Richard II Monologue (Act 5, Scene 5)
Enter Richard, alone.
I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world;
And, for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it. Yet I’ll hammer’t out.
My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father, and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts;
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermixed
With scruples and do set the word itself
Against the word , as thus: ‘Come, little ones’;
And then again:
‘It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye.’
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders – how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls,
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of Fortune’s slaves,
Nor shall not be the last, like seely beggars
Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame
That many have and others must sit there;
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortunes on the back
Of such as have before endured the like.
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented. Sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am. Then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I kinged again, and by and by
Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing. But whate’er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased
With being nothing.
Unfamiliar Words/Phrases
As always in our monologues unpacked I start by listing the unfamiliar words and giving you a simple modern definition:
hammer: ponder, think hard
beget: give rise to
humours: moods, temperaments (based on the idea of mood coming from bodily fluids: sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic
still-breeding: constantly breeding, continually breeding (like thoughts that won’t stop coming)
little world: the prison cell
scruples: doubts, reservations, qualms
set the word itself / Against the word: find passages of scripture that contradict other scriptures.
“come little ones”: Bible verse Matthew 19: 14
“It is as hard to come as for a camel/ To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye.”: Bible verse Matthew 19:24
postern: entrance, side gate
needle’s eye: very narrow opening at the end of a needle
flinty: hard
fortune’s slaves: unlucky people
seely: frail (in some versions it is “silly” which works as well)
refuge: shelter from, take refuge from
penury: extreme poverty