Richard II Symboles

Divine Right of Kings

You probably noticed that Richard II is always running around saying stuff like, "Hey, God picked me to be king, so I can do whatever I want and don't have to answer to anybody." Richard's got a big head all right, but his philosophy is actually grounded in a famous political theory that's often called the "divine right of kings." The theory just says that kings have a divine (god-given) right to rule because God has hand-picked them to be monarchs. We talk about this more in "Characters: Richard II."

Gardens

Okay, Shmoopsters, we're just going to come right out and say this. Any time you see a reference to gardens (especially gardens that have been trashed) in Western literature, the author probably wants you to think about the biblical Garden of Eden, which, according to the Book of Genesis, was paradise on earth until it was ruined by Adam and Eve's fall from grace.

If you've read this play, then you know that gardens (literal and metaphorical) are all over the place in Richard II. The most obvious example is when the queen is strolling through her garden and finds out (from her gossipy gardener, of course) that her husband has lost the crown. Her response? She compares Richard's downfall to the Biblical fall of man:

Thou, old Adam's likeness, set to dress this garden,
How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news?
What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested thee
To make a second fall of cursed man?
Why dost thou say King Richard is deposed?
Darest thou, thou little better thing than earth,
Divine his downfall? Say, where, when, and how,
Camest thou by this ill tidings? speak, thou wretch.

The queen is pretty irrational here. She's acting like the Gardener has caused the "second fall" of man just by gossiping about King Richard being deposed (bumped off the throne). Even though the queen's logic is a little wacky, we can tell that Shakespeare is making a bigger point: the idea is that deposing a king is a sin (especially for those who think kings are appointed by God). That means there are going to be some serious consequences that will change the world (read: England) forever – just like Adam and Eve's world was changed forever when they blew it by giving in to temptation. We find out what these consequences are in the sequels to this play: Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, and Henry V.

But whose fault is it that England is (or will be soon) like a ruined garden of Eden? Most characters in this play blame Richard. Don't just take our word for it – let's think about what the Gardener has to say. Earlier, in Act 3, Scene 4, the Gardener explicitly compares the kingdom with a garden and suggests that Richard hasn't been a very good gardener. He hasn't pruned it, he hasn't weeded it, he hasn't bothered to take care of it. He's assumed, instead, that it would take care of itself, or that God would take care of it. The problem with this logic is that it doesn't take into account the fact that gardening (like kingship) is not a passive activity: you have to till; you have to earn your crop.

Not only that, but Richard has surrounded himself with lousy advisors, like Bushy, Bagot, and Green, who would rather flatter him than give him honest feedback about how to run the country. This is why Henry Bolingbroke refers to Bushy, Bagot, and Green as "caterpillars of the commonwealth" (2.3.11). The metaphor implies that Richard's advisors are a bunch of parasites devouring or destroying England, just like pests might destroy a garden.

Add to this the fact that Richard has "farmed out" or "leased" the land in order to raise money. Gaunt tells him that his decision made him a "landowner" instead of a king. Future events seem to bear this out: by basically mortgaging the land, Richard mortgages his kingdom. John of Gaunt reminds us of this when he cries that Richard mismanaged "this other Eden, demi-paradise," this "blessed plot, this earth

Of course, after Richard's death, some characters see things differently. In Henry IV Part 1, a guy named Hotspur refers to Richard II as a "sweet lovely rose" who was uprooted and replaced by "this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke" (Henry IV Part In other words, Hotspur also thinks of England as a garden, but he believes it has been ruined by Bolingbroke (a.k.a. Henry IV), not Richard.

Brain Snack: Can't get enough of Shakespeare's obsession with gardens? Go talk to Hamlet, who sees the whole world as a smelly, "unweeded garden that grows to seed"Hamlet,

Seven Vials of Sacred Blood and Seven Fair Branches

In Act 1, Scene 2, the Duchess of Gloucester makes a big speech to John of Gaunt about how King Edward III's seven sons are like "seven fair branches" on a family tree or seven vials of Edward's "sacred blood." Check it out:

Edward's seven sons, whereof thyself art one,
Were as seven vials of his sacred blood,
Or seven fair branches springing from one root:
Some of those seven are dried by nature's course,
Some of those branches by the Destinies cut;
But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Gloucester,
One vial full of Edward's sacred blood,
One flourishing branch of his most royal root,
Is crack'd, and all the precious liquor spilt,
Is hack'd down, and his summer leaves all faded,
By envy's hand and murder's bloody axe.

