Richard II Exile Quotes

Foreshadowing alert! Gaunt's advice to Henry Bolingbroke as he's about to be banished (that he "pretend" he is the one in power) foreshadows the real events in the play. Bolingbroke ends up taking the mental exercise his father recommends quite literally by banishing (and later killing) the king.

In a fabulously mistaken moment, Green reassures the king that banishment will take care of the problem of Henry Bolingbroke, whose popularity in the kingdom had started to become worrying. This is, like pretty much everything Richard does, a passive and ineffective solution. While technically Green is right – getting rid of Henry helped the king feel better – this kind of thinking gave Henry all the time he needed to gather momentum and ended up costing Richard his kingdom.

England's soil is an important symbol in the play. Richard's leasing of the land is used as evidence of his mistreatment of it. And by casting England as his mother, Henry Bolingbroke equates his sadness at leaving his father with his sadness at leaving his country.

Henry Bolingbroke's reaction to banishment contrasts interestingly with Mowbray's. Whereas Mowbray sees his banishment from England as an enforced silence and a kind of death, Henry refuses to accept a passive position. He sees himself as aggressively communicating to the rest of the world that he is, and always will be, an Englishman.

Though not, strictly speaking, a return from exile, Richard's belated return to England is an opportunity for him to reflect on what English soil means to him. Like Henry Bolingbroke at 1.3.15, he thinks of his relationship to the earth in terms of mother and child. However, where Henry saw himself as the child and the earth as his mother, Richard casts himself in the role of the parent. This is an important difference between the two rivals.

When the queen finds out that Richard has been kicked off the throne by Henry, she compares his deposition to the Biblical fall of man, when Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden. What's up with that?

This is a weird little scene. After Richard gives up his crown to Henry, he asks if Henry will grant him permission to leave. This is odd, don't you think? Richard's not going on vacation – he's going to be locked up in solitary confinement. Although Richard isn't being expelled from England, his imprisonment is as just as bad as being exiled, wouldn't you say?

When Richard learns that Henry has decided to send him to Pomfret Castle in Yorkshire instead of the Tower of London, he describes his imprisonment as a kind of double divorce. Not only has he been divided from his crown, but now he's being divided from his wife, who's being sent to France. Why doesn't Henry just banish Richard to some far off country? Keep reading...

When the queen begs for her husband to be banished along with her to France, she reveals just how little she knows about politics. As Northumberland points out, it wouldn't be very smart for Henry to send Richard to France with his wife. He could come back with an army and challenge Henry. Or worse, they could have a child who might grow up and make a legal claim to the crown. Banishment isn't really an option here, which is why Henry suggests to Exton that someone needs to get "rid" of Richard... permanently.

At the end of the play, when Henry finds out that Exton has killed Richard (on Henry's behalf), he banishes the guy and compares him to Cain (who killed his brother Abel in the Bible). What's weird about this is how Henry refuses to acknowledge that he is the one who caused his cousin Richard's death. If anything, Henry is like Cain, so it seems unjust that Exton should be banished.

This scene also reminds us of how and why Richard banished Henry back in Act 1, Scene 3. (Remember, when Henry publicly accused Mowbray of murdering Gloucester, he was really accusing Richard without coming out and saying so. Richard responded by throwing Henry and Mowbray out of the country.) Is Henry's banishment of Exton really any different than Richard's banishment of Henry and Mowbray?