Enter Aumerle amazed
AUMERLE Where is the King?
BOLINGBROKE What means our cousin that he stares and looks so wildly?
AUMERLE God save your grace, I do beseech your majesty
To have some conference with your grace alone.
BOLINGBROKE Withdraw yourselves and leave us here alone.
[Exeunt Percy and the other lords]
What is the matter with our cousin now? (5.3.23-28)
Amazed is one of those excellent adjectives that has shifted just enough in meaning since the late sixteenth century (this stage direction is in the first quarto) to be cheerfully misleading. Aumerle does not enter going, wow, this is aMAZing, far out, but rather distracted, confused, troubled, beside himself, bewildered, overcome with fear. Aumerle is in extremis; he’s ridden full tilt, his father (and mother) in pursuit, leapt from his horse and made his way into the king’s presence as fast as he possibly can. Out of breath doesn’t begin to cover it: where is the King is a cry of desperation, not really a request for information, so far gone that he perhaps doesn’t even recognise Bolingbroke. A useful supplementary stage direction in Bolingbroke’s response: what means our cousin that he stares and looks so wildly? Aumerle is indeed distracted, out of control. And as ever in this play, how characters address each other is pointed, finely calibrated. Our cousin—the family relationship, and the royal plural; pulling rank, but with the affirmation of potential intimacy. But Aumerle desperately proper: God save your grace, I do beseech your majesty. No presuming on family ties here, and no chance of being seen to presume, even if he does want to have some conference with your grace alone. This is risky—this is what an assassin might request—but it’s also gambling on that close family relationship, that this might be a way of avoiding shame and indeed danger, of having to confess to treasonous intent before a gathering of lords (including Hotspur the keen) anxious to prove their loyalty and so, perhaps, advance themselves. If he can talk to Bolingbroke alone, there’s a chance this thing could be shut down, hushed up. Bolingbroke agrees, and chucks out the lords, who may be puzzled, intrigued, grumpy, hang back to see what’s going on. Depending on how many the production can supply (Percy plus at least one or two more?) it may take some time for them to go, allowing Aumerle to get even more wound up, waiting for them to be completely gone before he hurls himself to his knees in order to beg for his life. What is the matter with our cousin now? Genuine concern, perhaps, but also deep puzzlement. What on earth can have occasioned such distress?
