Abdication was a theme of great interest to Shakespeare. Richard II is only the first play in which abdication plays a central role; King Lear and The Tempest will follow. Only a king can abdicate; the rest of us can only resign.
We noted in an earlier chapter that Shakespeare was in conflict about his calling as a poet. To him, being a poet seems to be the equivalent of being a magician. In this play the assumption is made that he imagined himself as a king forced to abdicate.
Richard II was written in 1595, some three years after Richard III. William Hazlitt, writing in 1817, left us a great psychological description of Richard II.
Richard II is a play little known compared with Richard III which last is a play that every unfledged candidate for theatrical fame chuses to strut and fret his hour upon the stage in; yet we confess that we prefer the nature and feeling of the one to the noise and bustle of the other; at least, as we are so often forced to see it acted. In Richard II the weakness of the king leaves us leisure to take a greater interest in the misfortunes of the man. After the first act, in which the arbitrariness of his behaviour only proves his want of resolution, we see him staggering under the unlooked-for blows of fortune, bewailing his loss of kingly power, not preventing it, sinking under the aspiring genius of Bolingbroke, his authority trampled on, his hopes failing him, and his pride crushed and broken down under insults and injuries, which his own misconduct had provoked, but which he has not courage or manliness to resent. (Hazlitt, 1817: pp. 178–179)
Hazlitt's description of Richard's character is excellent; being pre-Freudian he has no need or space to deal with the unconscious.
In the third act Richard, facing Bolingbroke's rebellion, is still confident in his election as king and the special sanctity that his position gives him.
| RICHARD II: | Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm off from an anointed king; The breath of worldly men cannot depose The deputy elected by the Lord. For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown, God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay A glorious angel: then, if angels fight, Weak men must fall, for heaven still guards the right. (Richard II, III.ii.54–62) |
And yet in the very same scene Richard, not unlike Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, asks for our sympathy and wants to be seen as an ordinary person.
| RICHARD: | For you have but mistook me all this while: I live with bread like you, feel want, Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus, How can you say to me, I am a king? (III.ii.174–177) |
In the next scene we find Richard forcing himself to accept his abdication.
In Act IV, the abdication discussion between Richard and Bolingbroke is of psychological interest. Richard still regards himself as king of his grief, a poetic description of masochism.
The expression of the masochistic needs and the struggle against them can be considered the unconscious motivation of writing this play.
When Richard says, “My crown I am; but still my griefs are mine” he indicates that both the crown and his “griefs” have become part of his sense of identity. We may add that Richard calls his “griefs”, which we may be tempted to call his neuroses, have become very dear to him and constitute a treasured part of the self. They determine his sense of identity. Psychoanalytic experience has time and again demonstrated that it is much harder to give up a neurosis when it has become the carrier of one's identity, and renouncing it evokes strong resistance. Upon abdication he will give up his crown but still retain his grief.
Bolingbroke demands a yes or no answer. Richard, being neurotic, knows the complexity of his psychology and why he cannot answer yes or no. Then comes the magnificent line “With mine own tears I wash away my balm”. Unlike King Lear (although that play was not yet written when Shakespeare composed these lines), King Richard II has no wish to crawl towards death. What he does may look like abdication, but he knows that he has allowed himself to be overthrown. Bolingbroke, the victor and man of action, knows nothing of the unconscious, while Richard II, the flawed king, has a deep understanding of the unconscious.
The scene continues with the same magnificent language. The Earl of Northumberland offers Richard a paper to sign as a mere formality. Richard's answer is regal. In his downfall he identifies himself with Christ, as if Christ too had abdicated.
| RICHARD: | Nay, all of you that stand and look upon, Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself, Though 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. (IV.i.237–242) |
The original masochistic surrender turns into identification with the betrayed Christ and an attack on his former followers.
| NORTHUMBERLAND: | My lord,— |
| RICHARD: | No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man, Nor no man's lord; I have no name, no title, No, not that name was given me at the font, But ‘tis usurp'd: alack the heavy day, That I have worn so many winters out, And know not now what name to call myself! O that I were a mockery king of snow, Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, To melt myself away in water-drops! Good king, great king, and yet not greatly good, An if my word be sterling yet in England, Let it command a mirror hither straight, That it may show me what a face I have, Since it is bankrupt of his majesty. (IV.i.253–266) |
It is questionable whether Richard asked for a mirror concretely or metaphorically, but Bolingbroke is not a man to understand metaphor. He orders a mirror to be brought. When the looking glass arrives it evokes another storm of self-accusation from Richard.
| RICHARD: | Give me the glass, and therein will I read. No deeper wrinkles yet? hath sorrow struck So many blows upon this face of mine, And made no deeper wounds? O flattering glass, Like to my followers in prosperity, Thou dost beguile me! Was this face the face That every day under his household roof Did keep ten thousand men? was this the face That, like the sun, did make beholders wink? Was this the face that faced so many follies, And was at last out-faced by Bolingbroke? A brittle glory shineth in this face: As brittle as the glory is the face. (IV.i.276–288) |
He then dashes the glass against the ground.
I have quoted the mirror scene in full because in portraying it Shakespeare conquered new psychic terrain. It is not easy to match this scene in the vehemence of the attack upon the self. On the analytic couch we hear similar self-denunciations but these are brought about because the analysand was urged to censor nothing. To describe such an attack on the self, Shakespeare could not go anywhere to find it except in the depths of his own unconscious.
Shakespeare has given us what may well be the first description of masochism in Western literature. The way he presents Richard II to us is remarkable; we understand him and sympathise with him but Shakespeare took care that we do not identify with him.
