto text we know to be derivative of Q1, I have decided to employ the following textual standard:

Q1 is used as a source text. F1 is used as the source text for the deposition scene. F1 is also used to provide necessary corrections to the Q1 text, although if the correction originated in quarto editions between Q2 and Q5 (likely making it no more than a typesetter’s best guess), I don’t give it any more weight than other emendations.

STAGE DIRECTIONS FROM HOLINSHED

One final point of interest in the text are the stage directions for Act V, Scene 5 (in which Richard is murdered). In the original Q1 text, the scene appears like this:

KEEPER My lord I dare not; Sir Pierce of Exton,
Who lately came from the King commands the contrary.

RICHARD The devil take Henry of Lancaster, and thee,
Patience is stale, and I am weary of it.

KEEPER Help, help, help.

The murderers rush in.

RICHARD How now, what means Death in this rude assault?
Villain, thy own hand yields thy death’s instrument.
Go thou, and fill another room in hell.

Here Exton strikes him down.

The First Folio provides us with the identities of the murderers (“Enter Sexton and Servants“), but still leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions: What prompts the Keeper to call for help? And should we interpret “Villain, thy own hand yields thy death’s instrument” as a dramatic invocation (and perhaps foreshadowing) of the fate that awaits those who murder kings?

The description of the scene found in Holinshed’s Chronicles, on the other hand, may help to shed some light on it:

King Henry, sitting on a day at his table, sore sighing, said, “Have I no faithful friend which will deliver me of him, whose life will be my death, and whose death will be the preservation of my life?” This saying was much noted of them which were present, and especially of one called Sir Piers of Exton. This knight incontinently departed from the court, with eight strong persons in his company, and came to Pomfret, commanding the esquire that was accustomed to sew and take the assay before King Richard to do so no more, saying: “Let him eat now, for he shall not long eat.” King Richard sat down to dinner and was served with courtesy or assay, whereupon much marveling at the sudden change, he demanded of the esquire why he did not his duty, “Sir” (said he) “I am otherwise commanded by Sir Piers of Exton, which is newly come from King Henry.” When King Richard heard that word, he took the carving knife in his hand, and struck the esquire on the head, saying, “The devil take Henry of Lancaster and thee together.” And with that word, Sir Piers entered the chamber, well armed, with eight tall men likewise armed, every of them having a bill in his hand.

King Richard, perceiving this, put the table from him, and stepping to the foremost man, wrung the bill out of his hands, and so valiantly defended himself that he slew four of those that thus came to assail him. Sir Piers being half dismayed herewith, leapt into the chair where King Richard was wont to sit, while the other four persons fought him and chased him about the chamber. And in conclusion, as King Richard traversed his ground from one side of the chamber to the other, and coming by the chair where Sir Piers stood, he was felled with a stroke of a pole-axe which Sir Piers gave him upon the head, and therewith rid him out of life.

The fact that Shakespeare drew directly from this passage can be seen in its many similarities to the text of the play. In addition, it is relatively easy to see how the action described by Holinshed can be fitted to Shakespeare’s verse:

KEEPER My lord I dare not; Sir Pierce of Exton,
Who lately came from the King commands the contrary.

[Richard takes the carving knife and strikes the Keeper on the head.]

RICHARD The devil take Henry of Lancaster, and thee,
Patience is stale, and I am weary of it.

KEEPER Help, help, help.

<Enter Exton and Servants.>
The murderers rush in.

RICHARD How now, what means Death in this rude assault?

[Richard takes a halberd from one of them, killing several of them.]

Villain, thy own hand yields thy death’s instrument.
Go thou, and fill another room in hell.

Here Exton strikes him down.

While consistent, however, it should be noted that the exact timing of them and perhaps even their details are open for negotiation in actual production.

As an interesting note, the Moby Shakespeare on which virtually all online versions of Shakespeare are based includes a stage direction for Richard which reads: “Snatching an axe from a Servant and killing him.” (This direction is from the 1864 Globe Shakespeare on which the Moby Shakespeare takes its text.) But there’s no textual basis for Richard ending up with an axe, and Holinshed makes it clear the opposite is true: Richard employed a bill (or halberd). He was in fact killed by an axe, not wielding one.

TEXTUAL PRACTICES

Source Text: First Quarto (1597)
1. Original emendations in [square brackets]; emendations taken from F1 in <diamond brackets>; emendations taken from Q2 thru Q5 in {curly brackets}.
2. Speech headings silently regularized.
3. Names which appear in ALL CAPITALS in stage directions have also been regularized.
4. Spelling has been modernized.
5. Punctuations has been silently emended (in minimalist fashion).