AUMERLE Comfort, my liege. Why looks your grace so pale?
RICHARD But now the blood of twenty thousand men
Did triumph in my face and they are fled;
And till so much blood thither come again
Have I not reason to look pale and dead?
All souls that will be safe fly from my side,
For time hath set a blot upon my pride. (3.2.75-81)
Tricky character, Aumerle; he’s got to do more than simply cue Richard’s next speech (he will become ever more significant in the plot, and in modern productions he is sometimes given more prominence still, in his intimacy with Richard). But here, is he being needy? Obtuse? Naïve? Does he think he’s being helpful? Richard’s already rebuked him for being discomfortable earlier in the scene, and perhaps he’s trying to do the opposite (he is certainly keeping the word comfort live and loaded in the scene). Comfort has an interesting range of meaning here, I think: it can mean, don’t worry, cheer up, be consoled, be encouraged, don’t lose heart; it also, perhaps, has a slight implication of, get a grip, get things in perspective. It is bracing, rather than soft; etymologically, it’s about strengthening, con-fort.
Mostly, however, Aumerle is setting up Richard’s next conceit: Why looks your grace so pale? Pale with shock, or anger, but Richard (characteristically) picks it up and makes it about the nature of kingship, at least indirectly. But now the blood of twenty thousand men did triumph in my face and they are fled. But now, right up until this moment, I had an army. My body (politic) was sustained and animated by my subjects, quite literally incorporated their lives and strength and loyalty. (There’s a continuity here between his imagining of his close, symbiotic relationship with the land, and now with the people whom he thought he could command.) And now that’s gone. (It’s as if he’s been unplugged.) And till so much blood thither come again have I not reason to look pale and dead? He doesn’t, yet, think primarily in terms of manpower, of an army sufficient to engage with Bolingbroke’s force: it’s about his body, his identity, his sovereignty; those are the terms, and the fears that resonate most with him. It’s always personal; he exaggerates Salisbury’s twelve thousand to twenty thousand because what matters most is that it’s an impossibly big number that now no longer exists, not some more precise calculus of relative powers and military strength. And a final histrionic flourish: so you’d all better leave me too: all souls that will be safe fly from my side. I’m cursed and tainted, and my luck has deserted me: time hath set a blot upon my pride. Pride here is glory, majesty (echoing the image of the clouds covering the sun) but it also suggests the possibility of overreaching (the sun; that golden angel army) and hence falling, and in conjunction with time, it’s a reminder of the wheel of fortune. What goes up must come down. Is this a tipping point for Richard?