Hmm, looks like someone has been spending a lot of time on Ancestry.com. But seriously, the idea is that if you're descended from King Edward III, your blood carries some of his sacred awesomeness with it. After all, it's the sacred blood of a king! That, says the Duchess of Gloucester, is why it's not cool that Richard II has had his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, murdered. Gloucester was one of Edward II's seven sons, so when Richard had Gloucester killed, it was like he hacked down one of the "sacred branches" of Edward's family tree. (Psst. Check out this awesome genealogy map if you need to brush up on the royal family tree.)

By the way, we should point out that Shakespeare riffs off this family tree idea throughout the play. There are tons of references to plants, trees, and gardens, and people are always running around saying things like Henry has supplanted or uprooted Richard II as the king of England. By the way, Shakespeare is also having fun with the fact that Edward and his sons are part of the Royal House of Plantagenet. Get it?

Shakespeare is making a bigger point with all this sacred blood and seven branches talk, though. When too many people have royal blood, things get complicated. In a nutshell, Edward III had too many sons. Even though the rule is that the oldest son of the oldest son inherits the throne, it turns out that lots of Richard's cousins (like Bolingbroke) might actually take after granddad more than Richard himself.

In the play, Henry Bolingbroke justifies his return from banishment by arguing that if Richard is king by virtue of his blood, then he, Henry, deserves his inheritance too, for exactly the same reason. He's the son of a son of Edward III, just like Richard. However powerful Richard might think he is, and however many laws he might break, the one rule he can't break is the one that makes him king. If he goes against someone else who carries his blood, he risks giving his enemies a foundation to disinherit him too.

Biblical Betrayals

Shakespeare refers to the Bible in his plays more than any other Elizabethan playwright, so we're not really surprised when we find a bunch of biblical shout-outs in this play. Let's discuss.

Christ, Judas, and Pontius Pilate

Richard is always comparing himself to Christ, who's betrayed and ultimately crucified in the New Testament. At one point Richard compares the men who have joined forces with Bolingbroke to Judas, the disciple who betrays Jesus: "Three Judases," he says. "Each one thrice worse than Judas! / Would they make peace? terrible hell make war / Upon their spotted souls for this offence!" After he's forced to give up his crown, Richard even compares the rebels to Pontius Pilate, the Roman judge who sentences Jesus to be crucified: "Some of you with Pilate wash your hands / Showing an outward pity; yet you Pilates / Have here deliver'd me to my sour cross, / And water cannot wash away your sin"
Okay, it doesn't take a Bible scholar to figure out that Richard sees himself as a Christ-like martyr who thinks he's going to be revenged by God. Here's the catch: Richard is so NOT a Christ figure. Shakespeare suggests that the problem with such a comparison is that Christ's story is the opposite of Richard's.
Think about it: Christ received a crown (instead of having it taken from him). It was a crown of thorns, but it was a crown nonetheless. (According to the New Testament, Roman soldiers place a crown of thorns on Christ's head before he is crucified.) And Richard, far from suffering silently like Christ did, talks nonstop about his suffering. Plus, Christ never had his own uncle murdered, and he certainly didn't go around running entire kingdoms into the ground. Basically, Richard's insistence on the comparison is just another example of how utterly clueless he is.

Cain and Abel

Shakespeare also makes reference to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve. (In Genesis 4, Cain commits humanity's first act of murder when he kills his brother.) The story shows up at least twice in Richard II. When Henry accuses Mowbray of plotting Gloucester's death, he says that Mowbray "like a traitor-coward / Sluiced out his innocent soul through streams of blood; / Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries" (1.1.4). Okay, we get it. Henry compares Gloucester to Abel in order to remind us that Gloucester's murder was ordered by his own family member (Richard).
At the end of the play, when Henry finds out that Extor has killed Richard (on Henry's behalf), he banishes him and says, "With Cain go wander through shades of night, / And never show thy head by day nor light" (5.6.6). Hmm, this analogy is pretty ironic, don't you think? It's Henry's fault that his cousin Richard is dead, so really Henry is more like Cain than anyone else.
Brain Snack: By now it should be pretty clear that Shakespeare knew the Bible like the back of his hand. That's probably because 1) Big Willy Shakes was an avid reader, and 2) the Bible was the most printed book in Elizabethan England, thanks to the printing press and the English Reformation. In case you're wondering which version Shakespeare had access to (and we know you were), most literary critics and historians think our playwright read the "Geneva" Bible, which gets its name from the fact that it was printed in Geneva by a group of Protestants who were living in exile while Queen Mary I ruled. The first edition was printed in 1560 and the second in 1570

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Immediately after he's forced to give up his crown, Richard asks for a mirror. Huh? What's that all about? We know the guy's arrogant, but geez, this isn't exactly the best time for Richard to be checking to see if his hair got messed up when he took off his crown. What's going on here?

