Enter Green

GREEN            God save your majesty, and well met, gentlemen.

I hope the King is not yet shipped for Ireland.

QUEEN           Why hop’st thou so? ’Tis better hope he is,

For his designs crave haste, his haste good hope.

Then wherefore dost thou hope he is not shipped?

GREEN            That he, our hope, might have retired his power

And driven into despair an enemy’s hope,

Who strongly hath set footing in this land:

The banished Bolingbroke repeals himself,

And with uplifted arms is safe arrived

At Ravenspur.

QUEEN                                   Now God in heaven forbid!              (2.2.40SD-50)

Green starts with neutral formalities, polite salutations—and then an unexpected enquiry, diffidently phrased: I hope the King is not yet shipped for Ireland. What? Bushy, Green, and the Queen (and the as-yet silent Bagot) were all present when Richard announced his intention to leave with all possible speed for Ireland; that he has indeed gone has been the entire occasion of the Queen’s doleful conversation with Bushy. Surely Green knows that Richard’s gone? Is he trying to avoid being the bearer of bad news? Is he hoping against hope? Whatever, the Queen seizes on hope. Why hop’st thou so? We should all better be hoping that he’s shipped, and at speed, for his designs crave haste—his plans needed speed in order to have a chance of success. So why are you hoping that he hasn’t left yet?

Ah. Ah. So Green softens the blow, so far as is possible, by playing with hope—by delaying the delivery of bad news, he holds out hope, as it were. If the King, our hope, hadn’t yet departed for Ireland, then he could have stood down his army, retired his power, and redirected it towards an enemy, driven into despair that enemy’s hope (despair, the loss of hope, the French désespoir—Bolingbroke has come from France, after all). That enemy strongly hath set footing in this land. (Green finally has to concede that there’s been an invasion.) And now, out with it, he must say by whom: the banished Bolingbroke repeals himself. He has defied the royal decree; indeed, as Green phrases it, he’s arrogated to himself a quasi-royal power, by repealing himself. And he has arrived with uplifted arms, weapons at the ready (but also, perhaps, suggesting a standard, his armorial bearings, his coat of arms, which will include royal arms, as well as those of Lancaster). Bolingbroke is (as we heard was the plan only a moment or two earlier, from Northumberland) at Ravenspur.  Now God in heaven forbid! is all that the Queen can muster, her terrible sense of foreboding all too quickly vindicated. Her shocked exclamation is also an echoing, equally formulaic reply to Green’s salutation, God save your majesty, but his greeting now seems much less of an empty formality.