Richard II and Calais

Rightly or wrongly, the US government has used the military base at Guantanamo Bay to detain people it believes to be terrorists. The fact that it is not on US soil makes it easier to set aside the question of whether or not these detainees are entitled to the protections of the US Constitution.

Calais plays a similar though not identical purpose in the story of Richard and the Duke of Gloucester. Gloucester is arrested in London and then quickly taken to Calais, an English possession in what is now France. It is worth considering why Gloucester was imprisoned in Calais.

In his History of England, David Hume says that Gloucester is taken to Calais because this is the only place that the duke, "by reason of his numerous partizans...could safely be detained in custody" (II.XVII.308). In other words, if people found out that Gloucester was imprisoned in London, they would have risen up against Richard and demanded that Gloucester be released. But they would be helpless to free him if he were imprisoned in Calais.

In the play Thomas of Woodstock, the author suggests that the purpose of imprisoning Gloucester (that is, Woodstock) in Calais is to prevent people from knowing what happened to him. One of Richard's evil counselors, Sir Henry Greene, is the one who advises it:

...So clappe hime under haches,
hoyst sayles & secrettly convay hime out ath Realme to Callys.
And so by this meanes ye shall prevent all mischeife,
For neither of your uncles nor any of the kingdome,
Shall know whats become of hime.

The author of this play is more inclined than Hume to view Richard as a tyrant. The act of secretly imprisoning one's political enemies is a charactertistic mark of tyrannical governments, as the gulags of the former Soviet Union attest. Blackstone sees this kind of wrongful imprisonment as the most dangerous threat of all to liberty:

‘To bereave a man of life or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.” (William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, as quoted by Hamilton in Federalist 84)

After quoting this passage from Blackstone, Hamilton comments that this is precisely what makes the writ of habeas corpus so important: "And as a remedy for this fatal evil he is everywhere peculiarly emphatical in his encomiums on the habeas corpus act, which in one place he calls 'the BULWARK of the British Constitution'"

So, by Blackstone's standards (and those of the Founders), Richard's action of "secretly hurring" Gloucester to jail, "where his sufferings are unknown" is a "dangerous engine of arbitrary government" and precisely the kind of action that the British and US Constitutions are designed to guard against. This again marks Richard as the kind of king who deserves to be overthrown.

The Perplexity of York

If I know how or which way to order these affairs
Thus thrust disorderly into my hands,
Never believe me. Both are my kinsmen:
The one is my sovereign, whom both my oath
And duty bids defend; the other again
Is my kinsman, whom the king hath wrong'd,
Whom conscience and my kindred bids to right.
Well, somewhat we must do....
(II.ii.109-116)

York is torn between two competing demands of justice. As a subject of the king and as the one left in charge while the king is in Ireland, York must defend the king against Hereford's usurpation. Yet he is sensitive to the fact that the king has greatly wronged Hereford and that he has a moral duty to do whatever is in his power to right that wrong. He never seems to take a stand on either principle and ends up simply muddling through.

Richard and Magna Carta

“No freeman shall be arrested, imprisoned, dispossessed of his estate, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will We proceed against or prosecute him except by lawful judgment of his peers or the law of the land.” (Clause 39 of Magna Charta, Great Britain, 1215)

Shakespeare's Richard violates just about every provision of this clause. He "arrested, imprisoned" and "destroyed" the Duke of Gloucester without the "lawful judgment of his peers or the law of the land"; he banished the Duke of Norfolk and the Duke of Hereford; and he dispossessed the Duke of Hereford of his estate.

"A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. " So says the Declaration of Independence. These words could apply to Richard as well, as could these words from the Declaration: "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states."

At this point, however, Shakespeare and the Founders diverge. The Americans see the tryanny of the King as givng them a right and even a duty to "throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." If, however, we take Carlisle as expressing the view of Shakespeare, there is no right to throw off even a tyrannical government: "What subject can give sentence on his king?" (IV.i.21)

Who Murdered the Duke of Gloucester? Part 5

For someone who never appears in the play, the Duke of Gloucester and his murder comes up again and again.

