CARLISLE       I speak to subjects and a subject speaks,

Stirred up by God thus boldly for his king.

My lord of Hereford here, whom you call king,

Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford’s king

And if you crown him, let me prophesy

The blood of English shall manure the ground

And future ages groan for this foul act.       (4.1.133-139)

And now Carlisle is really winding up to the climax of his speech (one more movement to go). He repeats the terms of the earlier part of his argument—I speak to subjects and a subject speaks—no one present is in a position to pass judgement on the king; they are all subjects, including Carlisle himself. But he has been stirred up by God thus boldly for his king, divinely inspired not only to speak on behalf of Richard, but to remind the assembled nobles that what they are doing is not only wrong, but illegal and, in effect, impossible. And Bolingbroke is every bit as much one of Richard’s subjects as the rest of them: my lord of Hereford here, whom you call king, is a foul traitor to proud Hereford’s king, in his assertion that he can now ascend the regal throne. Nothing Bolingbroke says or does will stop Richard being king either.

Carlisle shifts, now, from admonition to prophecy, and in effect, to a curse. If you crown Bolingbroke, let me prophesy, there will be war, civil war, the like of which has never been seen; you will be cursed and lamented by your descendants. The blood of English shall manure the ground and future ages groan for this foul act. The future ages, as the audience would well know, were those of the Wars of the Roses, seen in the plays of the first tetralogy, as well as the rebellions of the reign of Henry IV himself. The desecrated ground, or garden, that Carlisle pictures being manured with blood has already been imagined by John of Gaunt, and by Richard himself. What Carlisle is imagining is a second Fall, a catastrophe of cosmic proportions.