Controlling The Image Of Kingship In The Second Tetralogy.

During his deposition in Westminster Hall Richard II introspectively asks, Was this the face/That like the sun did make beholders wink? (Richard II, 1595, 4.1.283-4). As he draws parallels between his face and the sun[1] he recalls his glorious, magisterial image that has been constructed for and partly by him. The rhetorical question demonstrates that Richard is a monarch wholly aware of the influence his royal image could have over his beholders they are at times dazzled by it. However his use of the verb to wink (284) is curious. If he seeks to present an image of his subjects totally blinded by the splendor of his majesty, then blink would be a more appropriate verb. Wink connotes deceitfulness and slyness. While Richard s beholders may be dazzled by the power of their king s constructed royal image, Shakespeare, through his choice of language, conveys Richard s realization that to maintain such an image is not enough. In focusing on the image of his kingship, he has left room for his supposedly loyal subjects to plot and ultimately outmaneuver, outface him (4.1.286).

One could also contend that at this point Shakespeare sees the image of glorious majesty reflected back to Richard through a quotation in Doctor Faustus (first performed in 1592), as the play s namesake addresses a succubus that has taken up the appearance of Helen of Troy: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships ? (Doctor. Faustus, 5.1.91-2). There is a symbolic link between the mythical figure of Helen, whose beauty classical myth claims burned the city of Troy, and a beautiful monarch with an overzealous concern about his presentation, whose deposition lead to a long period of destructive civil war in England. The root of Richard s usurpation and Helen s abduction lies in their inability to manage and control their beauty and image, to such an extent that it ends up, partially at least, controlling and defining them. This inability is cruelly displayed in Richard II, as the most stately and regal display of kingship in the play is in the scene where Richard is dethroned.

Sections of The Wilton Diptych (c.1395-1399), an opulent diptych that portrays Richard s II s divine right to rule and signifies the lavish grandeur that defined his kingship, appear at pertinent moments throughout the Royal Shakespeare Company s production of Richard II, directed by Gregory Doran. First, the white hart from the exterior of the Diptych appears accompanied by a burst of ethereal music as a hologram at the back of stage immediately after Ross, Wiloughby and Northumberland make clear Richard s supporters are flocking to Bolingbroke at the end of scene 2.1.[2] The juxtaposition of the hart adorned with a crown, and three previous supporters of Richard configuring his usurpation in terms of returning the physical aspects of kingship to what they should look like , is the ultimate irony. The diction of Northumberland s speech (2.1.293-6) suggests that the perceived image of the monarch is in urgent need of restoration, conveying the feeling that Richard, played here by David Tennant, has left a blemish on the golden lustre of the robes and regalia of state that needs to be Wipe[d] off before high majesty can look like itself again. The image of himself that Richard has created herein becomes his undoing.

Subsequently, in scene 3.3 the three angels from the Diptych appear on the gantry regaling a song, again ethereal in nature, as The trumpets sound [a] parley and [KING RICHARD] appeareth [above] on the walls (3.3.62).[3] As Richard emerges, As doth the blushing discontented sun (63), his appearance and aura are so dazzling that Bolingbroke, York, Harry Percy and Northumberland below all have to protect their eyes, perhaps they have to wink . Aumerle gazes at Richard intensely, as if in a trance, giving the impression that he is literally basking in his glory. Richard, wearing the state crown, robes, holding the orb and sceptre, reemphasises his divine appointment by referencing my master, God omnipotent (85), and informs Northumberland that no hand of blood and bone/Can gripe the sacred handle of our sceptre/Unless he do profane, steal or usurp (79-81). Tennant as Richard engages in a display of complete majesty, demonstrating that he remains politically aloof as he has Aumerle speak down to those below him on his behalf. This display of complete majesty is limited however as moments later Richard descends from the balcony to sit on the floor, in the space that his future usurpers have vacated, carefully taking off the robes and regalia of state one by one, and consoling the weeping Aumerle. This, along with his frustration that Northumberland and Hotspur s joints forget/To pay their awful duty to our presence (75-76), presents a king unable to rely on his aura to retain control.

The final appearance of the Diptych occurs at the start of 5.1 as Richard is on his way to the tower and his wife and her two attendants enter dressed in the same colours as the aforementioned three angels, though their suggested divinity is not respected as they are skittled to the floor by townspeople. Richard then appears in his bedclothes, an image of sacred majesty falling apart, and proceeds to draw the heavenly futures of himself and his wife into the discourse of divine majesty, and the pursuit of a new signifier of power: Our holy lives must win a new world s crown (5.1.24). The Diptych, repeatedly haunting Richard at times that his power is being undermined, neatly presents him as a king so entangled in the loftiness of what it meant to look like a king, that he was left unaware of the practical, political threats to his kingship.