Well, as it turns out, Richard's not being a diva. In fact, it's just the opposite. Check out what he says when he sees his reflection:

No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath Sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine
And made no deeper wounds? (4.1.10)

Okay, now we get it. After losing his title and all his power, Richard looks in the mirror and expects to see that his face has aged as a reflection of his sorrow and grief. Ever see the before and after pictures of US presidents? Powerful political leaders often age dramatically as a result of their stressful jobs (Barack Obama's hair seemed to turn gray almost overnight), so Richard seems to be onto something here. But as he continues to look into a mirror, Richard is surprised to find his face basically unchanged.

O, flatt'ring glass,
Like to my followers in prosperity,
Thou dost beguile me.

Since he feels like he's been transformed by losing the crown, Richard thinks it's strange that his face hasn't aged a gagillion years to reflect his suffering and stress. Here he accuses the glass of "flattering" him, or making him look better and healthier than he actually is – kind of like his brown-nosing advisers did when he was still in power.

Then things get really weird. Richard grabs the mirror, smashes it, and tells King Henry to look at how sorrow has "ruined" his face. (Uh oh – broken mirrors are never a good symbol.) Actually Richard's face isn't ruined – it's the mirror that's broken into a bunch of little pieces, so now Richard's reflection looks as awful and distorted as Richard feels on the inside. In other words, this is Richard's way of showing us that his loss of the crown has shattered him emotionally.

What, you don't buy that theory? Okay, here are some other options. This moment could signal that Richard is symbolically breaking with his former identity as the king of England. Or this mirror-breaking scene could be Shakespeare's dramatic way of telling us that life is one big illusion that can be broken in an instant.

What, you've got a better idea? That's fine with us, as long as you can back it up

The Crown

Everyone knows that a monarch's crown is never just a fancy, bedazzled hat that looks good with a matching golden wand and throne. It's more than that: it's a visual symbol of power. In this play, the crown comes to mean even more, especially to Richard II, who is eventually forced to give his up.

HENRY BOLINGBROKE
Are you contented to resign the crown?
KING RICHARD II
Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be;
Therefore no no, for I resign to thee.
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 duty's rites:

In spite of his many faults, the spectacle of watching Richard give up his crown is really moving. Coronations were extremely important public events; the crowning of a king was a ritual that many considered to be holy. And it was a production – kind of like a play… It was important that the public see the new monarch crowned. There is no equivalent ceremony for taking a crown away (any more than there's a ceremony for, say, divorce). A coronation is not supposed to be undone. Bolingbroke's insistence that Richard voluntarily give up his crown in front of witnesses shows his understanding that the putting on and taking off of crowns needs to be public in order to be meaningful. It also does the job of turning his rebellion into a civilized ceremony.

Brain Snack: The crown was a seriously important symbol in Elizabethan England. To show a king giving up his crown onstage was pretty dangerous, since monarchs did not like plays that depicted this kind of thing. The thinking went like this: if the audience sees a king give up his crown onstage, they'll start to imagine how the real-life queen might give up hers. That's why this deposition scene was censored in Shakespeare's day, when Queen Elizabeth was alive.

Rising "Up" and Falling "Down"

There's a whole lot of talk about rising and falling in this play – so much so that it makes us feel a little seasick. When Henry forces Richard II to give up the crown, Shakespeare beats us over the head with the idea that the dramatic downfall of one king gives rise to another. Richard says as much as he literally hands over his crown:

Here, cousin, seize the crown;
Here cousin:
On this side my hand, and on that side yours.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen and full of water:
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

Here, Richard compares the crown to a well and says that he and Henry are like two water buckets on a pulley system (when one bucket goes down into the well, the other bucket rises up). Richard, of course, is like the bucket being lowered "down" into the well, filling with water (or tears). Henry, on the other hand, is like the emptier bucket that rises up, "dancing in the air," as the other is lowered down "unseen." Most of us don't get our drinking water from wells anymore, but we can still appreciate the astonishing image Richard creates with this metaphor. The point is also pretty clear: Bolingbroke's good luck is tied to Richard's misfortune. As Bolingbroke rises in power, Richard experiences a major downfall.

