The Tragedy of King Richard the Second: The Garden of the Kingdom

1162 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The Complex Character of King Richard II

The Tragedy of King Richard the Second: The Garden of England

In Act 3, Scene 4 of The Tragedy of King Richard the Second by Shakespeare, the Queen finds that she is unhappy due to an unexplained intuition. While in the Duke of York’s palace, the Queen’s waiting-women try to comfort her until the gardeners interrupt the failed attempts to reach a happiness. As the Queen secretly listens into the gardener’s conversation, she hears that they are speaking about binding the apricots and plucking the weeds. However, the gardening essentially is a metaphor for the rule and management of the kingdom under King Richard II. This scene is important because it displays how Shakespeare desires to reveal the perspective of the common man and the type of rule King Richard II has over the people of England. In the metaphors of the garden, blame is placed on Richard and his advisors for England’s state and the King’s overrule by Bolingbroke.

The gardeners, who represent members of the public, are introduced in the end of the play’s third act. Before this, Queen Isabel has been suffering with sadness as her waiting-women struggle to cheer her. The Queen rejects all of their attempts until she notices the gardeners and hides herself to hear their conversation. Here, the unhappy Queen states, “…here come the gardeners…/They will talk of state, for everyone doth so/Against a change" (3.4. 28-29). What is important to note in this statement, is that Queen Isabel expects the political state to be an ordinary conversation topic of the lower class and common man. The news of King Richard’s downfall has reached as far down the social later from the King to the working class. This ultimately indicates King Richard’s loss of rulership in England. Shakes...

... middle of paper ...

...ability for Richard and his nobles to rule England successfully. They constantly refer to nobles as weeds and the want for them to be removed from England’s rule. However, the gardeners also mention King Richard, himself as being a source for Richard’s downfall. In this case, the common man believes that King Richard and his nobles, the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, and Greene are all to blame for the bad condition England is in. Bolingbroke is one to pull the weeds from the soil (execute the nobles) and by this, creates a better relationship with his future people by getting rid of what is brining the kingdom to its downfall. This foreshadows the power and authority Bolingbroke naturally possesses by showing action and not being afraid to command. Bolingbroke is pulling the “weeds” of the royals so that he can flourish in his future kingdom as a fit and finest King.

Show More
Related

  • Richard III and Looking For Richard Connections

    942 Words  | 2 Pages

    ... middle of paper ... ... This resonates with the dramatic irony of Richard’s depiction of “Christian prince” with “two props of virtue” in RIII, demonstrating the common connection of duplicity to the environment. Evidently, the play itself manipulates the audience’s perception of reality as it presents a historical recount designed to solidify the ruling monarch, and condemn Richard.

    Read More

  • Comparing the Defective Rulers in Henry IV and Richard II

    833 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout Richard II, Bolingbroke is up against King Richard.  Richard is, to a considerable degree, the morally void opportunist: he does after all sieze Gaunt's lands at the moment of his death, taking the entire inheritance away from Gaunt's sons.  Richard lacks a sense of morality when it is to his advantage to ignore morality, and proclaims what is right when he thinks he can save his crown.  At Gaunt's death, when York attemps to point out that what Richard is doing is wrong, Richard says simply: 'Think what you will, we sieze into our hands/ His plate, his goods, his money and his lands'.  Yet later, as Richard is surrounded and on the verge of defeat: 'We are amazed, and thus long have we stood/ To watch the fearful bending of thy knee,/ Because we thought ourself thy lawful king;/ And if we be, how dare thy joints forget/ To pay their awful duty to our presence?'.  Richard uses morality as a tool, a necessary quality in a good ruler, yet he is not manipulative enough.  Bolingbroke not only ignores morality in his dealings, but keeps up the appearance of moral right and goodness.  Bolingbroke knows how to let others take the fall...

    Read More

  • Richard III and the Stability of England

    807 Words  | 2 Pages

    Richard III and the Stability of England Richard became King of England on July the sixth 1483 after the heir to the throne was proclaimed illegitimate. Whether this claim was true or not is questionable. During Richards reign, the stability of England has been debated. Was he the ruler England needed to end the 'Wars of the Roses' and bring stability back to the English people? Or did he cause England to be restless and unsettled?

    Read More

  • The Beginnings and Endings of Machiavellian Kings

    1007 Words  | 3 Pages

    Shakespeare, William, and Peter Holland. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. New York, NY: Penguin, 2000. Print.