Conversely Bolingbroke, one of Richard s supposedly loyal but wink[ing] subjects, is seemingly in control of his own image. This is evident as he lectures his son on the nature of self-marketing after he has become Henry IV. He explains that to maintain a firm base of power, one must become adept at the art of statecraft, and a careful manager of the trappings of kingship. He recognizes that had he not won over Opinion (I Henry IV, 1598, 3.2.42), he would not have successfully taken possession (43) from Richard. When Henry details his usurpation and attempts to maintain his image as a rightful king[4], his diction inheres in institutional deceit and immorality:

And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,

And dressed myself in such humility

That I did pluck allegiance from men s hearts

Thus I did keep my person fresh and new,

My presence, like a robe pontifical,

Ne er seen but wondered at

(3.2.50-52, 55-57)

In stating that he stole all courtesy from heaven Henry paints himself as an opportunist, whilst openly recognising that the crown was not his to take. He extends the theme of furtiveness in his didactic speech through the use of the verb pluck (52), suggesting something both considered and covert. To state he dressed himself in humility (51) is to create a distinction between himself and the splendour of Richard s image. Henry does not engage in a sumptuous display of majesty, but recognises the need to put on a show to maintain the support of the hearts he did angle for (4.3.84). By remaining Ne er seen , he engages his subjects imagination through appearing distant. Henry has no intention of tirelessly recreating and maintaining a lavish image as Richard did, especially as it was Richard s very obsession with stately kingliness that Henry used to un king, undo (RII, 4.1.203) him. Hotspur describes Henry as this vile politician (I Henry IV 1.3.240), this king of smiles [5] (245). These descri ptions suggests a shrewd schemer, a deceitful individual who, like his son Prince Hal, is willing to imitate the sun (1.2.185) and falsify men s hopes (189) to obtain a position of power that is a malleable ruler who knows it is beneficial to their power base if they mystify the role of king through a pageant show of pretence. Henry recognizes how Richard s obsession with Enfeoff[ing] himself to popularity (3.2.69), being bent on attaining sun-like majesty (79), resulted in his public with his presence being glutted, gorged, and full (3.2.84). This recognition allows him to usurp Richard as ruler of a populous desensitized with and stuffed full of his image.

Whilst Henry remains aware that regal image is merely a pretence, a construct separate from a king s own self, when Richard demands a looking glass (4.1.265) he is unable to define himself apart from his position as king. The looking glass is Richard s last autonomous attempt to indict Bolingbroke as a thief, and depict himself as a victimized and robbed true king (318) having had his position stole[n] (1H IV 3.2.50). Once the mirror shatters, cracked in a hundred shivers (RII, 4.1.289), and his shadow (292, 293, 294) along with it, it is as if the very fabric of his own state of being has been destroyed. Richard s imagined self-image has become inextricable from his carefully crafted royal image to such an extent that all he can see when he looks into the mirror is an empty shell of a king, stripped of his physical belongings and all that they have come to represent. Bit by bit he deprives the body politic of the symbols of its dignity and exposes his poor body (Kantorowicz, 36), having earlier demonstrated this deprivative deconstruction by declaring, I God s name (3.3.146), that he will exchange:

my jewels for a set of beads,

My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,

My gay apparel for an almsman s gown,

My figured goblet s for a dish of wood,

My sceptre for a palmer s walking staff,
My subjects for a pair of carved saints

And my large kingdom for a little grave

(147-154)

The physical signifiers of power have become for Richard power itself, and as he loses them bit by bit he feels as if he must lose/The name of King (3.3.145-6). He desires to see what a face (4.1.266) remains amongst the fragments after his shattered identity has been left bankrupt of his majesty (267). What has his face (266), outfaced (286) by Bolingbroke, come to represent? The reflection Richard sees, the physical, tangible face, is not one that he can associate with his inner experience once all the symbols of kingship are stripped away: Was this the face Was this the face Is this the face? (281-85). When Richard is divested of these symbols, when he foreswears All pomp and majesty (211), he transfers the sun imagery and with it the dazzling picture of majesty traditionally associated with his kingship to Bolingbroke: send him many years of sunshine days! (4.1.222). The physical signifiers of kingship are for Richard a defining part of his identity and constructed self-image, so much so that if he parts from them, he must nothing be (201).

[1] A sunburst, a sun in splendor, and a sun clouded were all heraldic badges of Richard II. Hayward, Palmer, and Schuler discuss Richard s deployment of badges and civic pageantry.

[2] It remains there throughout the start of 2.2 whilst Busy, Baggott and Green are on stage with the queen. Green confirms the news of Richard s allies fleeing to Bolingbroke (2.2.52-60), becoming midwife to [the queen s] woe (2.2.62).

[3] The editorial stage direction supplied, derived from the embedded stage direction in Northumberland s question of Richard May it please you to come down? (3.3.177) leaves no room for doubt over Richard s true position.

[4] His need to transcend the image of himself as an illegitimate heir make it all the more important that he is viewed as regal.

[5] Leontes refers to Polixenes as Sir Smile in The Winter s Tale, (1.2.195) explained in a footnote as a hypocritical deceiver . (Arden Shakespeare, p.167)