We also see this relationship between rising and falling in an earlier scene, when Bolingbroke shows up at Flint Castle and forces Richard to give up peacefully (3.3). When Bolingbroke arrives, Richard is standing up high on top of the castle walls. When Northumberland asks the king, "May it please you to come down?" (3.3.5), Richard makes a big deal out of the word "down" as he descends the steps to surrender:

Down, down I come; like glistering Phaethon,
Wanting the manage of unruly jades.
In the base court? Base court, where kings grow base,
To come at traitors' calls and do them grace.
In the base court? Come down? Down, court!
down, king

FYI, in Greek mythology, Phaethon was the guy who tried to drive his dad the sun god's chariot. When he couldn't control his horses, Zeus shot him out of the sky with a giant thunderbolt. By comparing his downfall to Phaethon's, Richard lets us know just how dramatic it is for him to lose the crown to Henry, even though this whole scene lacks the kind of violence we might expect when a king loses his power.

After Richard walks down the steps of Flint Castle, Bolingbroke greets him by kneeling down, presumably as a fake show of respect. Richard's not having any of this phony stuff. He says, "Up, cousin, up. Your heart is up, I know / Thus high at least, although your knee be low" (3.4.6). Translation: "Why are you down on your knee pretending that you're not taking my crown from me? You should be standing up to reflect your power and your elevated mood."

The Sun

Shakespeare uses the sun as a metaphor for kingly power and strength throughout this entire cycle of history plays. (What? You don't believe us? Fine. When you're done here, go read about "Symbolism" in Henry IV Part 1 and Henry V.) For now, let's think about the sun's function in Richard II.

When King Richard rules England, he's associated with the sun's majesty and glory. Check out what Richard says when he finds out that Henry Bolingbroke has raised an army and is coming after him:

So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke,
Who all this while hath revell'd in the night
Whilst we were wandering with the antipodes,
Shall see us rising in our throne, 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.

Richard obviously thinks he's pretty awesome, because he directly compares himself to a "rising" sun. He also thinks that when Bolingbroke sees him in all his sun-like majesty, he'll be shaking in his boots. But that's not quite what happens when Bolingbroke confronts the king at Flint Castle. When Bolingbroke corners the king with his army, he looks up and sees Richard on the castle walls. He compares Richard to the sun all right, but it's a sun that's about to be overshadowed by a bunch of ominous clouds (a.k.a. the rebel army):

See, see, King Richard doth himself appear,
As doth the blushing discontented sun
From out the fiery portal of the east,
When he perceives the envious clouds are bent
To dim his glory and to stain the track
Of his bright passage to the occident.

We've heard this before when Salisbury predicted Richard's downfall and compared him to a setting sun: "Ah, Richard! [... ] I see thy glory, like a shooting star, / Fall to the base earth [... ] Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west" (2.4.2). Translation: Richard is totally going down, and his power will be short lived.

As we know, though, even after a setting sun goes down, it always rises again. In this case, Richard goes down, but the newly crowned king Henry IV rises in power. Richard says as much after being stripped of his crown:

O that I were a mockery king of snow,
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water-drops!

Translation: King Henry IV is as powerful as the blazing sun, and poor Richard is now just some poor chump who feels like he's going to "melt away" (cry and/or disappear and be forgotten) under the new "sun's" rays.

Henry's Name(s)

Names are a very, very, very big deal in Richard II. Remember when Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, returns to England to claim the land he was supposed to inherit when his dad (Gaunt/Lancaster) died? Henry makes a huge deal out of the fact that he wants to be called "Lancaster" now, not "Hereford," because the Dukedom of Lancaster is his rightful inheritance and King Richard has taken it from him illegally. (Remember, members of the nobility are named after the land they control.) Check it out:

LORD BERKELEY
My Lord of Hereford, my message is to you.
HENRY BOLINGBROKE
My lord, my answer is – to Lancaster;
And I am come to seek that name in England;
And I must find that title in your tongue,
Before I make reply to aught you say.

In other words, Henry wants to be called Lancaster because he wants Richard to acknowledge that he has a right to inherit his father's land. Remember, if you haven't inherited property from your ancestors, then you're not a nobleman – you're a "man of no name" (a.k.a. a commoner and a nobody). More than in any other history play, characters in Richard II tend to derive their identities from their names.