    Read More

  • Fear and Hope in Marigolds

    657 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Marigolds” is about change. Collier chose a “fourteen-going-on-fifteen” (1) year old girl because the transition from childhood to adulthood adds layers of conflict to the story. The initially obvious conflict is that of the woman and child inside Elizabeth. She represents the child when she pulls up the marigolds: “The fresh smell of early morning and dew-soaked marigolds spurred me on as I went tearing and mangling and sobbing” (5). She (as the child) is struggling inwardly against being a woman. At the end of her rampage, she is “more woman than child” (1), and the child in her loses the battle. As a woman, she wins “a kind of reality which is hidden to childhood” (5). The second conflict is also symbolic. Elizabeth represents fear. She has the feeling that “ something old and familiar [is] ending and something unknown and therefore terrifying [is] beginning” (1). The marigolds represent hope. The reason for her “great impulse towards destruction” (4) was a combination of fear for the future and bitterness towards the past. In this conflict, fear wins because Miss Lottie “never [plants] marigolds again” (5). The third conflict is the most important. It takes place inside of Elizabeth and is also between fear and hope. At the end of the story, fear may win symbolically, but hope wins inside of Elizabeth: “In that humiliating moment I looked beyond myself and into the depths of another person. This was the beginning of compassion” (5).

    Read More

  • The Passing of the Crown by Shakespeare's Henries

    1856 Words  | 4 Pages

    In his histories from Richard II through Henry V to Richard III, Shakespeare depicts the English monarchy as a game between family and friends of vying for a gold ring -- the crown. Shakespeare gives his reader a central metaphor through which to see this equation in King Henry IV part one. The prank Prince Hal, later King Henry V, and his friend, Poins, play on their friends, particularly Falstaff, parallels the plot's focal passing of the crown.

    Read More

  • A Hero, a King, and a Daemon

    1163 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gifted with the darkest attributes intertwined in his imperfect characteristics, Shakespeare’s Richard III displays his anti-hero traits afflicted with thorns of villains: “Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous / By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams” (I.i.32-33). Richard possesses the idealism and ambition of a heroic figure that is destined to great achievements and power; however, as one who believes that “the end justifies the means”, Richard rejects moral value and tradition as he is willing to do anything to accomplish his goal to the crown. The society, even his family and closest friends, repudiate him as a deformed outcast. Nevertheless, he cheers for himself as the champion and irredeemable villain by turning entirely to revenge of taking self-served power. By distinguishing virtue ethics to take revenge on the human society that alienates him and centering his life on self-advancement towards kingship, Richard is the literary archetype of an anti-hero.

    Read More

  • Providentialism In King Richard III

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    The undeniable pursuit for power is Richard’s flaw as a Vice character. This aspect is demonstrated in Shakespeare’s play King Richard III through the actions Richard portrays in an attempt to take the throne, allowing the audience to perceive this as an abhorrent transgression against the divine order. The deformity of Richards arm and back also symbolically imply a sense of villainy through Shakespeare’s context. In one of Richard’s soliloquies, he states how ‘thus like the formal Vice Iniquity/ I moralize two meanings in one word’. Through the use of immoral jargons, Shakespeare emphasises Richard’s tenacity to attain a sense of power. However, Richard’s personal struggle with power causes him to become paranoid and demanding, as demonstrated through the use of modality ‘I wish’ in ‘I wish the bastards dead’. This act thus becomes heavily discordant to the accepted great chain of being and conveys Richard’s consumption by power.

    Read More

  • Richard III by William Shakespeare

    1616 Words  | 4 Pages

    Written during a time of peace immediately following the conclusion of the War of the Roses between the Yorks and the Lancasters, William Shakespeare’s play Richard III showcases a multi-faceted master of linguistic eloquence, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, a character who simultaneously manages to be droll, revolting, deadly, yet fascinating. Richard's villainy works in a keen, detestable manner, manifesting itself in his specific use or, rather, abuse of rhetoric. He spends a substantial amount of time directly interacting and therefore breaking the fourth wall and orating to the audience in order to forge a relationship with them, to make members not only his confidants of murderous intentions, but also his accomplices and powerless, unwilling cohorts to his wrongdoings. Through the reader’s exploration of stylistic and rhetorical stratagem in the opening and final soliloquies delivered by Richard, readers are able to identify numerous devices which provide for a dramatic effect that make evident the psychological deterioration and progression of Richard as a character and villain.

