“Now put it, God, in his physician's mind,
To help him to his grave immediately!
The lining of his coffers shall make coats
To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars.
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
his crown and life would merely satisfy our sense of justice, but this
outcome did not satisfy Shakespeare's desire for emotion, and
particularly his desire for pathos, {Footnote: In the last scene of the
last act of “Lear,” Albany says:
“This judgement of the heavens, that makes us tremble
Touches us not with pity."}
and accordingly he veers round, says nothing more of Richard's
vileness, lays stress upon his weakness and sufferings, discovers, too,
all manner of amiable qualities in him, and so draws pity from us for
his dethronement and murder.