RICHARD                    It boots thee not to be compassionate.

After our sentence, plaining comes too late.

MOWBRAY                 Then thus I turn me from my country’s light

To dwell in solemn shades of endless night.

RICHARD                    Return again and take an oath with thee.

[To both Mowbray and Bolingbroke]

Lay on our royal sword your banished hands:

Swear by the duty that you owe to God—

Our part therein we banish with yourselves—

To keep the oath that we administer:

You never shall, so help you truth and God,

Embrace each other’s love in banishment,

Nor never look upon each other’s face,

Nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile

This louring tempest of your home-bred hate,

Nor never by advisèd purpose meet

To plot, contrive or complot any ill

’Gainst us, our state, our subjects or our land.

BOLINGBROKE          I swear.

MOWBRAY                 And I, to keep all this. (1.3.174-192)

 

Richard is unmoved, loftily so: moaning and lamenting isn’t going to get you anywhere, not after I’ve given my judgement and passed sentence. (The odd usage of compassionate here means sad, piteous, rather than full of compassion.) And Mowbray is now being a bit over the top, perhaps, with yet another couplet in which the resonantly moving and interesting conceit of being muted and languageless in exile is translated into blindness, the light of England being replaced by the darkness of foreign parts, the solemn shades of endless night; a kind of death. (Mowbray needs a Friar Lawrence here, to point out to him sternly that while he may think of banishment as being like death, it is emphatically not the same thing, and he needs to make the best of it.)

Richard is winning here, in a number of ways. He’s changed the script, certainly, and demonstrated the extent of his power and prerogative. In dramaturgical terms, he’s controlling Mowbray’s exit: a couplet is very often an exit line, and Richard is saying, in effect, no you don’t, you only leave when I say you can, and on my terms. Within the world of the play, he is also demonstrating considerable political acumen. We’ve seen Bolingbroke and Mowbray at loggerheads, tearing strips off each other across two scenes, but Richard knows that the real danger here is that they will get together during their exile and join forces against him. And so he is taking advantage of the high chivalric context of this moment, as well as the high emotion and the assumption that both of them will want to leave with as much dignity as possible, to try to avoid that possibility of these sworn enemies uniting to undermine and attack him. He swears them on the hilt of his sword, a common device because the hilt forms a cross (but it will almost certainly also necessitate their kneeling, reinforcing who’s in charge), and he tries to cover all the bases. They must not embrace each other’s love, form an alliance; they mustn’t meet in person, by chance or on purpose; they mustn’t write. He tells them that they mustn’t try to overcome this louring tempest of your home-bred hate, which probably isn’t the kind of advice or instruction a Christian king should give (he should be exhorting them to reconciliation and forgiveness)—but he is mostly reminding them, you hate each other, remember? And finally, in explicit terms: you must swear not to plot, contrive or complot any ill, against us, our state, our subjects or our land.

There’s the sense of a checklist here, and a bit of smugness, as all the wiggle room (can they write? can they meet by chance? can they plot against the king without plotting against his people?) is gradually removed. Bolingbroke and Mowbray have no choice but to comply and swear. (Even though they may well be making a mental note to get the lawyers on to it.)