"Of comfort no man speak: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth. Let's choose executors, and talk of wills: . . . . . . . . For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings:--How some have been depos'd, some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd. Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd, All murder'd:--for within the hollow crown, That rounds the mortal temples of a king, Keeps Death his court, and there the antick sits, Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchise, be fear'd, and kill with looks" (iii. 2). In these moods of depression, in which Richard gives his wit and intellect free play, he knows very well that a king is only a human being like any one else:-- "For you have but mistook me all this while: I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, Need friends. Subjected thus, How can you say to me, I am a king?" (iii. 2). But at other times, when his sense of majesty and his monarchical fanaticism master him, he speaks in a quite different tone:-- "Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm from an anointed king; The breath of worldly men cannot depose The deputy elected by the Lord. For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd, To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown, God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay A glorious angel" (iii. 2). Thus, too, at their first meeting (iii. 3) he addresses the victorious Henry of Hereford, to whom he immediately after "debases himself":-- "My master, God omnipotent. Is mustering in his clouds on our behalf Armies of pestilence; and they shall strike Your children yet unborn, and unbegot, That lift your vassal hands against my head, And threat the glory of my precious crown." Many centuries after Richard, King Frederick William IV. of Prussia displayed just the same mingling of intellectuality, superstition, despondency, monarchical arrogance, and fondness for declamation. In the fourth and fifth acts, the character of Richard and the poet's art rise to their highest point. The scene in which the groom, who alone has remained faithful to the fallen King, visits him in his dungeon, is one of penetrating beauty. What can be more touching than his description of how the "roan Barbary," which had been Richard's favourite horse, carried Henry of Lancaster on his entry into London, "so proudly as if he had disdained the ground." The Arab steed here symbolises with fine simplicity the attitude of all those who had sunned themselves in the prosperity of the now fallen King.