Enter a Gardener and two Servants

QUEEN           But stay, here come the gardeners.

Let’s step into the shadow of these trees;

My wretchedness unto a row of pins

They’ll talk of state, for every one doth so

Against a change. Woe is forerun with woe.           (3.4.24-28)

A functional setting-up of the scene’s next movement—the Queen and her lady (or ladies) need to be able to overhear the gardener and his co-worker (or workers; it could be played with just one and sometimes is, although he might appear rather overworked) without being seen, as of course they won’t speak freely if they think they’re being observed. Shadow is simply a trochaic shade, but here given a slightly more ominous cast, befitting the Queen’s low mood. (And perhaps reminding the audience, at some level, that Richard is the sun, now in decline…) The establishment of her character, situation, and state of mind continues to be effected with a tremendous combination of brevity and sharpness: the sense, for instance, that no one really tells her what’s going on, that she’s cut off from proper news, while at the same time being aware that some kind of political crisis is imminent (or ongoing); whispering in corners, people stopping talking when she enters a room, people staring. I know that’s what they’re going to do, talk of state, for every one doth so against a change, when they know that change is in the air. I’d bet on it, she says, wagering my wretchedness (not her life; what kind of life is this? her wretchedness is all she has) against a row of pins, the archetypal trivial thing. Hamlet does not ‘set his life at a pin’s fee’ when he first follows the Ghost; my textile obsession wonders if there is an additional bitterness and helplessness here, in an invocation of ‘pin money’, the money a woman would be given as an allowance (by her husband, for instance, and usually annually) to pay for day-to-day personal expenses—such as pins, essential for dressing, semi-disposable (although they could be refurbished by straightening and sharpening; those were cheaper.) (That’s enough about pins.) The Queen has been utterly dependent on her husband: now she has to rely on overhearing servants’ gossip, in effect a prisoner, bored, depressed, and afraid. Woe is forerun with woe; she is already full of foreboding and sorrow, and she does not, therefore, expect to hear good news.