My views of Richard seemed to change a couple of times as I was reading through Act 3. At one point I felt as if he was still the greedy king from the first two acts. Yet, as the act went on, I almost felt sympathy for him.
Throughout scene two my views of Richard stayed the same. As Aumerle reminds him that as they waste time, Bolingbroke grows stronger as rules, Richard tells us that we have nothing to worry about. Through divine right he is still meant to be on the throne. Richard tells Aumerle "Bolingbroke, / Who all this while has revelled in the night / Whilst we were wand'ring with the Antipodes, / Shall see us rising in our thrown, the east / His treasons will sit blushing in his face, / Not able to endure the sight of day, / But, self-affrighted, tremble at his sin" (3.2.43-49). Although Bolingbroke is basking in his power, Richard will get his back. Richard goes on to say that "The breath of worldly men cannot depose / The deputy elected by the Lord" and "Weak men must fall; for heaven still guards the right"(3.2.52-53,58). I think I mistook Richard's belief in divine right as greed. I guess, may, I don't see how he can believe that the throne is solely meant for him and that he will definitely be able to regain it. I also believe that at this moment, Richard seems very sure of himself, yet by the end of the scene he’s doubting himself.
So soon after I felt that greed, I felt sympathy for him in that same scene when he says "For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings- / How some have been deposed, some slain in war, / Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, / Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed, / All murdered" (3.2.151-156). Right away, the words "all murdered" stuck out. I felt as though Richard was seeming insecure at this point...he goes on to say "How can you say to me I am a king?" (3.2.173) I felt sympathy for Richard...would he get murdered too? Yet, would that be a bad thing? At the same time, is he foreshadowing his own murder/death? As Richard began to give up home, I thought maybe he was giving in too easily...How could Richard walk away from it all? It reminded me of the earlier scene where he was originally going to have Bolingbroke and Mowbray duel or fight but then simple banished them both.
I think writing this response has raised many more questions for me than before I wrote it. I wonder how Richard believes in divine right but seems to doubt himself as king and be indecisive. I look forward to seeing how Richard develops further as a character and also how the belief of divine right gets played out.
2 comments:
Thank you for drawing from Richard's meditation in 3.2. I find it interesting for a couple of reasons: one, because he talks of Death as an omnipresent, omnipotent force--God-like, if you will--and it is this force that somehow undoes his divine right. It's almost as if death is the antithesis of God's will. How did Death come to be part of the picture? The fall of man. In other words, Richard has no one to blame but himself for Bolingbroke's political checkmate in Act IV.
These are great reflections on Richard's topsy-turvy speeches in 3.2, Erica, and I like how you and Nicole are reading the text here. Revealed here, too, is the insight that to be a king is to be insecure. That's ironic, of course, given the idea of "Divine Right," but it's a lesson that Henry needs to learn through the course of this and the following plays in the tetralogy.
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