In the passage from Shakespeare’s Richard II, the Queen decides to eavesdrop on a conversation between two commoners, a servant and a gardener, in an attempt to learn more about the state of the King. Aided by the multitude of figurative language, which serves as a means to dramatize the situation, used by the commoners, the Queen will learn much about the state and of the King from eavesdropping from the shadows in which she hides.
The servants begin their conversation by talking about what they have to do to take care of the garden but then they slowly begin to transition into talking about the state using the garden as an extended metaphor. One of the servants orders the other to “cut the heads of too fast growing sprays that look too lofty for [their] commonwealth. The other responds by questioning why they have to “in the compass of a pale keep law and form and due proportion, showing… [their] firm estate” when it is “swarming with caterpillars.” That was the other servant’s way of asking why they were required to maintain order in their garden, rather within their social class, when the higher-ups became disordered. As the Queen listens in on the conversation, she learns that the King may soon be deposed and possibly “taken care of” just as “the weeds which his broad spreading leaves did shelter”, his allies the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy and Green, all of whom the country views as leeches that do nothing but suck up the nutrients of their country, by a man who goes by the name of Bolingbroke.
The figurative language used by the commoners successfully dramatized the King’s dire situation. For example, “He that hath suffer'd this disorder'd spring/Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf”, shows the use of using the seasons to describe the rise and fall of the King. Since spring is usually the birth, this means that the King had a disordered rise to power and now he will meet his fall from power with the fall of leaf, which is synonymous to autumn, a time a death. Also the use of the extended metaphor of a garden to represent the state adds to the dramatization of the King’s situation because as the King is clearly in a difficult spot, the imagery of weeds, insects and chaos in the garden adds the effect that nothing is going well. The use of the extensive figurative language by the commoners emphasizes the King’s dismal situation.
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