NORTHUMBERLAND Well have you argued, sir, and for your pains
Of capital treason we arrest you here.
My lord of Westminster, be it your charge
To keep him safely till his day of trial.
May it please you, lords, to grant the commons’ suit.
BOLINGBROKE Fetch hither Richard, that in common view
He may surrender—so we shall proceed
Without suspicion.
YORK I will be his conduct. Exit
BOLINGBROKE Lords, you that are here are under our arrest,
Procure your sureties for your days of answer.
Little are we beholding to your love
And little looked for at your helping hands. (4.1.151-162)
Ah, Northumberland. Is he intervening confidently, of his own accord? Secure in the knowledge that he’s doing what Bolingbroke wants? Or does he look to Bolingbroke for approval before he acts (is there even a whisper in the ear, a meaningful look), a course of action agreed while Carlisle is still speaking? Whatever, for the space of a line he can sound polite and respectful, and of capital treason we arrest you here might well get a nervous laugh, or a sharp intake of breath, onstage and off. (Does anyone on stage look uneasy at the dreadful scenario Carlisle has just described? A bit of foot-shuffling and lack of eye contact, perhaps? Or are the young men still glaring and squaring up to each other? Lots of choices for a production to make.) Carlisle’s taken into custody, or rather handed over to the Abbot of Westminster, but he remains on stage throughout the rest of the scene, perhaps a visual reminder of the bleak and powerful words he’s just spoken, the spiritual and moral authority he represents.
And now a pivot, from Northumberland: may it please you, lords, to grant the commons’ suit, that is, the request by the house of commons (this is the lords) to have a formal judgement made against Richard, to allow his deposition, or abdication, to be properly declared, and its causes made known. Bolingbroke knows that this is entirely pragmatic, that this part of the process, at least, must take place in common view—so we shall proceed without suspicion. Richard may, he must surrender openly. And York goes off to fetch the sometime King.
Bolingbroke again reiterates that the dispute between the various lords is not resolved: those that are under his arrest, bound to trial at a later date, must provide sureties, guarantors, that they will turn up on the appointed day. But there’s also a sting: little are we beholding to your love and little looked for at your helping hands. I’m not much indebted to your love, and I didn’t look for much at your hands. No love lost between us, is there, and the helping hands could well be a sarcastic allusion to all those gloves, so petulantly flung around in the earlier part of the scene. Bolingbroke is pragmatic; he knows how self-interested the lords mostly are in allying themselves with him, and this political astuteness and a pragmatism that can border on cynicism, but is mostly blunt realism, is what will characterise his speeches in the remainder of the scene. And these lines are also here to allow the suspense to build a little more for Richard’s entrance; if York were to return immediately, suggesting that Richard had been waiting just outside, it would be somewhat odd…
In the early quartos of the play, the part of the scene beginning after Northumberland’s speech, that is Richard’s entire appearance, is notoriously cut (around 160 lines); a version appears for the first time in Q4 (1608) and then another version (on which subsequent texts have been based) in the 1623 Folio.
