RICHARD He is our cousin, cousin, but ’tis doubt,
When time shall call him home from banishment,
Whether our kinsman come to see his friends.
Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here and Green,
Observed his courtship to the common people,
How he did seem to dive into their hearts
With humble and familiar courtesy,
What reverence he did throw away on slaves,
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles
And patient underbearing of his fortune,
As ’twere to banish their affects with him. (1.4.20-30)
A handy reminder of those close family relationships here, and a bit more background about Bolingbroke’s character, as well as putting names to faces—Bagot and Green, presumably indicated with a gesture—along the way. Richard is suggesting that when the time comes for Bolingbroke to return from banishment, it won’t be his friends, that is, his peers and especially his relations whom he most wants to see; he won’t be interested in seeing the likes of you and me, Richard says to Aumerle. No, we’ve seen the way in which he’s ingratiated himself with the common people, diving into their hearts with humble and familiar courtesy, how he’s respected them, even treated them as equals and friends. He’s been polite and courteous, thrown away reverence (which might have the particular sense of bowing or nodding, here), wasted politeness and attentiveness even on slaves (not actual enslaved people, but here used to mean the lowest of the low, the powerless). He’s wooed poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles: Richard thinks that Bolingbroke is plotting something, and also, perhaps, that he’s a dissembling hypocrite, being nice to the common people only in show, out of craft, rather than out of deeply held principle or fellow feeling. And it’s not just the niceness, the friendliness that makes Richard suspicious, it’s Bolingbroke’s patient underbearing of his fortune, his endurance, his stoicism, lack of grumbling at what’s happened to him. The result is that he’s taken the affection and good will of the common people into exile with him.
