Enter the Duke and Duchess of York
DUCHESS My lord, you told me you would tell the rest,
When weeping made you break the story off
Of our two cousins coming into London.
YORK Where did I leave?
DUCHESS At that sad stop, my lord,
Where rude misgoverned hands from windows’ tops
Threw dust and rubbish on King Richard’s head. (5.2.1-6)
A bittersweet juxtaposition: York and the Duchess (this is her first speaking appearance in the play; the actor has not impossibly appeared already as the Duchess of Gloucester in 1.3) enter together, in mid-conversation, or at least encounter one another mid stage, just as Richard and his Queen go their separate ways. It’s a brilliant transition, though: time has passed (but how much? where are the Yorks, as they have this conversation?); the previous scene is immediately given a larger, even more distressing context of public ridicule and cruelty, on top of its delicate, devastating depiction of private agony. And York was there or thereabouts: who knew? This is a long-married couple, too, elderly and comfortable with each other (at least in the first part of the scene), such as Richard and his Queen will never be able to become.
York has been mid-telling, it seems, when weeping made him break the story off, when he became too upset to continue. But the Duchess wants to hear it all, the account of our two cousins—Richard AND Bolingbroke that is, a useful reminder, once again, of how closely related everyone is—coming into London. Where did I get to? asks York. And there’s a sense that the Duchess is both repeating and interpreting what he’s already told her, adding adjectives: the place where York halted was a sad stop, his description of the way in which rude misgoverned hands from windows’ tops threw dust and rubbish on King Richard’s head. The adjectives, especially rude and misgoverned, could as well be York’s, but what he’s going to go on to say is more neutrally expressed, and the Duchess, the scene will show, is more passionate; I think it’s her emotional colouring of the scene, responding both to the imagined scene itself and to York’s evident distress in relating it. It is a terrible picture of insult and torment, even more vivid for a London audience who would have been well aware of the sorts of things that could rain down from the teetering gables overlooking London’s narrow streets. The reference here, too, is surely to the ancient custom of casting dust and ashes on the head in mourning, and as a sign of mortality, a return to earth, a motif which has recurred in many of Richard’s speeches. Here, he is indeed brought low, albeit to his aunt he is still very much King Richard.
