The similarity of these passages shows that in the very spring of life and heyday of the blood Shakespeare had in him a certain romantic melancholy which was developed later by the disappointments of life into the despairing of Macbeth and Lear.
When the Bishop calls upon Richard to act, the King's weathercock mind veers round again, and he cries:
“This ague fit of fear is over-blown,
An easy task it is to win our own.”
But when Scroop tells him that York has joined with Bolingbroke, he believes him at once, gives up hope finally, and turns as if for comfort to his own melancholy fate:
“Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth
Of that sweet way I was in to despair!”
That “sweet way” of despair is Romeo's way, Hamlet's, Macbeth's and Shakespeare's way.
In the next scene Richard meets his foes, and at first plays the king. Shakespeare tells us that he looks like a king, that his eyes are as “bright as an eagle's”; and this poetic admiration of state and place seems to have got into Richard's blood, for at first he declares that Bolingbroke is guilty of treason, and asserts that:
“My master, God omnipotent,
Is mustering in his clouds, on our behalf,
Armies of pestilence.”
Of course, he gives in with fair words the next moment, and the next rages against Bolingbroke; and then comes the great speech in which the poet reveals himself so ingenuously that at the end of it the King he pretends to be, has to admit that he has talked but idly. I cannot help transcribing the whole of the passage, for it shows how easily Shakespeare falls out of this King's character into his own:
“What must the King do now? Must he submit?
The King shall do it. Must he be depos'd?
The King shall be contented: must he lose
The name of king? O! God's name, let it go:
I'll give my jewels for a set of beads;
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage;
My gay apparel for an alms-man's gown;
My figur'd goblets for a dish of wood;
My sceptre for a palmer's walking staff;
My subjects for a pair of carved saints;
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little, little grave, an obscure grave:—
Or I'll be buried in the King's highway,
Some way of common trade, where subjects' feet
May hourly trample on their sovereign's head:
For on my heart they tread, now whilst I live;
And, buried once, why not upon my head?—
Aumerle, thou weep'st; my tender-hearted cousin!—
We'll make foul weather with despised tears;
Our sighs, and they, shall lodge the summer corn,
And make a dearth in this revolting land.
Or shall we play the wantons with our woes,
And make some pretty match with shedding tears?
As thus:—To drop them still upon one place,
Till they have fretted us a pair of graves
Within the earth; and, therein laid,—There lies
Two kinsmen digg'd their graves with weeping eyes.
Would not this ill do well?—Well, well, I see
I talk but idly, and you mock at me.—
Most mighty prince, my lord Northumberland,
What says King Bolingbroke? will his majesty
Give Richard leave to live till Richard die?
You make a leg, and Bolingbroke says ay.”