Shakespeare's Kings (36 page)

By
this
time
Richard
had
already
been
for
some
two
months
at Pontefract.
Exa
ctly
how
he
died,
and
when,
will
always
remain
a mystery.
Shakespeare,
following
Holinshed,
represents
him
as
being struck
down
by
a
certain
Sir
Piers
Exton,
who
had
heard
an
exasperated King
Henry
ask
if
there
was
no
friend
who
would
rid
him
of
'this
living fear'
-
much
as
his
namesake
Henry
II
had
cried
out
against
Thomas
a Becket
more
than
two
centuries
before.
Such
a
fate
is
certainly
possible, though
in
view
of
the
traditional
reluctance
to
shed
the
blood
of
an anointed
king,
it
has
been
suggested
that
-
if
there
was
any
violence
at all
-
smothering
was
more
likely.
Another
story
relates
that,
on
hearing that
the
attempt
to
reinstate
him
had
failed,
Richard
had
simply
turned his
face
to
the
wall,
refusing
all
food,
and
died
of
starvation.
All
we
can say
with
certainty
is
that
on
29
January
1400
the
French
King
and Council
referred
to
him
as
being
dead;
and
that
a
few
days
later,
in
the face
of
continuing
rumours
that
he
was
alive,
his
body
was
brought
to London
and
displayed
at
various
stopping-places
along
the
way.
It
then lay
for
two
days
in
St
Paul's,
where
the
new
King
attended
a
requiem mass
as
pall-bearer,
before
being
taken
to
King's
Langley
in
Hertfordshire for
burial.
In
1413
Henry
V
had
the
body
disinterred
and
removed
to Westminster
Abbey,
where
it
was
consigned
to
the
tomb
which
Ri
chard himself
had
built
for
his
first
wife,
Anne.
The
effigy
above,
by
the London
coppersmiths
Nicholas
Broker
and
Godfrey
Prest,
was
created during
his
lifetime
and
is
clearly
a
portrait.
It
shows
a
face
at
once sensitive
and
indecisive,
with
a
pointed
nose
and
short
forked
beard, crowned
with
waving
curls.

Shakespeare
makes
King
Henry
-
once
again
like
his
distant
predecessor
-
disown
the
crime,
if
crime
there
was.
At
the
same
time
he cannot
absolve
himself
of
indirect
responsibility,
and
in
the
last
speech of
the
play
he
vows
a
pilgrimage,
or
perhaps
a
crusade:

Though I did wish him dead,

I hate the murtherer, love him murthered . . .

I'll make a voyage to the Holy Land,

To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.

This,
too,
seems
to
be
invention.
According
to
Holinshed,
the
King did
indeed
make
such
a
vow;
but
it
was
in
the
last
years
of
his
reign rather
than
the
first,
and
there
was
never
any
suggestion
that
it
was

prompted by a desire for atonement. He certainly went through all the normal formalities of mourning, and ordered a thousand masses said for the repose of Richard's soul; he was, after all, a genuinely religious man. But he would not have been human if, after hearing the news of Richard's death, his strongest emotion had been not sorrow or remorse, but relief.

prince.
. . . think not, Percy,

To share with me in glory any more: Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere, Nor can one England brook a double reign Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales.

henry iv part i

At
the
time
of
his
accession,
King
Henry
IV
was
thirty-two
years
old. He
had
been
born
on
3
April
1367,
at
his
father's
castle
of
Bolingbroke, near
Spilsby
in
Lincolnshire,
just
three
months
after
his
cousin
Richard, the
day
of
the
great
victory
won
at
Najera
by
his
father
John
of
Gaunt and
his
uncle
the
Black
Prince.
When
he
was
only
ten,
his
grandfather Edward
III
had
made
him
a
Knight
of
the
Garter,
and
less
than
three months
afterwards,
in
July
1377,
he
had
borne
the
principal
sword
at Richard's
coronation.
In
that
year
he
was
already
styled
Earl
of
Derby; later
he
acquired
the
additional
earldoms
of
Leicester,
Lincoln
and Northampton;
in
1397
he
became
Duke
of
Hereford
and
in
1399,
on the
death
of
his
father,
Duke
of
Lancaster.
According
to
the
sixteenth-century
chronicler
Edward
Hall,
he
was
'of
mean
stature'
but
well proportioned
and
compact,
with
fine,
regular
teeth
and
a
thick,
dark red
beard:
Froissart
describes
him
as
beau chevalier.
Moreover,
though he
possessed
none
of
his
cousin's
taste
and
sophistication,
he
certainly did
not
lack
intelligence.
Unlike
Richard,
too,
he
had
seen
the
world. Between
1391
and
1393
he
had
travelled
first
to
Lithuania,
on
a
crusade with
the
Teutonic
Knights,
and
then
to
Jerusalem
on
a
pilgrimage
to the
Holy
Sepulchre,
visiting
Prague
and
Vienna,
Rhodes
and
Cyprus, and
on
his
return
journey,
Venice,
Milan,
Pavia
and
Paris,
to
say
nothing of
all
the
principal
shrines
along
the
way.
Both
journeys
were
undertaken in
a
spirit
of
genuine
piety,
for
he
was
naturally
devout.
He
also
seems