RICHARD The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermixed
With scruples and do set the word itself
Against the word, as thus: ‘Come, little ones’,
And then again,
‘It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a needle’s eye’.
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders—how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls,
And for they cannot, die in their own pride. (5.5.11-22)
Although Richard is still, sort of, imagining thoughts as people—the better sort, not the commoners, initially—what’s more striking is the sense of competing voices in his head, a chattering confusion of motivations and interpretations, a series, perhaps, of incompatible coping strategies. The better sort are thoughts of things divine, holy thoughts, but such thoughts are intermixed with scruples, doubts, and anxieties, here expressed in terms of worrying about the way in which various parts of the Bible seem to cancel each other out, setting the word itself against the word, and specifically worrying about his own salvation, the state of his soul. Here Christ’s injunction to suffer the little children, a statement of inclusion and welcome (and it’s telling, perhaps, that Richard wants to think of himself as a child, one of the little ones being invited to draw near to God) is set against a sterner sentiment, the notorious description of how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. (Much debate over many centuries as to what constitutes the camel and the needle’s eye, the latter probably a gate, hence postern. I shall not rehearse it here! The bible texts in question are Matthew 19.14, 24, with close parallels in Mark and Luke.) Richard worries about his status in the eyes of God: will he be judged and forgiven as a little child, an innocent, or as a king, condemned as a man of wealth and power, both of which he has surely abused?
As well as fretting about the state of his soul, Richard has other thoughts, tending to ambition, less pure and admirable, hubristic, unrealistic. Such thoughts involve the plotting of unlikely wonders, imagining (for instance) how he might escape this prison with his bare hands, how these vain, weak nails might tear a passage through the flinty ribs of this hard world, my ragged prison walls. There’s a recollection of Flint Castle here, whose walls were also described as ragged, rough, and perhaps decaying, but here the prison and the castle are elided with Richard’s own body in his ragged prison garments, his own ribs (his emaciation, deprivation, suffering)—but he can no more get out of his body, or out of his head, than he can break out of this cell. This cell, which is this hard world, and this hard world, which has shrunk to his cell. So those ambitious thoughts—of escape, ambitious only for freedom—they go nowhere. They die in their own pride, their hubris duly punished.
