SCROOP          Men judge by the complexion of the sky

The state and inclination of the day—

So may you by my dull and heavy eye

My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say.

I play the torturer by small and small

To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken:

Your uncle York is joined with Bolingbroke

And all your northern castles yielded up

And all your southern gentlemen in arms

Upon his party.

RICHARD                                Thou hast said enough.        (3.2.196-203)

Scroop acknowledges that his looks are sour, that he’s not looking happy, as Richard has just observed. And there’s a reason for that: more bad news. Just as it’s possible to predict what kind of day it’ll be by looking at the sky, how the weather’s going to shape up, so you can infer from my solemn expression, my dull and heavy eye, downcast and serious, even laden with tears, that I bring not good news, but more bad, that I have only a heavier tale to tell, rather than glad tidings. Complexion isn’t just confined to faces, it means condition, physical appearance more generally, but here Scroop does extend the cluster of ideas which has run through the scene to do with bodies, land, sky, and sun. (If the sun is like an eye, the day’s eye, then here implicitly the sun, so strongly associated with Richard, is like Scroop’s eye, clouded and overcast.) I’m only prolonging the agony—playing the torturer by small and small, little by little lengthening, delaying, the worst news of all. (The torture here is surely the rack, the prisoner’s body grimly lengthened by each motion of its wheels; it also suggests the cumulative effect of smaller acts of torture—to say ‘death by 1000 cuts’ is anachronistic in this context, but that’s also what it might suggest to a modern ear.) So here’s the last bit of bad news, finally, bluntly: Your uncle York is joined with Bolingbroke and all your northern castles yielded up and all your southern gentlemen in arms upon his party. Some editors add commas at the end of lines, but the sense here that it all just tumbles out is effective. So York, Richard’s uncle (and Bolingbroke’s), the man to who he’s entrusted the kingdom in his absence, one of his few surviving kinsmen, a potential father figure: he’s betrayed the king, gone over to Bolingbroke. (And of course that means that York’s taken his own supporters and troops with him.) But not just that. All your northern castles yielded up (which might have been a refuge, a place to regroup; holding the north, commanding the loyalty of the northern earls—like Northumberland—that’s crucial) and all your southern gentlemen in arms, taking Bolingbroke’s part. The north, the south, the whole land, is now Bolingbroke’s.Thou hast said enough indeed.