Right before Bolingbroke is crowned, the subject is resumed. Bolingbroke asks Bagot to come forward and reveal who persuaded King Richard to have Gloucester put to death:

Now, Bagot, freely speak thy mind;
What thou dost know of noble Gloucester's death,
Who wrought it with the king, and who perform'd
The bloody office of his timeless end.
(IV.i.3-5)

Bagot comes forward and accuses the Duke of Aumerle, the son of the Duke of York, of being responsible for the deed:

My Lord Aumerle, I know your daring tongue
Scorns to unsay what once it hath deliver'd.
In that dead time when Gloucester's death was plotted,
I heard you say, 'Is not my arm of length,
That reacheth from the restful English court
As far as Calais, to mine uncle's head?'
(IV.i.813)

After Aumerle denies the charge, Lord Fitzwater comes forward and accuses Aumerle as well:

By that fair sun which shows me where thou stand'st,
I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spakest it
That thou wert cause of noble Gloucester's death.
(IV.i.35-37)

After Henry Percy and another lord join in Bagot's accusation of Aumerle and the Duke of Surrey tries to refute it, Lord Fitzwater adds another detail to the plot against Gloucester:

As I intend to thrive in this new world,
Aumerle is guilty of my true appeal:
Besides, I heard the banish'd Norfolk say
That thou, Aumerle, didst send two of thy men
To execute the noble duke at Calais.
(IV.i.78)

Aumerle then accuses Norfolk of lying and asks Bolingbroke to recall Norfolk so that he may have the opportunity to refute him, but Carlisle informs them that Norfolk is dead. The bishop describes Norfolk as fighting for "Jesu Christ" and finally giving his "pure soul unto his captain, Christ" (IV.i.93, 99). This adds credibility to Norfolk's words, as does Norfolk's earlier denial:

...For Gloucester's death,
I slew him not; but to my own disgrace
Neglected my sworn duty in that case.
(I.i.132-134)

This most likely means that Norfolk's sin was to permit the two executioners sent by Aumerle to murder Gloucester rather than protect him in while he was in custody.

This part of the scene ends with the new king telling the accusers and the accused that he will set a date for their trial by battle.

Why does the subject of Gloucester's death come up again? Presumably to remind us of the wrongs of the king who is about to be dethroned.

Carlisle the Prophet

Marry. God forbid!
Worst in this royal presence may I speak,
Yet best beseeming me to speak the truth.
Would God that any in this noble presence
Were enough noble to be upright judge
Of noble Richard! then true noblesse would
Learn him forbearance from so foul a wrong.
What subject can give sentence on his king?
And who sits here that is not Richard's subject?
Thieves are not judged but they are by to hear,
Although apparent guilt be seen in them;
And shall the figure of God's majesty,
His captain, steward, deputy-elect,
Anointed, crowned, planted many years,
Be judged by subject and inferior breath,
And he himself not present? O, forfend it, God,
That in a Christian climate souls refined
Should show so heinous, black, obscene a deed!
I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks,
Stirr'd up by God, thus boldly for his king:
My Lord of Hereford here, whom you call king,
Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford's king:
And if you crown him, let me prophesy:
The blood of English shall manure the ground,
And future ages groan for this foul act....
(IV.i.114-138)

At the moment that Bolingbroke is about to ascend the throne, Carlisle interrupts and tries to make plain to all concerned what a wicked thing it is to depose a king. In fact, Carlisle cannot find enough words to describe how wrong it is. It is "so foul a wrong"; "so heinous, black, obscene a deed"; Hereford is a "foul traitor" and crowning him would be a "foul act." As Carlisle understands it, it is morally wrong to depose a King, no matter what his guilt. "What subject can give sentence on his king?"

Why is it so wrong? For the same reason that Gaunt thought it was wrong. As Carlisle puts it, the king is "the figure of God's majesty, His captain, steward, deputy elect, anointed, crowned, planted many years." To rise up against the king is to rise up against God.

So wrong is this act that its consequences will be nothing less than catastrophic. Carlise speaks as a prophet and prophesies the bloody civil war that later generations will call the War of the Roses. These events do, in fact, follow this action and are the subject of the plays that cover the period 1399-1485 (Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI parts 1,2, and 3, and Richard III). Carlisle is a true prophet and this suggests that his understanding of the deposition of Richard is the true one, as Shakespeare understands it: no matter what the king's crimes, it is always wrong to depose a king.

(After Richard surrenders his crown, the abbot remarks how sad a scene it was. Carlisle responds by repeating his prophecy: "The woe's to come. The children yet unborn shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn" (IV.i.22-23).)

York the Prophet

...my liege, farewell:
What will ensue hereof, there's none can tell;
But by bad courses may be understood
That their events can never fall out good.

Richard seizes the goods of John of Gaunt upon his death, even though Bolingbroke the heir is still living. These words are York's response to the King's theft.

(This is the last of of the King's great sins: first he deprived Gloucester of life without due process of law; then he deprived Bolingbroke and Mowbray of liberty without due process of law (by banishing them); and now he deprives Gaunt of his estate--again without due process of law.)

York does not claim to be a prophet, but he understands that there is a law of consequences in this world. Bad consequences follow upon wrong actions and so the consequences that will follow upon Richard's bad actions will not be good.

