SALISBURY    Ah, Richard, with the eyes of heavy mind

I see thy glory like a shooting star

Fall to the base earth from the firmament.

Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west,

Witnessing storms to come, woe and unrest.

Thy friends are fled to wait upon thy foes

And crossly to thy good all fortune goes.    Exit.                 (2.4.18-24)

Salisbury knows that the situation is dire, and here he adopts the Welsh Captain’s language of doom-laden omens and prognostication, establishing and reinforcing terms which will come back again and again in the scenes which follow. The ominous shooting star, the meteor first evoked by the Captain, has now become Richard himself, his glory blazing as it falls to the base earth from the firmament, the heavens. The fall, the blazing: Richard is imagined too as a catastrophic Phaeton, out of control, plunging from the skies. The earth is base because it is physically low, but also morally and psychologically reduced, not divine, not special, not elite; base is a word that Richard will soon pick up on to mock others and himself. (Earth and physical lowering will soon matter too, and earth is the element of dullness, melancholy, depression, not air, not fire; of being merely human, not divine.) And there’s a suggestion of a Fall too, a cataclysmic event, a rupture in the divine order of things. Salisbury sees with the eyes of heavy mind, with a mind full of sorrow and foreboding, heavy like earth. It is Richard’s sun—he is, in effect, the sun—which sets weeping in the lowly west, declining in sorrow, again brought low, and the weeping clouds, the rain, suggest that there are storms to come, woe and unrest. It’s all looking pretty bleak, for Richard and for his kingdom. As we have already seen, without even Salisbury’s final couplet to confirm it, Richard’s friends are fled to wait upon his foes, his friends suggesting even his relations (perhaps here, even, the vacillating York) as well as his one-time supporters and allies. And crossly to thy good all fortune goes: everything’s against you, crossly to your good fortune, going in the opposite direction to what would be advantageous. You’re having bad luck over and over again. Now Salisbury’s off too, and it’s left unclear as to whether he’s still sticking with Richard.