GAUNT           O, had thy grandsire with a prophet’s eye

Seen how his son’s son should destroy his sons,

From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,

Deposing thee before thou were possessed,

Which art possessed now to depose thyself.

Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world

It were a shame to let this land by lease,

But, for thy world, enjoying but this land,

Is it not more than shame to shame it so? (2.1.104-112)

Gaunt is really letting rip at this point; he’s dying, he’s got nothing to lose. If only your grandfather Edward III had seen with a prophet’s eye, that is, foreseen how his son’s son—that is, Richard—should destroy his—that is, Edward’s—sons—that is, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester (remember him? all the fuss a couple of scenes earlier, the duchess and so on?), and also Gaunt himself, less directly, by banishing his son and so destroying his family and his lineage. If your grandfather had foreseen that, he’d have prevented you from bringing such shame upon yourself (and on the royal house), by deposing you (technically, disinheriting, but the word depose is like a grenade with the pin pulled out at this point in the play, or rather, perhaps Chekhov’s gun, safety catch off) before you were possessed, both possessed of (that is, in possession of) the crown, and possessed in the sense of demonic possession, and taken over, subject to evil influences, forces beyond your control more generally. Dispossessed is implicit here; Richard has ceded control of his land; he is already dispossessed, and has in effect deposed himself. Even if you were the regent of the world, ruling over the entire globe, it would still be a shameful thing to have leased out any part of it, to cede ownership and control (and income). But this is all the world that you have—this land, England is your world (and this harks back to Gaunt’s earlier speech, his characterisation of England as this little world), and so it’s all the more shameful, worse even than shame, to have done what you have done?