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Go, bind thou up young dangling apricokes
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.—
Go thou, and like an executioner
Cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays
That look too lofty in our commonwealth.
All must be even in our government.
You thus employed, I will go root away
The noisome weeds which without profit suck
The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.
(Act 3, scene 4, lines 32–42)
The final scene of act 3 takes place in the garden of the Duke of York’s estate. Queen Isabel, who is being held on this estate, seeks distracting entertainments from her ladies-in-waiting. When the aging gardener and his assistant appear, she hides away hoping to hear them gossip about affairs of state. The first words she hears are these, which belong to the gardener. His words conjure a vision of the garden as a microcosm of England. The gardener suggests this symbolic connection when instructing his assistant to “bind . . . up young dangling apricokes / Which, like unruly children, make their sire / Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.” The heavy apricots cause the boughs to bend under the “oppression” of their weight. Likewise, the kingdom’s courtiers—those “unruly children” who place too-heavy a burden on the king’s coffers—oppress their “sire”: the kingdom itself. The gardener then extends this symbolism by telling his assistant to act as the “executioner,” “cut[ting] off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays” and “root[ing] away / The noisome weeds.” If these suggestive words don’t give illuminate the political symbolism, the gardener’s explicit references to “our commonwealth” and “our government” surely do.
The gardener’s metaphor of the garden-as-state is significant for a couple of reasons. First, it harkens back to two previous speeches that commented on the state of the kingdom through references to the land: John of Gaunt’s deathbed speech in act 2, scene 1, and Richard’s salute to England upon his return from Ireland in act 3, scene 2. In particular, the gardener’s metaphor echoes Gaunt’s speech, which emphasizes the desecration of the English landscape. Similarly, the gardener focuses on the parts of the garden that have become problematic and hence need tidying up. The gardener’s metaphor is also significant for the way it reflects the point of view of a commoner rather than a member of the nobility. Even common folks can see that Richard has failed as a king. Indeed, the gardener’s assistant makes this argument even more explicitly when he refers to England as “our sea-wallèd garden” with “Her fruit trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined, / Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs / Swarming with caterpillars” (3.4.46, 48–50). The assistant is complaining about Richard’s leasing of crown lands, his unfair taxation schemes, and the voracious “caterpillars” of the court.
