RICHARD        That jade hath ate bread from my royal hand;

This hand hath made him proud with clapping him.

Would he not stumble, would he not fall down,

Since pride must have a fall, and break the neck

Of that proud man that did usurp his back?

Forgiveness, horse! Why do I rail on thee

Since thou, created to be awed by man,

Wast born to bear? I was not made a horse

And yet I bear a burden like an ass,

Spur-galled and tired by jauncing Bolingbroke.     (5.5.85-94)

Jadeis a contemptuous term for a horse, an old nag, not a proud Arabian steed—but it’s also an insulting word for a woman, and hence for Fortune. It’s mostly the horse, here, but Richard has been betrayed by more than his beloved roan Barbary, who becomes perhaps the only bearable way of thinking about the way in which his friends, his peers, his people have apparently switched their allegiance to Bolingbroke, forgetting him and carrying on with their lives. (Roan Barbary isn’t quite Auden’s ‘torturer’s horse | scratch[ing] its innocent behind on a tree’, but the horse’s apparent indifference, as much as his fickleness, causes Richard pain too.) Richard has fed the horse (bread, not sugar lumps, as unknown in the 1590s as in the 1390s) from his own hand; he’s clapped him, patting his neck, his flanks, that rough roan coat. He’s loved the horse; he thought (as he thought of his people) that the horse loved him back. Would he not stumble, would he not fall down, toss Bolingbroke the proud man from his back, take Richard’s part and act on his behalf, breaking the neck of the usurper? Roan Barbary’s back has become the throne, and it’s Richard who has fallen.

But Richard pivots, as he always does, retreating from his outburst to beg forgiveness in a moment of wry self-mockery.Why do I rail on thee, horse? You only did what horses do; you were created to be awed, to do what you’re told by man. You were born to bear. And I was not, Richard continues; I was not made a horse. And yet I bear a burden like an ass, spur-galled and tired by jauncing Bolingbroke. Brought low by fortune’s wheel—the fickle jade—Richard is no longer the one borne, carried loftily through the streets, but the one who bears, not even a horse but a mere ass, a beast of burden indeed. And Bolingbroke’s on his back, with the whip hand and the wounding spurs which prick his sides, gall and tire him, wounding and shredding skin and flesh. Jauncing means prancing, but it’s not clear whether it’s Bolingbroke making Richard prance, unwillingly dance to his tune, pick up his feet and obey out of fear and pain, or whether Bolingbroke himself prances, in lofty, careless glee, on the back of roan Barbary.