YORK                                                  So fare you well,

Unless you please to enter in the castle

And there repose you for this night.

BOLINGBROKE          An offer, uncle, that we will accept;

But we must win your grace to go with us

To Bristol Castle, which they say is held

By Bushy, Bagot and their complices,

The caterpillars of the commonwealth

Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.

YORK                          It may be that I will go with you—but yet I’ll pause,

For I am loath to break our country’s laws.

Nor friends nor foes, to me welcome you are,

Things past redress are now with me past care.    Exeunt.            (2.3.158-170)

 

York is in an impossible position. He’s fundamentally decent, and family seems to have the highest claim on him. Goodbye, then—unless you’d like to come and stay with me in this castle tonight, get some proper rest, off the road. An offer, uncle, that we will accept; Bolingbroke’s choice of address is always smart, and here he’s recognising the primacy of that family tie. But then he pivots back to your grace, to register York’s political power and influence: we must win your grace to go with us to Bristol Castle. They need York’s backing, as Bolingbroke and his supporters begin to take the law into their own hands. Bushy and Bagot and their (ac)complices (a word that can only suggest criminality) are at Bristol, and they are the caterpillars of the commonwealth, parasites, destroyers of the public good, infesting the garden of England so eulogised by Gaunt, and a commonplace of early modern political discourse and, in the specific case of the caterpillars, of satire. Bolingbroke is going after them, and he has sworn to weed the garden, and to pluck away the caterpillars, destroy those which have, too long, fed upon the realm and grown fat, to the detriment of the land and its people. A war of words, of legal arguments and carefully controlled, albeit emotive rhetoric is about to shift into actual violence.

 

York isn’t quite ready to capitulate, yet: It may be that I will go with you—but yet I’ll pause, for I am loath to break our country’s laws. (He takes refuge in rhyming couplets as the scene draws to a close.) I’m not going to say whether you’re friends or foes, but to me welcome you are. I think there’s no helping this situation, no redress, and it’s out of my hands and control, and therefore I can’t worry about it any longer. York is, for all his frustration and rage, a pragmatic survivor.

 

Happy Christmas! KingedUnKinged returns in the New Year; it is, I fear, all fast downhill from here…