Gaunt the Prophet

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired
And thus expiring do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
(II.i.31-39)

Gaunt here explicitly describes himself as a prophet and foretells Richard's fall. There is nothing supernatural about the prophecy. Gaunt sees that the vicious and irresponsible way in which Richard lives cannot be sustained and can only end in his ruin. This is the case with all human beings, including and perhaps especially kings.

If there were any possibility of Richard changing his ways, then this end could be avoided. But the King, as York makes clear, is unwilling to even listen to the suggestion that he needs to change: "Vex not yourself nor strive with your breath, for all in vain comes counsel to his ear...it is stopped with other, flattering sounds" (II.i.3-4, 17).

Norfolk the Prophet

No, Bolingbroke: if ever I were traitor,
My name be blotted from the book of life,
And I from heaven banish'd as from hence!
But what thou art, God, thou, and I do know;
And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue.
(I.iii.201-205)

The Duke of Norfolk is the first to foresee Richard's fall. There are two indications here of Norfolk's innocence of the charges against him. First is the strong oath he takes, his prayer that he may be eternally damned if he is guilty. The second is that he is right about Hereford. The King does in fact live to regret what Bolingbroke is--namely, a bad man who is aiming at the throne. Norfolk knows that he himself is true to Richard and Bolingbroke false. He suspects that Bolingbroke's next victim will be the King.

Sacred Person of the King

"In England, the king is a perpetual magistrate; and it is a maxim which has obtained for the sake of the public peace, that he is unaccountable for his administration, and his person sacred. Nothing, therefore, can be wiser in that kingdom, than to annex to the king a constitutional council, who may be responsible to the nation for the advice they give. Without this, there would be no responsibility whatever in the executive department an idea inadmissible in a free government" (Federalist 70).

This statement from Publius is helpful in understanding the history of Richard. Accusations of wrong-doing cannot rightly be made against the king, but it is permisible to accuse those who are advising the king. The feud between Richard and Gloucesester goes back to the time when Gloucester impeached the king's advisers for their bad counsel. McKisack: "To Gloucester's plea for mercy [Richard] replied that he should have just so much mercy as he himself had shown to Simon Burley, for whom the queen had interceded on her knees" (479).

Who Murdered the Duke of Gloucester? Part 4

O, had thy grandsire with a prophet's eye
Seen how his son's son should destroy his sons,
From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,
Deposing thee before thou wert possess'd,
Which art possess'd now to depose thyself.
(I.ii.104-107)

That blood already, like the pelican,
Hast thou tapp'd out and drunkenly caroused:
My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul,
Whom fair befal in heaven 'mongst happy souls!
May be a precedent and witness good
That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood.
(II.i.124-131)

(These speeches occur before York's and should have been discussed first).

Just before his death, John of Gaunt again accuses Richard of Gloucester's murder--and this time to his face.

Who Murdered the Duke of Gloucester? Part 3

His hands were guilty of no kindred blood,
But bloody with the enemies of his kin.
O Richard! York is too far gone with grief,
Or else he never would compare between.
(II.i.82-85)

The Duke of York, the last living son of Edward III, is perhaps the central character of the play--at least when it comes to the question of how one must respond to a despotic king. He falls between Gaunt and Bolingbroke in his response to Richard. As we have seen, Gaunt is unwilling to challenge Richard no matter how great his sin. Bolingbroke, as we will see, is the one who dares to overthrow a King who has gone too far. York wavers between the two.

York begins this speech by rehearsing Richard's wrongs and the first among them is the death of Gloucester. He ends it by comparing Richard to his father, the Black Prince, the first of Edward's sons. The comparison is not a favorable one and the last point of comparison contains the final reference to Gloucester's death: "[Your father's] hands were guilty of no kindred blood, but bloody with the enemies of his kin." So York's answer to the question of who murdered the Duke of Gloucester is this: it was King Richard.

Yet it is not this, but Richard's decision to seize Gaunt's goods upon his death (and so disinherit Bolingbroke) that brings York to the point of not being able to stand any more of Richard's wrongdoing:

How long shall I be patient? ah, how long
Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?...
If you do wrongfully seize Hereford's rights...
[You] prick my tender patience, to those thoughts
Which honour and allegiance cannot think.
(II.i.63-64, 201, 207-208)

The thoughts that honor and allegiance cannot think are thoughts of treason, assassination, and the deposing of a tyrannical king. York is as yet unwilling to think such thoughts and, though he will later yield to Bolingbroke upon his return, he remains true to the same idea of kingship as Gaunt (and, I will argue, as Shakespeare himself). When Bolingbroke overthrows Richard, we can dismiss his action as self-seeking and so it does not provide any compelling justification for the overthrow of an unjust king (such as we find in the Declaration). Yet in York's response to Richard--the response of a good man who has nothing to gain by Richard's overthrow--we see a real challenge to the idea that the king is inviolable: when a king is as bad as Richard, how can it not be right to overthrow such a king?

