BOLINGBROKE          Go signify as much while here we march

Upon the grassy carpet of this plain.

Let’s march without the noise of threatening drum,

That from this castle’s tottered battlements

Our fair appointments may be well perused.

Methinks King Richard and myself should meet

With no less terror than the elements

Of fire and water when their thundering shock

At meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven.

Be he the fire, I’ll be the yielding water,

The rage be his whilst on the earth I rain

My waters—on the earth and not on him.

March on, and mark King Richard how he looks.   (3.3.48-60)

This is a transitional moment in the scene, because Bolingbroke has to get his army (which, however lavish the production, isn’t going to be enormous) from—somewhere near Flint Castle?—to the castle itself. All without going offstage, and having sent Northumberland as a herald or messenger. So Bolingbroke’s speech is both taking up time and describing or allowing the passage of time, as well as the traversing of distance; it might also be allowing just a little more time for a costume change for Richard from the previous scene, especially if he’s going to appear, as is sometimes the case, in armour. There’s perhaps an analogy in Romeo and Juliet where the action is more or less continuous from the end of the Queen Mab scene with Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio before the Capulet party, and the beginning of the party itself, with the transition marked by the stage direction ‘They march about the stage, and Servingmen come forth with napkins’ (in Q2 and F, at least).

The grass which Bolingbroke has just imagined as a bloodsoaked lap is now less violently a grassy carpet, and they’re going to march without the noise of threatening drum: it’s dialling back the aggression on one level, but it’s still allowing our fair appointments to be well perused, that is, ensuring that those inside the castle can see (from their tottered battlements, their dilapidated fortifications) the full extent of the forces arrayed against them, and how disciplined and well-equipped they are. But then the focus shifts to what’s really on Bolingbroke’s mind, the imminent meeting with Richard, his cousin, his king, and now his enemy, whom he hasn’t seen since the moment of his banishment many years before. What’s going to happen? What will it be like? What should it be like? There’s a touch of bathos here, in the cosmic clash that Bolingbroke evokes, and it’s perhaps already ironic, in that he knows that their forces are so unequal, that in most respects the advantage is all his: they should meet with no less terror than the elements of fire and water, lightning and rain, when they produce thunder; the shock of their clash should tear the cloudy cheeks of heaven, streak deafeningly across the sky, rupture the fabric of the universe, or nearly. But it’s not that simple. If that’s the scenario, then Richard can be the fire, the rage, the lightning; Bolingbroke will be the water, the rain, yielding and soft—but rain must also be heard as reign, raining/reigning on the earth (the syntactical placement of my waters neatly delaying the tilting of the homophone towards the meteorological rain rather than the political reign). Yet Bolingbroke will rain his waters on the earth—bringing peace, plenty, fertility, cleansing?—and not on Richard himself. This is a bit obscure: is it a magnificent, magnanimous bypassing of Richard entirely? A recognition that this conceit is a bit presumptuous and insulting? A sly suggestion that, although as water he could always quench fire outright (in a version of scissors-paper-stone) Bolingbroke will rather leave that particular fire, that lightning, to burn itself out?

So let’s get to Flint and see how Richard responds, and how he’s coping.