Richard II Language and Communication Quotes

Yikes! Sometimes, we get the feeling that Henry wishes he could make his words cause physical harm to his enemies, especially when he says to Mowbray, "With a foul traitor's name stuff I thy throat" (1.1.2). Unlike Richard, who always talks about his power and divinity without ever proving anything, Henry has no patience for words; he's all about action. Here he says he's going to "prove" what his tongue says with a weapon: his sword. Language is insufficient for Henry; it has to be "proven" or made concrete by acts.

The play is obsessed with the difference between words and deeds. Here Mowbray emphasizes that he can offer more than just "cold words" to prove his innocence. He's trying to keep Henry Bolingbroke from characterizing him as "all talk," and states that language won't resolve their disagreement. Henry and Mowbray agree on that much, despite being enemies. Unlike them, Richard will try to resolve the dispute through verbally commanding that they make peace. As king, he has come to believe that his words are actions. He's wrong, of course, and his order that the two be friends fails to heal the cracks developing in the kingdom.

Something else worth noting here is the way Mowbray is a master of reversals. First he says words don't matter, but then he cleverly finds a way to talk anyway – he won't be "hushed." Then he tells the king that his respect for him "curbs," or stops, him from saying all he wants to about Henry. But then of course he goes on to do exactly that!

Mowbray says that even worse than his physical banishment from England is his banishment from his own language. First he compares his tongue, which can only speak English, to a useless or out-of-tune instrument. The king, he says, has metaphorically imprisoned his tongue within his mouth, since whatever freedom it had is lost the moment he leaves England and can no longer communicate with other men.

One of the issues the play explores is the extent to which language is a vehicle for power. Even though he seemed to dismiss speech as unimportant earlier, now that he's facing banishment, Mowbray reflects on the importance of language. Noting that he's too old to learn a new language, he says the king's sentence is metaphorically a death sentence. (There's a pun here: the king's "sentence" isn't just a legal term; it's also the unit of language – the kind of sentence that's made up of words.) To send Mowbray somewhere he can't use his language is to condemn him to "speechless death." In Mowbray's metaphor, language is so important that he equates the ability to speak with the ability to live.

Henry Bolingbroke observes – possibly a little sarcastically – that Richard has the power to make time pass just by speaking. A word from him can reduce Henry's banishment from ten years to six. The way Bolingbroke puts it, though, the "breath of kings" can actually make four winters and four springs go by. (It's just possible that Richard actually believes his words have this kind of power.)

Henry Bolingbroke fails to reply to his friends when they regret his banishment. (Big surprise there.) When Gaunt asks him why he's "hoarding" his words, he says he doesn't have enough to express the pain of saying goodbye to his father.

Whereas Henry Bolingbroke was genuinely at a loss for words when his friends said goodbye, Aumerle tells Richard that he faked it: when he said goodbye to Henry, he pretended to be so emotional that he couldn't speak. This is interesting, don't you think? What Aumerle is describing, really, is acting: conveying an emotion you don't really feel. This is what Richard's advisors are guilty of too. This is a play where it's very hard to know what anyone really feels about things. Remember, since he wants Richard to think he has no feelings about Henry's banishment, it's unclear to the audience whether he's telling the truth or not.

This is what Northumberland says about Gaunt after the old man delivers a big speech about how Richard is ruining England and then dies. In describing Gaunt's death this way, Northumberland reinforces the link between language and life and highlights the fact that by trying to tell Richard the whole truth about himself, Gaunt "spent" his life. In other words, a certain kind of language is very expensive in this play: Richard has set up a government in such a way that it cost something to tell the truth.

It's probably obvious by now that naming is extremely important in Richard II. Here, Henry Bolingbroke, who gets referred to by four different names throughout the play (Hereford, Bolingbroke, Lancaster, and finally King Henry IV), tells York that his banishment is no longer valid. Why? Because the man King Richard banished was Hereford. Now that John of Gaunt is dead, Henry, as his heir, has legally inherited the title of Lancaster, so he's no longer the "Hereford" whom the king banished. In an interesting way, Henry does the opposite of Richard: where Richard has a really hard time separating his identity from the title of king, Henry shuffles names and titles around until he finds the one that brings him the most power.

Long after John of Gaunt tried to warn him of the "wounds" he'd suffered at the hands of his flattering advisers, Richard learns his lesson. Moments earlier, Aumerle comforted him by suggesting that they appeal to Aumerle's father, York, for an army to fight the rebels. Richard, feeling hopeful once more, asks Scrope, who has just arrived with news, to "speak sweetly." But it's no use: Scrope can't sweeten the bad news.