RICHARD And let them die that age and sullens have,
For both hast thou and both become the grave.
YORK I do beseech your majesty, impute his words
To wayward sickliness and age in him.
He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear
As Harry Duke of Hereford, were he here.
RICHARD Right, you say true. As Hereford’s love, so his.
As theirs, so mine, and all be as it is.
Enter Northumberland
NORTHUMBERLAND My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your majesty.
RICHARD What says he?
NORTHUMBERLAND Nay, nothing. All is said—
His tongue is now a stringless instrument.
Words, life, and all, old Lancaster has spent.
YORK Be York the next that must be bankrupt so;
Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe. (2.1.139-152)
I love sullens here because it seems slightly incongruous to a modern ear; a fit of the sullens, gloom-mongering, in a sulk. As if Richard’s accusing Gaunt of packing a sad (that might be a more antipodean idiom?), being a mardy bastard. Actually it’s a perfectly common early modern usage, especially if one sees it as sullenness. But it is definitely pejorative, suggesting sulkiness as well as sadness, low mood. Piss off and die then, you gloomy old man, you’re depressing me; the grave is the only place left for someone like you. Whatever Richard says, and assuming that the Exit stage direction is in the right place, his petulant couplet is going to be directed at Gaunt’s departing back; Gaunt’s won this one on points, really (not least because Richard has to repeat the grave/have rhyme with which Gaunt ended, copycat).
So there has to be a bit of filler, with York, presumably aghast at what his brother Gaunt has just done, and attempting to smooth things over: don’t take him seriously, your majesty, impute his words to wayward sickliness and age; he doesn’t know what you’re saying. Your Uncle Gaunt loves you really. And—genius moment dramatically, not so much in the world of the play—so does Gaunt’s son, your cousin Harry Duke of Hereford. Bolingbroke. He loves you too. At least he would if he were here. But you banished him. Ooops. (A handy reminder, that is, of what Gaunt’s death might mean, and of where opposition to Richard might come from next.) WHATEVER, I don’t think so, replies Richard, dripping sarcasm. Hereford loves me just as much as his father does. As theirs, so mine, and all be as it is. I love them right back, in EXACTLY the same way. (It’s not exactly Oscar Wilde, but Richard is good at these bitter, concise quips, especially within the more measured, potentially stultifying frame of the couplet, as here. He’s lost his temper, though.)
But the main purpose of this eight-line exchange with York has been to allow Gaunt time to get off stage, out of sight, and then expire. We have to imagine that Northumberland is quoting his last words—commend me to his majesty—or else, perhaps, that Northumberland thinks it politic to report those as his final words. That formula would ordinarily introduce another statement, though—a petition, for instance—hence Richard asking, impatiently, what says he? (NOW, implicitly). Nothing. All is said. He’s silent; his tongue is now a stringless instrument. (An image not simply of silence, but of disorder, a lack of harmony, or even the possibility of harmony.)Words, life, and all, old Lancaster has spent. York picks up on spent, grimly aware that he is now the last of his generation: Be York the next that must be bankrupt so. At least death ends a mortal woe, the sorrows and troubles of this life.