There is yet another quality in King Richard II that Shakespeare took pains to show us: his detachment. He is unemotional and cold because he is addicted to remaining the self-observer. Richard II cannot tolerate any intensity of feeling and certainly not one between a man and woman. In Act V, scene one the queen knows that he will be brought to the tower and waits for him.
| QUEEN: | And must we be divided? must we part? |
| RICHARD: | Ay, hand from hand, my love, and heart from heart. |
| QUEEN: | Banish us both and send the king with me. |
| NORTHUMBERLAND: | That were some love but little policy. |
| QUEEN: | Then whither he goes, thither let me go. |
| RICHARD: | So two, together weeping, make one woe. Weep thou for me in France, I for thee here; Better far off than near, be ne'er the near. Go, count thy way with sighs; I mine with groans. |
| QUEEN: | So longest way shall have the longest moans. |
| RICHARD: | Twice for one step I'll groan, the way being short, And piece the way out with a heavy heart. Come, come, in wooing sorrow let's be brief, Since, wedding it, there is such length in grief; One kiss shall stop our mouths, and dumbly part; Thus give I mine, and thus take I thy heart. |
| QUEEN: | Give me mine own again; ‘twere no good part To take on me to keep and kill thy heart. So, now I have mine own again, be gone, That I might strive to kill it with a groan. |
| RICHARD: | We make woe wanton with this fond delay: Once more, adieu; the rest let sorrow say. (V.i.81–102) |
We are entitled to wonder whether this is the way a husband and wife speak when they both know they will never see each other again. The words they exchange are noble and we can feel the queen's love, but not Richard's love for his queen. In terms of Shakespeare's unconscious the separation between a husband and a wife may represent Shakespeare's own wish to live separated from his wife. In couples that wish to separate but cannot do so, we encounter dreams that they are forced to separate.
In Act V, scene five, Richard is alone in prison. Shakespeare gave Richard a very long soliloquy, which I quote in part.
| RICHARD: | I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world: And for because the world is populous And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out. My brain I'll prove the female to my soul, My soul the father; and these two beget A generation of still-breeding thoughts, And these same thoughts people this little world … Thus play I in one person many people, And none contented: sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am: then crushing penury Persuades me I was better when a king; Then am I king'd again: and by and by Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke, And straight am nothing. (V.v.1–9, 31–38) |
The very same Richard whose weaknesses we have learned to know appears in this last scene in a new light. Alone in the cell he tries to achieve what psychoanalysis has designated as splitting the ego: to divide himself into two parts so that he can become two persons who entertain each other. We thus find that Shakespeare already knew another mechanism discovered by psychoanalysis, namely splitting. Alone in his cell, Richard is trying to achieve what his creator, Shakespeare, has achieved when he writes a play.
In 1927, under the title “A father pleads for the death of his son”, M. P. Taylor focused on two scenes, Act V, scenes two and three, which are “in no way essential for the action of the drama”. The Duke of York discovers that his son, Aumerle, is plotting to restore the recently deposed Richard II to the throne. He rushes to meet the usurper, Henry IV, asking that his son be put to death. Aumerle and his mother also arrive and the three kneel before the king, the mother and son pleading for the son's life. The mother believes that the duke does not think that Aumerle is his son but is a bastard.
The mother pleads with her husband not to kill their son.
| DUCHESS: | Hadst thou groan'd for him As I have done, thou wouldst be more pitiful. But now I know thy mind; thou dost suspect That I have been disloyal to thy bed, And that he is a bastard, not thy son: Sweet York, sweet husband, be not of that mind: He is as like thee as a man may be, Not like to me, or any of my kin, And yet I love him. (Richard II, V.ii.101–109) |
This is a milder version of what will take place in The Winter's Tale, where a paranoid father suspects that his child is a bastard. In this play the father, mother, and son, rush to Bolingbroke. The father accuses the son, and the mother is successful in obtaining pardon for him. Dramatically the scene builds Bolingbroke's good image but from other plays we know that the accusation of marital infidelity and the feeling that the child is a bastard was a favourite theme to express paranoid feelings. This may also be the case in this play, although here it has only a minor role not connected to the main theme.
In 1968 Martin Wangh published a psychoanalytic interpretation of Richard II. He studied the actual historical records about the real Richard II. Richard was the second son of Edward of Woodstock, later know as the Black Prince. He was born in Bordeaux on 6 January 1367; an older brother died when he was four and his father died when he was nine. A year later he became king of England, succeeding his grandfather, Edward III. He abdicated in 1399 and was murdered in 1400. Wangh assumes that Shakespeare believed that Richard II suffered from survivor's guilt, and the rumour that he was a bastard must have added to his feeling of not being entitled to the crown. Richard compared himself to Phaeton, who tried to drive his father Apollo's sun chariot but could not master the divine horses.
| RICHARD: | I have no name, no title No, not that name was given me at the font, But 'tis usurped. (IV.i.254–256) |
Richard tries to “ward off the pressure of his unconscious guilt but it unconsciously compelled to follow its dictates” (Wangh, 1968: pp. 213–214). When he surrenders his crown there is a momentary relief from the pressure of his unconscious guilt: “Here, cousin, seize the crown, / On this side my hand and on that side thine” (Richard II, IV.i.181–182). Not only the crown but Richard's very name has been usurped.
As a psychological study of a very complex personality, Richard II is a masterpiece. Only a very great psychologist could have created such a personality. Richard is a very guilty man and a masochist, long before the term was coined. I would describe the play as one in which the psychologist won over the dramatist. We are more interested in Richard II as an individual than in the play.