Bolingbroke accuses them of having "misled a prince" 8 --that is, of having given Richard deliberately bad advice--and recites a list of charges against them: he says that they have stirred up trouble between the king and his queen and that their advice was the reason that Richard "misinterpret[ed]" Bolingbroke and subsequently banished him He thus condemns them to be executed.
Bushy and Greene are defiant but resigned; Northumberland leads them away to die. Having dispatched this piece of business, Bolingbroke sends greetings to Queen Isabel via the Duke of York, at whose house she is staying, and gathers up his men to fight some rebellious Welsh before heading to the main battle.
Meanwhile, King Richard has landed on the coast of Wales, at "Barkloughly" Castle actually called Harlech , accompanied by the Duke of Aumerle, the Bishop of Carlisle, and some soldiers. Richard greets the earth and air of England in poetic terms.
Aumerle points out that, while they delay, Bolingbroke grows stronger in power. The King and his party seem to be aware that Bolingbroke has landed in England, but do not have up-to-date news on his progress. Richard responds, in powerful language, that since he is the rightful king, no rebel stands a chance; God is on their side, and they will easily sweep Bolingbroke out of England. Lord Salisbury enters, and, grieving, delivers terrible news to Richard: only the day before, the army of twelve thousand men of Wales, believing Richard to be dead, dispersed from where they had been waiting for him and fled to Bolingbroke.
Richard is now without an army. Richard momentarily succumbs to despair, but then recovers his royal self-assurance. Lord Scroope then enters to give Richard the news that, as Bolingbroke made his way through England, all the common people acknowledged him as lord and joined his forces--men, women and children alike. Whe Scroope tells him that they have "made peace with Bolingbroke" , Richard curses and damns them in ferocious terms--but then Scroope explains that he means they have been executed.
Richard gives a long, eloquent, and despairing monologue, but the Bishop of Carlisle tells him to recover hope: giving in to fear and despair, he say, will do the enemy's work for him.
Richard agrees, and declares that he will ride against Bolingbroke despite his losses. But Scroope has yet more bad news: the Duke of York has defected to Bolingbroke, too, and all the King's castles in the north and his allies in the south are in Bolingbroke's possession or on his side.
Richard, hearing this and realizing that he has no hope left, announces his final intention to give in to despair and declares that he will go to Flint Castle, in northeastern Wales, to "pine away" Act III, scene i, in which Bushy and Greene are executed, is brief but serves two important purposes. First, it shows us the escalation of events that is building towards the inevitable outcome of the war: King Richard's capitulation to Bolingbroke at Flint Castle in Act III, scene iii.
Richard's supporters have defected from, him one by one--or have been executed. The confused metaphors Bushy uses to try to convince Isabel to stop grieving are characteristic of the play's sometimes overly abstract and complex language--his comparison of Isabel's grief-stricken eyes to a picture painted in "perspective" is admirably complex, but difficult to make sense of on a first read-through.
We also see, in Isabel's "nameless woe," the kind of melancholy that Richard himself will increasingly display over the course of the play. The torrent of bad news that breaks over the Queen and her allies during the course of this scene is only a taste of what is to follow. After this point, Richard's fall appears to be inevitable.
We learn in quick succession of the invasion of Bolingbroke, the defection of the nobility, the departure of the Earl of Worcester, and the death of the Duchess of Gloucester.
It is little wonder that the Duke of York feels himself incapable of defending the country that Richard has left in his charge, or that Bushy, Bagot and Greene privately agree that the effort is hopeless: "Alas, poor Duke! It is also no wonder that Isabel, losing hope, seems to take a certain relish in resigning herself to the worst. York himself has begun to face his own moral dilemma: a loyalist to the last, he, like John of Gaunt, has difficulty in imagining himself raising arms against Richard, the divinely appointed king.
And yet, he knows that Bolingbroke's complaint is justified--and both Bolingbroke and Richard are his cousins. The seeds of doubt have been planted. SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Mini Essays.
Summary Act II, scene ii. Summary King Richard has departed for Ireland to put down the rebels there. Read a translation Read a translation of Act II, scene ii. Popular pages: Richard II. Take a Study Break.
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