NORTHUMBERLAND If then we shall throw off our slavish yoke,

Imp out our drooping country’s broken wing,

Redeem from broking pawn the blemished crown,

Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre’s gilt

And make high majesty look like itself,

Away with me in post to Ravenspur.

But if you faint, as fearing to do so,

Stay and be secret, and myself will go.

ROSS                                       To horse! To horse! Urge doubts to them that fear.

WILLOUGHBY                        Hold out my horse and I will first be there.                       Exeunt.            (2.1.291-300)

 

Scene divisions don’t mean much, but this is one of the longest scenes in the play, a stretch of continuous action that began with the dying John of Gaunt. And it’s to Gaunt’s register and rhetoric that Northumberland returns, elevated and aspirational, as—surprisingly quickly—the scene winds up and the next phase of the plot is set in motion. This is it, says Northumberland, time to decide where your loyalties lie, to back words with deeds.

 

England is enslaved, suffering under the yoke of taxation and mismanagement, and describing it thus makes King Richard implicitly a tyrant, although the word is certainly not being used. That’s important, because some political theorists (Tacitus, for example, being read and translated in the 1590s, especially in the circle of scholars and ambitious men around the earl of Essex) argued that it was lawful to depose a tyrant. Here it’s an oblique hint of an implication, no more. But if the slavish yoke is shaken off, then England will be transformed from a downtrodden beast of burden, first to a bird, probably a falcon; it has a broken wing, but that too can be mended, imped, have its broken feathers repaired. To imp is to graft, to strengthen by replacing broken feathers with new whole ones: the image of restored flight is what dominates, the antithesis of the vividly evoked drooping wing—but the imping, the graft also matters. Replacement of something weak and broken with an alternative, strong and whole.

 

The terms in which Northumberland continues are much more obviously loaded, because he is making a distinction between the crown, the monarchy, the office of king, and the person of the monarch, Richard, and it’s this distinction which will come to be at the heart of the play. It is the crown which is blemished, soiled, tarnished; it has been pawned (to pawnbrokers, hence broking pawn, but the near-tautology emphasises the way in which majesty has been sullied by Richard’s actions, by commerce, the brokering of grubby financial dealings). The shining gilt of the sceptre (unavoidably, one hears ‘guilt’, even if only momentarily) is dulled with dust: to do these things, to do what Northumberland is proposing, will make high majesty look like itself, clean everything up, renew it. This line matters: there is no suggestion whatsoever that Northumberland or anyone else is proposing the abolition of the monarchy: on the contrary, he has an almost mystically high view of kingship, and is arguing that Richard is not worthy of the office, that he is both abusing and debasing it.

 

So, let’s ride with all possible speed to Ravenspur (checks notes: a harbour on the River Humber in Yorkshire). Unless you’re faint, too scared, or not fully committed, in which case, fine, but stay and be secret, stay behind and don’t tell anyone. I’ll go alone if I have to. But Ross and Willoughby are totally in: To horse, to horse! Let’s ride at once, says Ross; leave any hesitation or doubt to those who are fearful. I’ll be the first one there, adds Willoughby, that is, if my horse holds out, lasts the distance.

 

And that—finally—is the end of the scene, a scene which began with a static, furious, dying man prophesying ruin, and ends with three peers of the realm rebelling against their sovereign and throwing their weight behind the claim of that now-dead man’s son to the throne of England.