Enter the Queen and two Ladies
QUEEN What sport shall we devise here in the garden
To drive away the heavy thought of care?
LADY Madam, we’ll play at bowls.
QUEEN ’Twill make me think the world is full of rubs
And that my fortune rubs against the bias.
LADY Madam, we’ll dance.
QUEEN My legs can keep no measure in delight
When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief.
Therefore no dancing, girl—some other sport. (3.4.1-9)
This scene in the garden is, partly at least, deftly functional. Richard has been onstage for most of the previous two scenes and, even more, he’s spoken 249 of their combined 425 lines (I counted). The scene which follows is massive; Richard needs a break (so does Bolingbroke, and, even more, Aumerle), and he also, probably, needs a costume change, especially if he’s been wearing armour for the previous scenes. But the garden scene is also a neatly, almost ostentatiously allegorical episode; it would work pretty much anywhere in the play’s middle movement, and it’s an utterly remarkable interlude in the play.
No indication as to where the garden is, but it seems that the Queen is shut up for her own safety, out of the way, cut off, perhaps at one of York’s houses (as he hastily devised in 2.2). The Queen and her ladies are bored, in need of distraction; there is a sense that this has been going on for some time. So her opening question is a weary, going-through-the-motions one: what sport shall we devise here in the garden to drive away the heavy thought of care? What are we going to do to pass the time today? How are we going to take our minds off our anxieties, drive away the heavy thought of care? Bowls? A popular pastime for both men and women at this time, although probably tilted towards the well to do, who had the gardens in which to make bowling greens and the money and staff to maintain them. The vocabulary of bowls makes it almost too easy to allegorise, because there are rubs, obstacles, rough patches in the green that prevent the smooth running of the bowl; the bowl’s bias is its internal lead weight which makes it run in a curve, rather than straight, by unbalancing it. Bowls will make the Queen think of all the obstacles in her way, and that her (good) fortune is being frustrated. Dancing will be no better: the Queen will not be able to take pleasure in it or even to keep time for a measure, dance a sequence of steps or a bar of music (both of which could be described as measures, although the first is probably more likely here) because her poor heart no measure keeps in grief. Her grief is without measure, unlimited, overflowing. Therefore no dancing, girl—some other sport.
