RICHARD Yet I well remember
The favours of these men—were they not mine,
Did they not sometime cry ‘all hail’ to me?
So Judas did to Christ, but he in twelve
Found truth in all but one, I in twelve thousand none.
God save the King! Will no man say ‘amen’?
Am I both priest and clerk? Well then, amen.
God save the King although I be not he,
And yet amen, if heaven do think him me.
To do what service am I sent for hither?
YORK To do that office of thine own good will
Which tired majesty did make thee offer—
The resignation of thy state and crown
To Henry Bolingbroke. (4.1.168-181)
Richard is getting into his stride a bit more: I well remember the favours of these men, both their flattery and their appearances. I know you all, he says, in effect, words that will eventually be spoken by Hal in 1 Henry IV, in a less bitterly pained and more self-aware speech about his friends: ‘I know you all, and will awhile uphold the unyoked humour of your idleness’. I know you all, says Richard, and you have betrayed me. Were they not mine, did they not sometime cry ‘all hail’ to me? Sycophants, fair-weather friends, and traitors, enabling me and cheering me on, and then abandoning me. And then one of Richard’s characteristic, over-the-top identifications with Christ: so Judas did to Christ, before he betrayed Him. You’re all Judases—and I’m therefore betrayed even more egregiously than Christ, because he in twelve found truth in all but one, whereas I in twelve thousand none. Twelve thousand is obviously plucked out of the air to inflate the twelve. Yet there will still be a sense, on stage, of Richard alone against a group of men who used to be on his side, who swore loyalty and did obeisance. There may well be a general air of shiftiness, a lack of eye-contact.
God save the King! Is Richard addressing himself, or Bolingbroke, or both? And this may be a moment, a brief, stunned silence, where the weird reality of what’s happening here hits home: who is the King? Who is Richard, now? Will no man say ‘amen’? Am I both priest and clerk, that is, do I have to make the responses too, speak both parts, as in a church service? Self-mockery, archness: well then, amen. Perhaps implicit: is no one else going to speak? What have you got to say for yourselves? A characteristic barbed twist, pointedly conditional and emphasising the strangeness, and the precariousness, of this situation: God save the King although I be not he, and yet amen, if heaven do think him me.Let’s leave it to heaven to judge who’s the King here, shall we? Because it may well yet be me—and the repetition of ‘amen’ and the rhyming of he/me makes the interdependent knottiness of that central question even more apparent.
But then another shift: to do what service am I sent for hither? (Weary, bored, apprehensive?) York, persisting with both formality and perhaps, kindness: to do that office of thine own good will which tired majesty did make thee offer. There’s a suggestion that this conversation has already happened; you said you’d do this, you said you’d resign of your own good will. Tired majesty hits home: Richard must be exhausted; the strains and stresses of kingship, as he has been the first to point out, are onerous, painful, extreme, let alone what’s been happening more recently. All you have to do is resign your state and crown to Henry Bolingbroke. It’s simple, a little thing, and then it’ll be over, and then you can rest.
