The Tragedy of King Richard the second - In what ways do the speeches of the characters help you to understand the relationships between Richard, Bolingbroke and Mowbray in the play as a whole?

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Melissa Cherry

The Tragedy of King Richard the second

In what ways do the speeches of the characters help you to understand the relationships between Richard, Bolingbroke and Mowbray in the play as a whole?

In this scene Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray are about to fight in the King’s royal lists to settle a dispute that they had in the beginning of this act. We have learnt from previous scenes that the dispute they were having was over Bolingbroke’s accusations to Mowbray. So now, they are both prepared to risk their lives in ‘chivalrous design of knightly trial’ to prove their honour and loyalty to the King. We learn very early in the play that they are stubborn and angry when Richard tells us that they are both ‘high-stomach’d’.  

 It’s not surprising that Bolingbroke and Mowbray are ‘foes’ rather than friends. We know of the crimes that Mowbray is said to have committed and the crimes that he has definitely done, as Mowbray himself even confesses. Mowbray is accused of eighteen years of treason, steeling ‘eight thousand nobles’ and most serious of all, murdering the Duke of Gloucester. We know that Bolingbroke knows that it wasn’t Mowbray who killed the Duke because it was commonly known that the King participated in the death of the Duke of Gloucester. But, it is ‘The Divine Rights of Kings’ that is holding Bolingbroke back from accusing the King. Though in perhaps when Bolingbroke uses a harsh simile at the beginning of the play when he compare the murder of the Duke of Gloucester with the first murder in the Bible he is really aiming it at Richard as he is there to hear it. He is not only showing the importance of religion in the play but also emphasising that it is terrible to kill a your own ‘kinsman’, i.e. it was terrible for Richard to kill his own uncle.

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In this passage Bolingbroke uses another simile to show again his beliefs in the ‘Divine Rights of Kings:

“For Mowbray and I are like two men

That vow on a long a weary pilgrimage.”

This simile might be a little ironic, as Richard is about to throw down his ‘warder’ and banish them both and they will be forced to go on a real journey.

 So, knowing about the belief about the ‘Divine Rights of Kings’ we can see why it is so important to Bolingbroke and Mowbray to carry out this battle. It is important to Mowbray because he ...

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