The trumpets sound [a] parley without and answer within. Then a flourish. Enter on the walls Richard, Carlisle, Aumerle, Scroop, Salisbury
BOLINGBROKE See, see King Richard doth himself appear,
As doth the blushing discontented sun
From out the fiery portal of the east
When he perceives the envious clouds are bent
To dim his glory and to stain the track
Of his bright passage to the occident.
YORK Yet looks he like a king: behold, his eye,
As bright as is the eagle’s, lightens forth
Controlling majesty. Alack, alack for woe
That any harm should stain so fair a show! (3.3.61-70)
The soundscape here is carefully controlled: Bolingbroke and his companions have marched without drums, but now the trumpets ring out, first (presumably) from among Bolingbroke’s party on stage, and then from within, inside the castle, and behind the wall of the tiring house. They sound a parley, the trumpet call announcing the cessation of hostilities to allow for negotiation, conversation, and then a flourish, a fanfare. The space must ring with the sound of the trumpets, and the flourish must, surely, come from within, a fanfare to announce the presence of the king. Richard and his companions enter on the walls, in the gallery, above; the whole spatial dynamic of the stage must change as that realm of the theatre—touching the heavens, or nearly—is activated once more, making Bolingbroke and his supporters, and the audience, look up, crane their necks, and dividing the audience’s attention, giving them another focus. It’s a brilliant, potent moment.
Bolingbroke seems genuinely impressed: he’s been speaking of lightning, tempests, showers of rain (and identifying with the latter) but here is the sun, Richard’s self-identification now reflected back at him by his adversary. It is the king himself, glowing and glorious, discontented (flushed with rage?) and emerging from his fiery portal, no longer a fortress slumping into ruin, but the royal palace of the sun. And the sun is not pleased to be met with envious clouds, these forces massed against him, bent to dim his glory and to stain the track of his bright passage. But that bright passage, the glorious transit of the sun through the heavens is still to the occident, the west. Richard may look like the sun, and Bolingbroke may be genuinely impressed, even awed—but the sun must set; even if Richard’s sun is now at its zenith, magnificent and brilliant, it must (and soon?) decline into darkness, his bright day done.
York too is awestruck: Richard looks every inch the king, and his eye as bright as is the eagle’s, the king of birds, able to fly higher than any other (so, York elevates Richard even further). His eye lightens forth controlling majesty, as if he’s radiating sovereign power, like bolts of lightning, from his eyes. It is a shame, a pity, a sorrow, a woe to think of any harm coming to so fair a show, staining such brightness, dimming such radiance. (But it’s still a show. It’s a fabulous spectacle, a bravura performance of majesty—and Richard hasn’t even opened his mouth yet. A performance, though. How much substance will there be? Can this show, this blaze of glory be sustained?)
