On Richard II, Nicholas II, and Donald Trump I.
King Richard II – at least according to Shakespeare – was very good with words, but was not really ready to be a king. His decisions lacked wisdom and perspicacity; nore were they based on true intelligence. Now one arbitrary act, now another. In fact, he consistently made decisions that undermined his own legitimacy and authority. Knowing that one of the arguing over-lords in front of him is deceiving him, Richard prefers to banish them both. When they want to challenge each other to the fight, he first allows it, then forbids. The terms of banishment are not equal. In short, he acts as a whimsical autocrat, all the while mesmerized by the fact that he is a God’s Anointed King.
Dying John of Gaunt (Father of the exiled Bolingbroke) warns him:
And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
Commit’st thy anointed body to the cure
Of those physicians that first wounded thee.
A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown.
King, however, persists in his self-destructive course. He decides to seize the possessions of the honest John of Gaunt, simply because he needs money for the war and dislikes what Gaunt had just told him Now it is the turn of Duke of York to warn him:
Take Herford’s rights away, and take from Time
His charters and his customary rights;
Let not tomorrow then ensue today;
Be not thyself; for how art thou a king
But by fair sequence and succession?
…If you do wrongfully seize Herford’s rights…
You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,
You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts.
Having undermined his authority sufficiently, King Richard proves an easy pray to the returning Bolingbroke. His kingdom falls like a house of cards, all is left for him is stare at the mirror and contemplate on the double nature of kings: simultaneously frail and human and yet majestic and divine:
For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and humored thus,
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!
As if these warnings are not enough, we have a great scene within the play, where a gardener keeps on reminding us on the need to pluck the weeds from the garden if one wants the garden to prosper.
I am not sure that King Richard II is a tragic figure. His stature is not big enough, I failed to see any greatness in him except in his grief. But his fate has always reminded me of those who for various reasons failed to take care of their political garden. And in his case, it is not just stupidity or venality. He somehow thinks that his very title has this divine power of getting things right. If this is a royal judgment, it has to be correct. Whatever stupidity I do, it somehow becomes justice if ordered from the royal throne.
Obviously, it does not work this way. Besides the high authority of the office, there should be done an incessant work of maintaining the garden. Weeds don’t give a damn about royalty.
In one way or another, different as they are, the fate of Nicholas II of Russia, and Donald Trump of United States, echo that of Richard II. There were tons of warnings, and tons of mistakes, in which they persisted, guided by their myopic and narcissistic outlook.
But let me push this analogy further. There is also a big difference between the actions of Bolingbroke, future Henry IV and that of two other deposers and consequent rulers: Lenin and Biden.
Bolingbroke still has tremendous respect for the office of the king. So he banishes Richard II’s murderer, and concludes the play with the desire to travel to the Holy Land to wash the blood from his hand and his office. Needless to say, Lenin has zero respect for all previous traditions. He brazenly mocked all the authority of previous offices, and now the authority of his communist legacy is mocked with the same abandon.
And Biden and Democrats had a chance to show as much respect for the office of the United States president as they could. Yet, they preferred not to. Why this idiotic eleventh hour impeachment? Why not allow Trump some sort of farewell ceremony given to all the previous presidents? If they undermine the same sequence, succession, respect and authority to the office and ceremonies that ushered them in, what do they expect in the future. That time would stand still?
Time, alas, has the logic of its own, and it is merciless to those who has no respect for it. As Richard II acknowledges: “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”
