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Summary
In Windsor Castle, where the new King Henry IV (a.k.a. Bolingbroke) now resides, a nobleman called Sir Pierce of Exton is talking with his servants. He tells them that King Henry has asked his audience of courtiers, “Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?” (5.4.2). Exton reasonably interprets the “living fear” as a reference to the still-living Richard, who is currently imprisoned at Pomfret Castle in the north of England. Exton thinks that he saw King Henry specifically look at him when he asked the question. He decides that, as the “King’s friend” (5.4.12)—motivated either by loyalty or by hope of reward, or perhaps both—he will be the man to go and kill Richard.
Read a translation of Act 5. Scene 4.
We now move to Richard in Pomfret, who is soliloquizing to himself. Still trying to come to terms with his isolation from the world, he tries various tricks to convince himself that he is not alone but still part of a populated world. A groom who has remained faithful to Richard comes in unexpectedly to wish Richard well and tell him how grieved he is to behold the former king’s fall, but he cannot cheer the grieving king.
Then the castle’s keeper enters with food for the former king. Richard, wary, bids the keeper taste of it first as he usually does (to prove it is not poisoned), but the keeper says that he cannot—one Sir Pierce of Exton, who has come to see him, has forbidden it. Angrily, Richard strikes the keeper, who cries out. Exton and his accomplices rush in. After a brief scuffle in which Richard manages to kill two of the accomplices, Exton strikes him down. Richard, condemning Exton to burn in hell for his sin, dies. Troubled by doubt and guilt, Exton resolves to bury his slain accomplices at Pomfret and convey Richard’s body to King Henry at Windsor.
Read a translation of Act 5: Scene 5.
Back at Windsor, we find the king discussing affairs of state with his advisors. The bad news is that there are rebels setting fire to towns in Gloucestershire in the northwest. The good news, however, is that the main conspirators against King Henry’s life—Lord Salisbury, the Abbot of Westminster, and others—have been executed and their heads have been sent to London (presumably for public display as a warning to others). The Bishop of Carlisle has been kept alive and is now presented to the king for his sentence. Bolingbroke shows Carlisle mercy and commands him to find a “secret place” (5.6.25), keep a low profile, and live out his life in peace.
Suddenly, Exton enters with the coffin containing Richard’s body and tells Bolingbroke that he has taken the cue from his own mouth and murdered the former king. Bolingbroke, in some of the most highly loaded, double-edged, and ambiguous language in the play, says that while he admits he is very glad that Richard is dead, he feels repulsed by the act of murder. Though tacitly admitting his own complicity, Bolingbroke repudiates Exton and exiles him from the court. Bolingbroke then vows to take a pilgrimage to the Holy Land—Jerusalem—to wash the guilt of this murder from his soul. He orders a sad funeral for Richard, and he and his retinue depart the stage in mourning.
Read a translation of Act 5. Scene 6.
Analysis
Richard’s final speeches, which he makes in act 5, scene 5, are among his most interesting. As we have seen throughout the play, the more Richard’s ability to manifest his will is compromised, the more extraordinary his poetry becomes. Now, at last, Richard is literally imprisoned—he cannot go anywhere or do anything, and he can only wait for his fate to come to him. Not surprisingly, then, his poetry soars.
In his opening speech, we find Richard playing psychological games to try to convince himself that he is not alone. (He appears to be courting insanity when he does this, but that is apparently not of great concern to him.) Richard considers his isolation and tries to find ways to rethink its emptiness: “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” (5.5.1–5). The imprisoned Richard tries several ideas out on himself. Most importantly, he pretends that his own conflicting thoughts, in all their various qualities, are like different kinds of people populating his cell. In this way, he contains a maddening number of people within himself: “Thus play I in one person many people, / And none contented. Sometimes am I king, / Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar . . . Then am I kinged again, and by and by / Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke, / And straight am nothing” (5.5.31–38).
This series of identity shifts ends with Richard imagining himself as “nothing”: “Nor I, not any man that but man is, / With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased / With being nothing” (5.5.39–41). Richard’s syntax is obscure, but his general idea is clear: imprisoned in this cell, he tends strongly toward nihilism, which is the idea that there is no purpose or value to existence. In some ways, this attitude has been visible in Richard from the beginning and has manifested itself in his perpetual passivity and willingness to give in to despair. Nihilism is very modern concept, and its appearance in some of Shakespeare’s dark-tempered protagonists is part of what makes critics see him as being such a prophetic writer: he is “modern” before his time.
(This speech, along with much else Richard says in this scene, can been read as a kind of preparation for the monologues Shakespeare will later write for Hamlet, another imprisoned intellect wandering in a gloomy castle and speculating on the nature of life, death, and identity. Hamlet, to whom Denmark seems as much a prison as Richard’s literal jail cell, laments to his friends: “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space—were it not that I have bad dreams” [Hamlet, 2.2.273–75)].)
A more literal “nothing”-ness arrives at Richard’s cell soon after his metaphysical musings, in the form of Exton and his accomplices. The death scene is surprisingly short; murdered kings in Shakespeare’s plays often get long and poignant speeches between their stabbing and their death. But Richard barely has time to curse Exton grimly for his deed and to bid farewell to the living world: “Mount, mount, my soul. Thy seat is up on high, / Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die” (5.5.115–16).
King Henry’s ambiguous reaction to Exton’s news in act 5, scene 6, suggests that he realizes his own hypocrisy and harbors feelings of guilt for Richard’s death. His words to Exton demonstrate this extraordinary ambivalence: “They love not poison that do poison need, / Nor do I thee. Though I did wish him dead, / I hate the murderer, love him murderèd” (5.6.38–40). Henry tries to lay the burden of guilt upon Exton, condemning him to wander the world like that famous murderer of the Old Testament, “Cain” (5.6.43). However, he is well aware of his own complicity in Richard’s death, as is clear when he says to his court, “Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe / That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow” (5.6.45–46). Yet the deed has been done, and thus the guilt of Richard’s murder weighs heavily on Henry from the very onset of his reign. This guilt, and the pledge Henry makes to take a pilgrimage to “the Holy Land” (5.6.49), hang in the air as the play concludes. Thus, Shakespeare sets the stage for the events that will unfold in the next three Henry plays.
