BOLINGBROKE          If not, I’ll use the advantage of my power

And lay the summer’s dust with showers of blood

Rained from the wounds of slaughtered Englishmen;

The which, how far off from the mind of Bolingbroke

It is such crimson tempest should bedrench

The fresh green lap of fair King Richard’s land,

My stooping duty tenderly shall show.       (3.3.41-47)

Bolingbroke’s sudden gear-shift into threat is at once terrifying and disturbingly delicate in the violence it imagines. The advantage of my power, the fact that his forces outnumber Richard’s strength so absolutely, is taken as a given. And he will unleash that power, so that blood rains on the earth from the wounds of slaughtered Englishmen (your countrymen, your subjects, he reminds Richard, whom you should be protecting, not sacrificing); blood will be like the showers which lay the summer’s dust, a powerfully evocative image at a time when roads and paths, especially outside cities, would be largely unpaved, and so incredibly dusty: water would be sprinkled, not only on outdoor paths but also on earthen floors and also floors strewn with rushes to fix or lay the dust, prevent it from rising up and blinding and dirtying those who travelled or trod on those surfaces. It’s a homely, commonplace image, here rendered horrific. That much blood.

But the blood increases in volume, from showers to rain to a drenching tempest, a torrential downpour, bright crimson (perhaps a prettier word than royal purple, often used for blood). What it will soak will be the fresh green lap of fair King Richard’s land: so there’s a strong visual contrast between crimson and bright, fresh green. The lap is sexualised, and implicitly feminised (as is King Richard, perhaps, by that floating adjective fair: is it the land or the king being so described?) This is a bloody parody of Danae, ‘visited’ by Jupiter in a shower of gold. This is, perhaps, a bloody rape.

But that’s what I don’t want to do—unless you make me do it, in which case, believe me, I can, and I will, says Bolingbroke (or rather, he instructs his intermediary Northumberland to say on his behalf). Therefore, for the moment, I’m going to be nice, show my stooping duty tenderly, kneel down, woo you a bit. (I generally think that Bolingbroke is OK, but this has a nasty abusive edge to it, at least to modern sensibilities.)