RICHARD Tell Bolingbroke, for yon methinks he stands,
That every stride he makes upon my land
Is dangerous treason. He is come to open
The purple testament of bleeding war,
But ere the crown he looks for live in peace,
Ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers’ sons
Shall ill become the flower of England’s face,
Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace
To scarlet indignation and bedew
Her pastures’ grass with faithful English blood. (3.3.90-99)
No matter how the scene is imagined, on stage Bolingbroke has, of course, heard every word. But, having finished his excoriation of Northumberland, Bolingbroke, and the latter’s supporters in general, Richard now acknowledges (having more or less shot him) that Northumberland is but the messenger. And he’s got a message for him to take back to Bolingbroke; it’s also a finely calibrated insult, perhaps, to both Northumberland (you’re not in charge here, you’re just the messenger) and to Bolingbroke himself, for yon methinks he stands, but I can’t be certain, he doesn’t stick out at all or appear to be in charge. (Worth emphasising that Richard is aloft, above the stage: he has the omniscient view that he has just ascribed to God. He can see further than Northumberland or Bolingbroke; he can be seen by everyone too.) And there is no ambiguity to the message which Richard has for Bolingbroke. Every stride he makes upon my land is dangerous treason. He wounds the land, opens the purple testament of bleeding war, leaves a bloody legacy, as if every step he takes is a violent violation. (Purple is uncompromising in its bloodiness, the most extreme on a scale from crimson via scarlet.) Richard reverts to his customary elision of England as nation and as land, its people and its physical landscape, in a complicated, sinister conceit. Bolingbroke’s attempt to gain the crown (and in fact he has so far made no such claim) will be achieved only through ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers’ sons, the death and destruction of the youth of England, the flower of England. That flower will be defaced, streaked and smeared with blood; that such a conflict will change the complexion of her maid-pale peace to scarlet indignation gives this violence a sexual slant, as if virginal, maid-pale, peaceful England is being sexually assaulted, blushing scarlet with indignation, indignity, anger, and shame. A fall, a loss of innocence, never to be regained. And the pastures of England will be bedewed with faithful English blood, just as Bolingbroke imagined a few moments earlier, when he threatened to bring a crimson tempest to bedrench the fresh green lap of fair King Richard’s land. Bolingbroke himself has made this threat; Richard reiterates and reinvents it, to emphasise just what a terrible threat it is, and how far Bolingbroke has already overstepped the mark.
A 1590s audience would perhaps remember the bloody and protracted conflicts of what are now known, but weren’t then, yet, as the Wars of the Roses, dramatized in Shakespeare’s first tetralogy, in which such bloody imagery, the contrast of red and white, and not least the white rose and the red, is prominent. Richard prophesies not only their action, but the terms of their dramatic reinvention and afterlife.
