Enter York [with attendants]
BOLINGBROKE I shall not need transport my words by you.
Here comes his grace in person. My noble uncle!
[He kneels]
YORK Show me thy humble heart and not thy knee,
Whose duty is deceivable and false.
BOLINGBROKE My gracious uncle—
YORK Tut, tut, grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle.
I am no traitor’s uncle and that word ‘grace’
In an ungracious mouth is but profane. (2.3.81-88)
Bolingbroke can be lofty for a line or two: I don’t need you to take my messages anyway, Berkeley, because here comes his grace in person. My noble uncle! And Bolingbroke is all correctness and politeness once again, kneeling before York, both deferential and helpfully familial (reminding the audience, yet again, of how everyone’s related, but also that he alone can claim close kin with the king, that he too is Plantagenet). He is kneeling to York both as his kinsman, in effect his father, the surviving elder of his family, and as regent, the sovereign’s representative. But York is having none of it. Don’t bother kneeling to me, you hypocrite, and here there’s a neat play on humble, humility pertaining to the earth, humus: the knee is humble, kneeling on the ground, but the heart is not. The duty, the gesture of kneeling, is all a sham, empty, deceivable and false, given the circumstances in which Bolingbroke has presented himself, a banished man, at the head of an invasion force. Bolingbroke can quibble too, My gracious uncle both recalling the proper form of address to a duke which he has already employed (your grace) and encouraging York to treat him graciously. York isn’t engaging, he won’t even let Bolingbroke finish, responding to him instead as if he’s a disobedient child: tut, tut, grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle. Stop trying it on, don’t you even dare. (The formula is conventional: as editors point out, compare Capulet, haranguing Juliet when she refuses Paris, ‘thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds’.) If you’re a traitor, you’re no nephew of mine, and don’t you ask me to be gracious, that word ‘grace’ in an ungracious mouth is but profane. Wash your mouth out. (York is just getting started. Brace yourself, Bolingbroke.)
