BOLINGBROKE What says his majesty?
NORTHUMBERLAND Sorrow and grief of heart
Makes him speak fondly like a frantic man,
[Enter Richard and his attendants below]
Yet he is come.
BOLINGBROKE Stand all apart
And show fair duty to his majesty.
He kneels down
My gracious lord.
RICHARD Fair cousin, you debase your princely knee
To make the base earth proud with kissing it.
Me rather had my heart might feel your love
Than my unpleased eye see your courtesy.
Up, cousin, up. Your heart is up, I know,
Thus high at least [pointing to his crown], although your knee be low. (3.3.183-193)
What says his majesty? introduces a little exchange between Bolingbroke and Northumberland that both covers Richard’s descent from the battlements/upper stage and maintains the illusion that Bolingbroke hasn’t been close enough to hear Richard’s conversation with Northumberland (even if, within the fiction of the play, it’s been made apparent that he’s heard everything, which would be an option). Northumberland’s description of Richard’s response and demeanour is fair and accurate: Richard is grief-stricken; he speaks fondly, foolishly, illogically, like a frantic man, a man who has lost his wits, a mad-man. And then Richard appears: yet he is come. (Did Northumberland think, for a moment, that he’d remain in the castle after all?)
Bolingbroke approaches the situation with considerable sensitivity, as well as psychological and political sophistication: Stand all apart and show fair duty to his majesty. His attendants and companions (including Northumberland, who might be annoyed) must draw back, leaving Bolingbroke isolated; they might kneel, or bow, or remove their caps. They should certainly look apprehensive, a bit shifty, even: here is majesty reduced, brought low, into the base court, down on their level. (Richard has so often been raised up, on dais or balcony.) The stage direction, He kneels down, of Bolingbroke, is in the first quarto; perhaps significant, when so many of the other SDs are editorial, although it’s explicit enough in the text what Bolingbroke does. My gracious lord, he says, just that, polite, deferential, non-committal—and, as ever, it’s Richard who has the most to say, who runs on, goes too far, says too much.
Richard continues his quibbling on base—he is obsessed with his own physical, political, and psychological lowering, and sees everything in those up-and-down terms. Fair cousin (he too can be immaculately polite, although cousin is not a term of rank, not an honorific) you debase your princely knee, in the act of lowering it to the ground to kneel and, at the time, and paradoxically, you make the base earth proud with kissing it. You flatter and elevate the earth by kissing it with your princely knee. But I’d rather be secure of your favour, feel your lovein my heart, than see you make this empty gesture of courtesy, this hollow performance of deference. This spectacle doesn’t please me; you don’t fool me. Up, cousin, up. I know that your heart is up, your intentions and your desires aim thus high at least, although your knee be low. And Richard must gesture at the crown he wears, his crown, but with the same gesture he is also indicating his head. Does Bolingbroke seek his life as well as the crown?
