payment page
Summary
At Coventry, the two challengers, Bolingbroke and Mowbray, enter fully armed into the “lists,” or the field of ritual combat. Bolingbroke is the accuser, or “appellant,” and Mowbray the “defendant.” Aided by the traditional officer of the duel (the Lord Marshal), King Richard formally questions them both and has them repeat their accusations against one another. Both Bolingbroke and Mowbray make dramatic speeches stating their own innocence, the criminality of their opponent, their joy in the fight, and their certainty of victory. John of Gaunt blesses his son Bolingbroke, and King Richard wishes good luck to both. But when heralds and trumpets announce the commencement of the fight, King Richard interrupts it before either can raise a weapon. Ritually throwing down his “warder” (or umpire’s baton), he orders the duel to stop.
After consulting with his advisors, King Richard returns and decrees a sentence of banishment upon both noblemen: Bolingbroke (whom Richard here addresses as “Hereford,” in recognition of his title of nobility) is banished from England, not to return for ten years; Mowbray (here called “Norfolk”) is banished for life. Both lament their sentences, but to no avail: Richard refuses to alter their punishment, and then forces them both to swear upon his sword that they will never again have contact with one another, even outside of England, or plan treachery against the English throne.
Mowbray departs in grief, but Richard suddenly decides to reduce Bolingbroke’s span of exile from ten years to six, saying that he takes pity upon his saddened uncle, Bolingbroke’s father John of Gaunt. Gaunt thanks the king but notes that he is so old he will likely be dead before his son returns, even with the reduced sentence. After the king and his retinue depart, Bolingbroke continues to lament his exile, in anger and unhappiness. His father counsels him to adjust his mindset and to imagine that he has banished the king and not the king him: “For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite / The man that mocks at it and sets it light” (1.3.299–300). Bolingbroke, however, answers that the mind cannot so easily vanquish misery. They leave the stage together under a cloud of sadness.
Read a translation of Act 1: Scene 3.
Analysis
The precise logic behind the political events of this scene, like those in act 1, scene 1, is somewhat obscure. Why exactly does Richard stop the fight? Why does he banish Mowbray and Bolingbroke? And why does he banish Mowbray for life and Bolingbroke only for a few years? Richard’s speech here is rhetorically powerful, but it doesn’t address any of these questions. He implies that allowing the men to stay in England would open up the possibility of civil war: “For that our kingdom’s earth should not be soiled / With that dear blood which it hath fosterèd; / And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect / Of civil wounds plowed up with neighbors’ sword; . . . Therefore we banish you our territories” (1.3.126–41).
The historical context surrounding these events seems to have been complicated. The common people were hostile toward both Mowbray and Richard because of the parts they supposedly played in the death of Thomas of Gloucester, but, more importantly, they felt that Richard had stirred up the controversy himself. The king should have kept peace between the two nobles. Therefore, Richard felt he had to prevent the duel in order to reduce resentment among the Londoners. For similar reasons, Bolingbroke, a popular favorite, had to get the lighter sentence.
The scene exhibits several notable formal and poetic qualities. As in act 1, scene 1, the characters slip into rhyming couplets at dramatically important moments. For example, when John of Gaunt protests that he will never see his son again, he says that, by the time Bolingbroke returns, “My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light / Shall be extinct with age and endless night; / My inch of taper will be burnt and done, / And blindfold death not let me see my son” (1.3.227–30). Mowbray also makes use of an interesting metaphor when he protests that he will never have the chance to use his native tongue again: “And now my tongue’s use is to me no more / Than an unstringèd viol or a harp. . . . What is thy sentence then but speechless death, / Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?” (1.3.162–76).
The advice John of Gaunt gives to his son attempts to show Bolingbroke how to bear his banishment more easily. Gaunt’s advice consists largely of a kind of metaphysical doublethink, in which the idea is that exile will be made easier to bear if the banished party pretends that he has left the country of his own accord: “Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honor, / And not the King exiled thee” (1.3.288–99). Gaunt also suggests that Bolingbroke try to reshape reality to please himself, and to interpret the objects of the world differently from what they actually are: “Suppose the singing birds musicians, . . . The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more / Than a delightful measure or a dance” (1.3.294–98).
Bolingbroke, however, refuses to view the world from this idealistic perspective, insisting instead on the realistic. As he puts the matter: “O, who can hold a fire in his hand / By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? . . . Or wallow naked in December snow / By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?” (1.3.301–306). This insistence on the failure of the imagination to alter the world is one of key Bolingbroke’s key traits, and it puts him in direct contrast with Richard. As the play progresses, Richard becomes increasingly poetic. Unable or unwilling to face the harsh realities of the world, he utters beautiful poetry instead. Bolingbroke, as we see in this scene, is his opposite—pragmatic and hard-headed.
