Come, gentlemen, let's all go visit him:
Pray God we may make haste and come too late."
This mixture of greed and cold cruelty decked out with blasphemous
phrase is viler, I think, than anything attributed by Shakespeare to the
worst of his villains. But surely some hint of Richard's incredible
vileness should have come earlier in the play, should have preceded at
least his banishment of Bolingbroke, if Shakespeare had really meant to
present him to us in this light.
In the first scene of the second act, when Gaunt reproves him, Richard
turns on him in a rage, threatening. In the very same scene York
reproves Richard for seizing Gaunt's money and land, and Richard
retorts:
"Think what you will: we seize into our hands
His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands."
But when York blames him to his face and predicts that evil will befall
him and leaves him, Richard in spite of this at once creates:
"Our uncle York, Lord Governor of England;
For he is just, and always loved us well."
This Richard of Shakespeare is so far, I submit, almost
incomprehensible. When reproved by Gaunt and warned, Richard rages and
threatens; when blamed by York much more severely, Richard rewards York:
the two scenes contradict each other. Moreover, though his callous
selfishness, greed and cruelty are apparently established, in the very
next scene of this act our sympathy with Richard is called forth by the
praise his queen gives him. She says:
"I know no cause
Why I should welcome such a guest as grief,
Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard."
And from this scene to the end of the play Shakespeare enlists all our
sympathy for Richard. Now, what is the reason of this right-about-face
on the part of the poet?
It appears to me that Shakespeare began the play intending to present
the vile and cruel Richard of tradition. But midway in the play he saw
that there was no emotion, no pathos, to be got out of the traditional
view. If Richard were a vile, scheming, heartless murderer, the loss of
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