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And if you crown him, let me prophesy
The blood of English shall manure the ground
And future ages groan for this foul act,
Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels,
And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars
Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound.
Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny
Shall here inhabit, and this land be called
The field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls.
O, if you raise this house against this house,
It will the woefullest division prove
That ever fell upon this cursèd earth!
Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so,
Lest child, child’s children, cry against you woe!
(Act 4, scene 1, lines 142–55)
These powerful lines are spoken by a relatively minor character, and one of the few who continue to support Richard even after Bolingbroke’s evident victory: the Bishop of Carlisle. Carlisle addresses these words to Bolingbroke following the latter’s declaration: “In God’s name, I’ll ascend the regal throne” (4.1.119). Strenuously opposing the deposition of the man he believes to be the rightful king, Carlisle issues an apocalyptic prophecy of what will result if Bolingbroke goes through with his plans. In his chilling vision, Carlisle predicts a blood-soaked England dominated by “disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny.” Most frightening of all is the vision he proffers of civil violence: “tumultuous wars” that will “kin with kin and kind with kind confound.” After intoning these words with the solemnity of an Old Testament prophet, Carlisle concludes by warning that if Bolingbroke doesn’t desist, his family will be cursed for generations to come.
In a play that is otherwise packed with prophecies and curses, Carlisle’s stands out for the way it laces its biblical gravitas with classical allusion. Early modern audiences who were at all familiar with Greek mythology would likely have known about the multigenerational curse associated with the House of Atreus. This curse began when King Tantalus tested the gods’ omniscience by inviting them to dinner and serving them a stew prepared with the flesh of his own son, Pelops. The gods, in their disgust, punished Tantalus and resurrected Pelops. But the lineage was already cursed, as Pelops would discover when his twin sons, Atreus and Thyestes, collaborate with their mother to murder his favored son, Chrysippus. Thus begins several generations of corruption, betrayal, and murder. The curse that Carlisle utters at the end of his speech strongly recalls this horrific example from antiquity. And like most prophesies and curses that appear in Shakespeare this one comes to fruition—albeit not in as dramatic a fashion as suggested by Carlisle. Nonetheless, as the sequels to Richard II demonstrate, England will continue to suffer from ongoing civil war throughout Bolingbroke’s reign as King Henry IV.
