What happens in Richard II

King Richard II sits in judgment over two angry noblemen. Henry Bolingbroke, his cousin, accuses Thomas Mowbray of treason and of a hand in the murder of the Duke of Gloucester. Mowbray denies it. Richard cannot reconcile them, so he sets a trial by combat at Coventry. Then, just as the lances drop, he stops the fight. He banishes Bolingbroke for six years and Mowbray for life. It looks like even-handed justice. It is really a king who cannot bring himself to decide.

Old John of Gaunt, Bolingbroke’s father, is dying, and he uses his last breath to warn Richard. England, he says, is a precious jewel that the king has rented out like a cheap farm. Richard waves the speech away. When Gaunt dies, he seizes the Lancaster estates to fund a war in Ireland and sails off, leaving his weak uncle York to mind the realm. That theft is the spark. By taking Bolingbroke’s inheritance, Richard destroys the very law of succession that holds his own crown in place.

Bolingbroke does not wait out his exile. He lands in the north with an army, claiming he has come back only for his stolen lands, not the crown. Northumberland and other angry lords flock to him. The Welsh forces wait, see omens of a dead king, and melt away. York, torn between loyalty and justice, gives up and stands aside. Richard returns from Ireland to find his support gone. Confident at first that God protects an anointed king, he collapses into despair the moment Scroop brings the news. He retreats to Flint Castle and, without a single blow struck, surrenders to his cousin.

In Westminster Hall, Bolingbroke presides as Richard hands over the crown in person. It is a long, painful scene. Richard narrates his own undoing, calls for a mirror to study his unchanged face, then smashes it on the floor. He is sent to the Tower, and then on to Pomfret Castle, while Bolingbroke is proclaimed King Henry IV. The Queen meets her husband one last time on a London street, and they part for France, agreeing to grieve apart.

The new reign begins under a shadow. A plot to assassinate Henry at Oxford is uncovered when York finds his own son Aumerle carrying the evidence. The Duchess of York throws herself at Henry’s feet, and he pardons the boy, though the other conspirators lose their heads. Meanwhile Henry mutters aloud that he wishes someone would rid him of “this living fear” — meaning Richard. A knight named Exton takes the words as an order.

Alone in his cell at Pomfret, Richard turns his thoughts over and over, making philosophy out of his ruin. A loyal groom brings him a small kindness and the bitter news that Bolingbroke rode Richard’s own horse through the coronation. When the keeper refuses him food, Richard’s patience snaps; he strikes out, and Exton and his men cut him down. He dies declaring his soul will rise even as his body sinks. Exton carries the coffin to Windsor, expecting thanks. Henry recoils in horror, disowns the murder, and vows a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to wash the blood from his hands. He holds the throne now, but he holds it stained — and the curse on it will run through the plays that follow.