    Read More

  • Comparison of King Richard III and Looking for Richard

    1514 Words  | 4 Pages

    Shakespeare constructs King Richard III to perform his contextual agenda, or to perpetrate political propaganda in the light of a historical power struggle, mirroring the political concerns of his era through his adaptation and selection of source material. Shakespeare’s influences include Thomas More’s The History of King Richard the Third, both constructing a certain historical perspective of the play. The negative perspective of Richard III’s character is a perpetuation of established Tudor history, where Vergil constructed a history intermixed with Tudor history, and More’s connection to John Morton affected the villainous image of the tyrannous king. This negative image is accentuated through the antithesis of Richards treachery in juxtaposition of Richmond’s devotion, exemplified in the parallelism of ‘God and Saint George! Richmond and victory.’ The need to legitimize Elizabeth’s reign influenced Shakespeare’s portra...

    Read More

  • The Role of Women in Richard II

    2164 Words  | 5 Pages

    Throughout the historical literary periods, many writers underrepresented and undervalued the role of women in society, even more, they did not choose to yield the benefits of the numerous uses of the female character concerning the roles which women could accomplish as plot devices and literary tools. William Shakespeare was one playwright who found several uses for female characters in his works. Despite the fact that in Shakespeare's history play, Richard II, he did not use women in order to implement the facts regarding the historical events. Instead, he focused the use of women roles by making it clear that female characters significantly enriched the literary and theatrical facets of his work. Furthermore in Shakespeare’s history play, King Richard II, many critics have debated the role that women play, especially the queen. One of the arguments is that Shakespeare uses the queen’s role as every women’s role to show domestic life and emotion. Jo McMurtry explains the role of all women in his book, Understanding Shakespeare’s England A Companion for the American Reader, he states, “Women were seen, legally and socially, as wives. Marriage was a permanent state” (5). McMurtry argues that every woman’s role in the Elizabethan society is understood to be a legal permanent state that is socially correct as wives and mothers. Other critics believe that the role of the queen was to soften King Richard II’s personality for the nobles and commoners opinion of him. Shakespeare gives the queen only a few speaking scenes with limited lines in Acts two, four, and five through-out the play. Also, she is mentioned only a few times by several other of the characters of the play and is in multiple scenes wit...

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Allegory In Shakespeare's Richard II

    504 Words  | 2 Pages

    The gardeners both converse about what should happen to an inefficient ruler: “[Richard] that hath suffered this disordered spring / Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf”(3.4.52-53). While talking to one gardener, the other gardener states that Richard has ‘suffered’ meaning allowed the ‘disordered spring’ which symbolizes the tangled garden called the English government. The gardener then says that Richard has “met with the fall of leaf” meaning he has met the end of his reign. Similar to the natural changes in season the allegory of the garden suggests that Richard should naturally lose kingship, similar to the natural change of seasons. Then again, a gardener must pick out unwanted plants, that infest the garden, which might also suggest that a ruler might have to physically become

    Read More

  • The Social Class In Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice

    608 Words  | 2 Pages

    The author Jane Austen was writing in the most transformative eras of British history. Austen experienced the beginning of industrialization in England. The movie shows concerns over property, money and status that highlight’s the social scale of the eighteenth and early ninetieth-century England. The film shows the broad social class that included those who owned land as well as the professional classes (Lawyers, doctors, and clergy). Throughout this time there were strict inheritance laws. The law for owning property was that it would go to male children or male relatives rather than breaking it up ...

    Read More

  • The Importance of the Garden Scene in Shakespeare’s Richard II

    1312 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Garden Scene is important for several reasons, firstly, it occurs between two scenes in which Richard, Bolingbroke, and others are present, but between which some time has passed. This implies a costume change, and this little scene provides just such an opportunity. But this is far from the full measure of the scene's worth. In addition to its practical necessity, it also provides a much-needed respite from the increasingly mounting tension of the play; we are allowed to dally for a moment in the royal gardens before being thrust back into the action. We observe, for the better part of the scene, two humble gardeners, welcome company after three acts of nothing but kings and queens, lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses; particulary for any groundlings watching the play back in 1597, this was a pause in which to reflect and relate.

    Read More

  • Richard II Essay: The Characters of Bolingbroke and Richard II

    860 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nevertheless, as a man of action, Bolingbroke has achieved for himself the goal of retrieving his father Gaunt's estates and much more. He, in the end, is king, King Henry IV. And though Richard as king was full of pomp and ceremony, those things were no match for ambition carried to its fullest. His strong words belied incompetence as a ruler, and he could not hold his position. It seems that it was inevitable that Bolingbroke would be the victor at last. Richard should have taken more note of his usurper, before he was such, this man he called "[Gaunt's] bold son" (1.1.3).

    Read More

More about The Tragedy of King Richard the Second: The Garden of the Kingdom

Open Document