RICHARD Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune’s slaves,
Nor shall not be the last—like silly beggars
Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame
That many have and others must sit there,
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortunes on the back
Of such as have before endured the like. (5.5.23-30)
After the thoughts of things divine and the thoughts tending to ambition, the spiritual consolation (and doubts) and the hubristic fantasies of escape (from prison, from inside his own mind and body), come a third category of thoughts, yet more voices crowding into Richard’s head. These are the thoughts tending to content, a kind of comfort or consolation: these thoughts flatter themselves by suggesting that it’s not so bad really, perhaps, like people who tell themselves that they are not the first of fortune’s slaves to suffer such a reversal of fortune, such a fall—and they won’t be the last either. There’s a comfort in the fact that their situation isn’t unique, that they haven’t been specially singled out for such suffering; it’s just a fact of life, of being human. And these thoughts, therefore, are like simple, silly beggars who console themselves, even as they sit in the stocks, being punished, mocked, and abused, that they’re by no means the first to suffer in that way, and that they will certainly not be the last. Many have and others must sit there: to suffer is to be human, to be alive. To be reminded of the suffering of others might at least remove some of the stigma, and some of the terrible loneliness of Richard’s pain and grief: in this thought, as for the foolish, philosophical beggars, there might be a kind of ease from shame, if not from pain (but not much; they are still in the stocks). There is a community in suffering: Richard is trying to persuade himself, a solidarity and therefore even a sharing of the load, as fortune’s slaves, the silly beggars bear their own misfortunes on the back of such as have before endured the like. The deposed king imagines a lineage, a dynasty of suffering and misfortune, of which he is but the latest inheritor; the lonely man who has surrounded himself with flatterers and favourites, and even some loyal friends, imagines that he is not quite alone. (Shakespeare had suggested this, even more bitterly, in The Rape of Lucrece, as Lucrece looks for consolation at the picture of Troy: ‘It easeth some, though none it ever cured, | To think their dolour others have endured’. Art ultimately fails Lucrece, though, and Richard doesn’t even have a picture to look at. But he has his own thoughts, and he’s still trying to hammer it out, to understand where and who and what he is.)
