The murderers, Exton and servants, rush in
RICHARD How now, what means death in this rude assault?
Villain, thy own hand yields thy death’s instrument.
[He seizes a servant’s weapon and kills him with it]
Go thou and fill another room in hell!
[He kills another.] Here Exton strikes him down
That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire
That staggers thus my person. Exton, thy fierce hand
Hath with the King’s blood stained the King’s own land.
Mount, mount, my soul, thy seat is up on high
Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward here to die.
[He dies] (5.5.105-112)
It all happens very fast, although the number of editorial stage directions indicates how much action there can be here. This place, this prison which has been at once so empty and so full, where only a few moments before Richard has been having that moving exchange with the Groom (is the Groom wholly innocent in this? productions make different choices; Aumerle sometimes appears, even as Exton…) is now full of people, not just Exton but his servants as well, the murderers (named as such in the first quarto, introduced more sedately in the folio as Enter Exton and servants). Rushed in is likely to be one of those helpful stage directions that records practice in performance; this isn’t a menacing, measured entry, but an invasion. What means death in this rude assault? A tricky line, but one possibility is, so sudden? Richard’s just been worrying about poison, something impersonal, potentially slow, and now this is clearly it, a rude assault, not least because it’s an invasion of the only space Richard’s come to call his own. It’s an insult, and he treats it as such even as he—perhaps unexpectedly—fights back: villain, thy own hand yields thy death’s instrument. (Villain has always been the insult of choice in this play, meaning common, low-born as well as morally bad.) This is perhaps a servant unused to fighting, or even awed at being in the presence of a king in such appalling circumstances—and so Richard can seize his weapon (a dagger? more likely than a sword, probably) and kill him. (One way of thinking about this is that actually Richard wants to provoke Exton and the others; he wants to die, and quickly, now he sees it’s wholly inevitable.) Go thou and fill another room in hell; damn you (as he, perhaps, kills another; I’m less persuaded by that SD, and I reckon that there’s perhaps just one servant killed, with a line from Richard before and after).
But here Exton strikes him down. This could suggest a number of possibilities for the action: a blow to the head or back with poleaxe or the hilt of a dagger, or simply a stabbing, with sword or dagger; there’s the possibility of blood but not the inevitability (it can be metaphorical in the next line). That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire that staggers thus my person, staggers suggesting the force of the blow: Richard reels and falls back, or down (down is the important bit), at both the violence and the insult to his person, his royal person, his body and the kingly status which he has never fully relinquished. Thy fierce hand hath with the King’s blood stained the King’s own land. It’s a terrible thing, a primal pollution, a curse on England, such as Carlisle imagined and prophesied.
In a brief volley of couplets, it’s all over. Mount, mount, my soul, thy seat is up on high whilst my gross flesh sinks downward here to die. A final aspiration, one last stretching out, and up, of the play’s central, defining vertical axis: Richard’s soul flies free, to the heavenly throne above; his body remains upon the ground, earth to earth, brought low. The death of kings. A last brief blaze of resistance at the end, a sunset flash of royal mettle. He dies. Richard’s dead.
