Module 5: Richard II And The Origins Of Political Theology
An Iconographical Inquiry

In writing this lecture, I was asking myself what could be the best possible transition between the first segment of the play (Act I-II) and the second (Act III-V). I think the best possible link lies in the maternal discourse. If you allow me a quick flashback, I would like to pause for an instant on a very intriguing moment in Richard II. Act II, scene 2, l.9-10, during the brief interlude (again in we are in an interval) between her husband's departure for the Irish wars and Bolingbroke's usurping return from banishment, Queen Isabel feels a strange, premonition sorrow:

QUEEN: yet again, methinks,
Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb,
Is coming towards me

II, 2, l.9-10

To which, Bushy replies:

BUSHY: 'Tis nothing but conceit my gracious Lady.
QUEEN: 'Tis nothing less: conceit is still derived
From some forefather grief; mine is not so,
For nothing had begot my something grief;
Or something hath the nothing that I grieve:
'Tis in reversion that I do possess;
But what it is, that is not yet known; what
I cannot name; 'tis nameless woe, I wot.

And the Queen to conclude episode:

QUEEN: So, Greene, thou art the midwife to my woe,
And Bolingbroke my sorrow's dismal heir:
Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy,
And I, a gasping new-deliver'd mother,
Have woe to woe, sorrow to sorrow join'd.

II.2.62-66

The whole scene/the overall rhetoric used here organizes itself and centers on the body of a pregnant queen about to deliver ('this is reversion I do possess'). This passage undoubtedly lends credence to the fact that Queen Isabel is actually giving birth to the outward events she foresees. The maternal discourse here acts as a proleptic element: i.e. the dethronement/ or the death of King Richard II while, through the feminine figure of Queen Isabel, emphasizing a genuine impossibility: giving birth to death or to nothingness. As it is also interesting to note that the cause of Queen Isabel's grief is also nameless and amounts to nothing which actually ties in with the fact that Richard II will be soon a king without a name a nothing too. It also ties in with the fact that the nameless - what cannot be named - the nothing - - the figure O without a name - which is so often assimilated with the female sexual organ in Francois Rabelais. Let's note again that Isabel describes her sorrow/grief as 'Tis in reversion that I do possess" which also echoes what Richard says of Bolingbroke before casting him away from England: "As were our England in reversion his". But the kingdom of England is no longer this caring and fertile mother. This mother and nurse" (I.3.307) for Bollingbroke - for John of Gaunt: "This nurse, this teeming womb" (II.1.57). Now, the garden, England, is a "hollow womb"/unfertile "earthy pit" (II.1.83). The land is no fertile any more, Richard's kingdom is no more than "a small model of the barren earth/which serves as paste and cover to our bones" (III.2.53-54) where, as one of the gardeners recall, "she did fall a tear; here in this place" Act III, 4, l.194. We shall leave, suspend for a moment this tear and see later how this shed tear plays its part or at least mark out an itinerary in this overall.