payment page
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!
(Act 3, scene 2, lines 165–75)
Richard addresses these lines to Aumerle, Scroop, and the Bishop of Carlisle near the end of the scene where he first realizes that he has lost his crown. This realization marks a key moment in the rising action of the play, leading to Richard’s official dethroning in act 4. However, it also marks a key moment in the development of Richard’s character, and in the play’s larger thematic concern with the divine right of kingship. These lines indicate a shift in Richard’s character insofar as they reflect an increasingly poetic and lyrical strain in his speech. Indeed, the conceit he introduces here demonstrates an intricacy that’s more often associated with Shakespeare’s contemporary, John Donne. Richard imagines Death as a king that lives inside the very crown he's worn throughout his reign. In this regard, Death is a greater king than Richard. So supreme a ruler is Death that “he” looks on the pathetic actions of the human king, who is filled with the “vain conceit” that he wields real power. Through this startling and strange image, Richard engages in a moment of radical self-awareness. Instead of truly ruling and commanding respect, he now sees that he’s done little more than “monarchize.”
Richard’s conceit of Death as the king who truly rules the crown is remarkable for its ingenuity, and it’s the first of several other equally daring conceits that he’ll present in the play’s concluding acts. This same conceit is also significant for the way it bears on the play’s thematic concern with the divine right of kingship. Throughout the first half of the play, Richard has insisted that his authority as king has been sanctified by God. He makes this claim earlier in this same scene, when he declaims: “Not all the water in the rough rude sea / Can wash the balm off from an anointed king. / The breath of worldly men cannot depose / The deputy elected by the Lord” (3.2.55–58). On the one hand, Richard’s conceit about Death is consistent with these lines. Death has the power to depose an anointed king precisely because he isn’t “worldly”—that is, he isn’t mortal. On the other hand, the figure of Death is not equal to God. Thus, if Death has the power to depose a king, it implicitly raises a question about whether kingship is indeed a divine right.
