BOLINGBROKE          Are you contented to resign the crown?

RICHARD                    Ay, no; no, ay, for I must nothing be:

Therefore no no, for I resign to thee.

Now mark me how I will undo myself:

I give this heavy weight from off my head

And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,

The pride of kingly sway from out my heart,

With mine own tears I wash away my balm,

With mine own hands I give away my crown,

With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,

With mine own breath release all duteous oaths,

All pomp and majesty I do forswear,

My manors, rents, revenues I forgo,

My acts, decrees and statutes I deny.

God pardon all oaths that are broke to me,

God keep all vows unbroke are made to thee.       (4.1.200-215)

 

Bolingbroke restates his question: are you contented to resign the crown? And that word contented seems to release something in Richard, another complex, extraordinary speech, playing with words and things and identities. Ay, no; no, ay can of course be heard as—perhaps must be heard as—I, no; no, I (and indeed other permutations are possible), but ‘no I’ is central here. I must nothing be, no I. Therefore no no (is the repetition emphatic, or ‘no “no”’? either and both) for I resign to thee. I can’t be nothing if I’m resigning, can I? Wherever Richard ends up after this baroque expression of self-negation (not the first, not the last) he proceeds to stage his resignation, that self-negation, piece by piece. Now mark me how I will undo myself. Take note, watch this. Undo as if it’s a button, but also employing an idiom usually only seen in the formula ‘I am undone’, meaning ruined, destroyed. This is not simply the resignation of an office, but the ritual disintegration of a self.

I give this heavy weight from off my head and this unwieldy sceptre from my hand. The literal paraphernalia of kingship, its physical burdens, its cares. And to go with those things, symbols though they be, I give the pride of kingly sway from out my heart, my power, the fact of my monarchy. Then an amazing, incantatory sequence: with mine own tears, with mine own hands, with mine own tongue, with mine own breath. There may be gestures; it’s as if he is in addition giving away his tears, his hands, his tongue, his breath, even as he names balm (my balm, the sacred oil with which he was anointed at coronation, which he has previously asserted can never be washed away), and my crown. I deny my sacred state with mine own tongue, so perhaps perjuring myself; I release everyone who’s ever sworn an oath to me, or in my name, from the obligations of such vows, such duteous oaths. (A pointed reminder to the assembled company that they have all sworn oaths to him in the past, including Bolingbroke. They have all broken those oaths.)

And as well as pomp and majesty, the ceremony of kingship, I give up my lands, my income; all the laws made in my name, they no longer exist either. May God pardon all oaths that are broke to me (such as all the oaths being broken this very minute by the lords) and, perhaps sarcastically, God keep all vows unbroke are made to thee. You should be so lucky, Bolingbroke.

It’s not simply the casting off of a costume and props, a character, a theatrical gesture, this self-undoing: it might be intelligible to an audience in the 1590s as something akin to the rituals of the degradation of a knight, and, even more, the defrocking of a cleric; narratives and even images of the latter could be found in the Acts and Monuments, Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’: Thomas Cranmer was re-vested as a priest in order that he could be degraded from the sacred ministry before he was burned at the stake in 1556. This is an existential undoing, the destruction of an identity, a self: what will be left of Richard?