RICHARD        Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is

Are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart,

Which is the bell. So sighs and tears and groans

Show minutes, hours and times. But my time

Runs posting on in Bolingbroke’s proud joy,

While I stand fooling here, his jack o’ the clock.

This music mads me, let it sound no more,

For though it have holp madmen to their wits,

In me it seems it will make wise men mad.

Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me,

For ’tis a sign of love and love to Richard

Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.           (5.5.55-66)

Now sir: Richard begins the final movement of this extraordinary speech. Is he addressing a member of the audience, or one of the discontented people he has imagined as joining him in the little world of his prison? Or even himself, a slightly admonitory tone as he unwinds the last complicated clauses of this knotty conceit? (Not helped by that grammatical disagreement in the first sentence.) Richard’s the clock, and his heart is the bell; it marks the passage of time, strikes the hours, with groans. There’s a suggestion here, in the heart being struck as a bell, of the gesture accompanying the mea culpa, the confession of sin, the fist beating the chest: this is all, ultimately, my fault, my most grievous fault; sighs might not be enough. Richard’s time is measured out in sighs and tears and groans, his minutes and hours and his times, this age, his era; it’s monotonous, torture, a slow death. (The sense of that time drawing to a close?) Bolingbroke’s the one for whom the passage of time is joyous and lively; it’s as if he’s taken over Richard’s time and, for him, it runs posting on, urgent and swift, in proud joy. All Richard can do and be is act as the jack o’ the clock, the ornamental figure striking the clock’s bell with his little hammer, entirely passive and even a little comic, marking out the hours, the time which is now Bolingbroke’s, with his helpless sighs and groans.

A switch: this music mads me, let it sound no more. (So it’s been continuing, perhaps growing more discordant as Richard becomes more despairing and distressed, or perhaps ever more beautiful, a harmony that, in his pain, he cannot properly hear.) He knows that music has holp madmen to their wits (as in Lear, and Pericles)—but in me it seems it will make wise men mad. And yet—another switch—blessing on his heart that gives it me, for ’tis a sign of love. This is so unexpected, and yet so quintessentially Richard, that longing for friendship and love, for a sign that he is not alone: no matter what the source of the music, even if it’s inside his head (and there’s no way of knowing) he wants to interpret it as a sign of love and love to Richard is a strange brooch in this all-hating world. Brooch here, which does indeed seem strange, suggests a jewel pinned to the torso, perhaps picking up on the heart as bell, and what I’ve imagined as a beating of the chest. Richard has loved shiny things, too much, but here’s a sparkle of beauty, something precious, love in this hard, lonely, frightening and all-hating world. He desperately wants this painful, mysterious music to be a sign of love.