Enter Exton [and others] with a coffin
EXTON Great King, within this coffin I present
Thy buried fear. Herein all breathless lies
The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,
Richard of Bordeaux, by me hither brought.
BOLINGBROKE Exton, I thank thee not, for thou hast wrought
A deed of slander with thy fatal hand
Upon my head and all this famous land. (5.6.30-36)
Exton is going to make quite an entrance, especially in comparison with the tersely efficient updates from Northumberland, Fitzwater, and Percy. It’ll take time to carry on a coffin, especially if it’s on a bier, and Exton will need to be accompanied by at least two, possibly three or four others, depending on whether he helps to carry the coffin himself. (I think he probably wouldn’t; too tricky and awkward in the scene. The servants carrying it could be entirely anonymous, but there’s scope for interesting doubling by those not already involved here.) Despite his apparent remorse at the end of the murder scene, Exton seems to have come to terms with what he’s done, and he is (initially at least) quite defiantly confident that he’s going to get a good reception, for having done Bolingbroke a great service: within this coffin I present thy buried fear. To describe Richard as the mightiest of thy greatest enemies is bathetic, and in fact perhaps the double superlative suggests that Exton is less confident than he might outwardly seem about Bolingbroke’s response. He sets it up carefully: Bolingbroke is great King, while Richard is not King Richard but Richard of Bordeaux, accurate but a pointed demotion. (And breathless is not bathetic so much as pathetic, reminding us painfully of Richard, the mercurial figure who never stopped talking, and whose might was imagined, in one of the play’s earliest scenes, in terms of the absolute power of the breath of kings.) By me hither brought, Exton concludes, somewhat redundantly: I did it, me, and I’m here for my reward.
No reward forthcoming: Exton, I thank thee not. And Exton’s insecure, yet swaggering half-rhymes are converted into rigid couplets by Bolingbroke: for thou has wrought a deed of slander with thy fatal hand upon my head and all this famous land. Even if you’ve done it more or less on my say so, I didn’t give the order, but now I’ll get the blame; my name’s the one that’s going to be dragged through the mud, my reputation gone. You’ve made me a regicide, a murderer (of my cousin, no less), confirmed my identity as a usurper, when I carefully managed things so that there would be at least a bit of a process, with Richard sort-of abdicating. You’ve trashed everything, Bolingbroke concludes, the reputation of this nation as well as the name of your king. (The death of Richard is apparently of secondary importance to Bolingbroke: what matters in the first instance is the fall-out, the reputational damage. Ever the politician.)
