BOLINGBROKE Good aunt, stand up.
DUCHESS I do not sue to stand.
Pardon is all the suit I have in hand.
BOLINGBROKE I pardon him as God shall pardon me.
DUCHESS O happy vantage of a kneeling knee!
Yet am I sick for fear. Speak it again—
Twice saying ‘pardon’ doth not pardon twain,
But makes one pardon strong.
BOLINGBROKE I pardon him
With all my heart.
DUCHESS A god on earth thou art. (5.3.128-135)
Bolingbroke tries again, perhaps exasperated, perhaps reassuring, laughing even: good aunt, stand up. (He’s got to get her out of there somehow, after all, because he’s just heard about a serious and imminent plot against his life and he has rather a lot to do.) But the Duchess is still not moving until she hears the magic word: I do not sue to stand, I’m not asking you to give me permission to get off my knees, because pardon is all the suit I have in hand, it’s the only thing I want, all that I’m begging you for. So Bolingbroke tries to be explicit—I pardon him as God shall pardon me—his choice of words also, I think, acknowledging the gravity of Aumerle’s fault, that he is a perjurer as well as a traitor, who will be judged, ultimately, by God, even if he is shown earthly mercy by his King. And also, perhaps, anticipating Bolingbroke’s own guilt about his action in deposing Richard (which will come to dominate his character and his reign) and even about the savagery with which he is about to put down the conspiracy against him. Just a glimpse, though, because it’s back to the Duchess: not convinced, speak it again, even though it seems that my kneeling knee has done the trick. It won’t dilute or divide the pardon, speaking it twice, it won’t pardon more than just Aumerle; it’ll strengthen your pardon! Bolingbroke is, in this at least, defeated, and says, again, explicitly, I pardon him with all my heart. The relentless couplets which have marked this exchange, considerably adding to both its comedy and its artificiality, come to an end with the Duchess’s internally-rhyming reply, a god on earth thou art, a moment of unity and resolution, finally. (But being a god on earth didn’t end so well for Richard.) Aumerle breathes again; does he help his mother to her feet, or does Bolingbroke, even? But York is silent and will remain so. For all his rigid and ultimately absurd moralising, he’s probably the one in the scene with the best grasp of the competing political impulses at stake here.
