Exam Essay
Shakespeare’s Richard II, the Queen is presented the opportunity to eavesdrop on two gentlemen, which includes the guard and the servant. The Queen takes what’s presented to her and hides behind trees, possibly shrubs, and listens hoping to gossip about the King and his decisions.
The gardener talks about the present state of the king but uses a different, indirect method of mentioning it. He uses the garden as a metaphor in comparison to the state which the king ruled. The gardener says “…Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers chocked up, her fruit tress all unpruned, her hedges ruined.” The weeds in line 21 could be taken for the surrounding states. At one point, the gardener states how the weeds and wholesome herbs are swarming with caterpillars. These insects could be a metaphor for the unpopular opinions of the king, or the enforcement of some of his neighboring friends.
Finally the Queen comes back into play during the last stanza, where she burst out of the silent trees into reveling herself. She questions and tries to convince the men to tell her whether the statements are true or not. She responds to by questioning their harsh words and wonder if the King really is no longer ruling the land, just as the guard and servant mentioned before. Although the queen eventually caught on to the men’s metaphor’s, it was a clever way of breaking the news.
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