(York later speaks again of the King's role in Gloucester's death, right after hearing the news of the death of Gloucester's wife:

...I would to God,
So my untruth had not provoked him to it,
The king had cut off my head with my brother's.
(II.ii.100-102)

Who Murdered the Duke of Gloucester? Part 2

God's is the quarrel; for God's substitute,
His deputy anointed in His sight,
Hath caused his death: the which if wrongfully,
Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift
An angry arm against His minister.
(I.ii.37-41)

These are the words of John of Gaunt, King Richard's uncle and the brother of Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester. It is in this scene that we see the importance of Gloucester's death: it is for Shakespeare the outstanding example of Richard's badness as a king and the best argument for his overthrow.

John of Gaunt, as we see here, knows Richard to be responsible for Gloucester's death. He denies, however, that he or anyone else has the right to take up arms against Richard for this or any other crime. No matter what Richard's sins, to kill or depose him would be itself great sin, because Richard is "God's subsitute, His deputy in His sight" and "His minister." If Richard is guilty of his brother's murder, then it is for God alone to avenge it. (At the beginning of the scene, Gaunt says in the same vein, "Put we our quarrel to the will of heaven; Who, when they see the hours ripe on earth, Will rain hot vengeance on offenders' heads" (I.ii.6-8).

We can tell from the words of the Duke of Gloucester's widow in this same scene that she believes that Mowbray was a party to her husband's murder. She hopes that he, at least, will get his just deserts at the hands of Bolingbroke:

O, sit my husband's wrongs on Hereford's spear,
That it may enter butcher Mowbray's breast!
Or, if misfortune miss the first career,
Be Mowbray's sins so heavy in his bosom,
They may break his foaming courser's back,
And throw the rider headlong in the lists,
A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford!
(I.ii.47-52)

It is in the grief of the Duchess of Gloucester ("Desolate, desolate will I hence and die") that we see how bad a king Richard really is.

Who Murdered the Duke of Gloucester? Part 1

Further I say and further will maintain
Upon his bad life to make all this good,
That he did plot the Duke of Gloucester's death,
Suggest his soon-believing adversaries,
And consequently, like a traitor coward,
Sluiced out his innocent soul through streams of blood:
Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,
To me for justice and rough chastisement;
And, by the glorious worth of my descent,
This arm shall do it, or this life be spent.
(I.i.98-108)

This is the first mention in the play of Gloucester's death. Here it is the Duke of Hereford, Henry Bolingbroke, who accuses Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk of his murder. Mowbray, for his part, denies it: "For Gloucester's death, I slew him not; but to my own disgrace neglected my sworn duty in that case" (I.i.132-134). It's not clear what Mowbray means when he says that he neglected his duty, but perhaps it has to do with failing to provide Gloucester adequate protection while awaiting his trial for treason. (Mowbray was in command at Calais, where Gloucester was imprisoned).

Historically, there may be something to Bolingbroke's accusation, but with a twist. May McKisack suggests that it was King Richard himself, "not daring to have [Gloucester] produced in Parliament," who was responsible for ordering Gloucester's murder--and Norfolk "was party to the crime" (The Fourteenth Century, 482). In the next scene, we see that this is, in fact, the view that Shakespeare takes of Gloucester's death.

Richard II and the Declaration

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

It is hard for a lover of liberty, in the American sense, who is also a lover of Shakespeare, to admit that Shakespeare would probably disagree with nearly every word of the American Declaration of Independence. Not, of course, because he was English, but because of his understanding of politics. This became evident to me as I watched a BBC production of Richard II.

Richard II, as Shakespeare portrays him, is clearly a tyrant. This is especially evident from a speech given by the Duke of York, who implies at least that Richard is responsible for the death of his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester. For this and other actions of Richard, this would seem to be a case when the principles of the Declaration would justify overthrowing him and establishing in his place a ruler who would not harm his subjects.

Yet the rest of the play indicates that Shakespeare does not see Richard's overthrow as justifiable. In fact, as can be seen from the speech of the Bishop of Carlisle, Shakespeare views the calamity that befalls England in the civil war to come as the consequence of the sin of Richard's overthrow.

In the posts that follow, I hope to discuss this in greater detail and gain a better understanding of Shakespeare's political thought.