Queen Isabella: The One Who Sees It Coming
First appears: Act 2, Scene 2
Richard's queen appears in Act 2, Scene 2 with a premonition of disaster she cannot name: 'some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb.' She is right. Northumberland arrives shortly after with news that Bolingbroke has landed in England. From that point, she is a witness to the fall of a husband she cannot save.
Her garden scene in Act 3, Scene 4 is among the play's most deliberate sequences: she overhears two gardeners discussing Richard's fall in the language of horticulture and statecraft simultaneously. It is artificial by design, and it works exactly because of that.
At their parting in Act 5, Scene 1, she asks Richard to resist, to rage against what is happening and not go quietly. He does not. He sends her back to France. It is the most honest exchange between them in the play, and the last.
Key Scenes
Famous Quotes
“Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb, is coming towards me.”
Queen Isabella — Act 2, Scene 2
“The lion dying thrusteth forth his paw and wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage to be o'erpowered; and wilt thou, pupil-like, take the correction?”
Queen Isabella — Act 5, Scene 1