Prior to his first confrontation with Henry Bolingbroke, Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of York, uses hyperbole in praising the King and offering him well-wishes. Mowbray greets the King, stating:
Each day still better other’s happiness
Until the heavens, envying earth’s good hap,
Add an immortal title to your crown.
Mowbray goes beyond a standard and polite expression of good fortune, instead grandly proclaiming that he desires for the King to receive happiness that increases each day until the sky, envying all this happiness on Earth, crowns Richard as an eternal monarch in heaven. His speech here stands in stark contrast to the relative modesty of Bolingbroke’s wish for the King to enjoy “many years of happy days.” His clear use of hyperbole establishes Mowbray as one of the many flatterers surrounding the King, something that Richard himself seems to recognize, stating:
We thank you both. Yet one but flatters us,
As well appeareth by the cause you come:
Namely, to appeal each other of high treason.
Richard seems to insinuate that Mowbray’s hyperbolic flattery was self-interested. In other words, Mowbray has attempted to sway the King, who is about to settle the legal dispute between Mowbray and Bolingbroke. The King, then, slyly implies that Mowbray’s flattery was a strategic error that is unsuitable for this serious occasion.
Thomas Mowbray hyperbolically suggests that his excitement at facing his opponent, Henry Bolingbroke, in their upcoming duel surpasses even that of a prisoner upon being released from prison. Speaking before Bolingbroke, the King, and a crowd of nobles, Mowbray states:
Never did captive with a freer heart
Cast off his chains of bondage and embrace
His golden uncontrolled enfranchisement
More than my dancing soul doth celebrate
This feast of battle with mine adversary.
His confident boast that “never” has any “captive” or prisoner “cast off his chains of bondage” with greater happiness than himself is a clear exaggeration. This hyperbolic claim casts the fear that might more commonly be associated with a duel—and the prospect of death at the hands of his opponent—as overwhelming excitement and joy. He claims that his “dancing soul doth celebrate” in hope of finally settling his dispute with Bolingbroke, who has accused him of misusing the Crown’s funds and, worse yet, of murdering the Duke of Gloucester, uncle to both the King and Bolingbroke.
In addition to minimizing his own anxiety, his hyperbole here equates his possible victory in the duel to a sense of release or “freedom” from the previous “bondage” of having been under suspicion for the murder of the Duke of Gloucester. In the medieval setting of the play, a victory in trial by combat is considered legally binding, and it would clear Mowbray's name both in the eyes of the law and the public.
Edmund of Langley, the Duke of York, uses hyperbole in praising the former King Edward. Speaking to his nephew, King Richard II, he states:
I am the last of noble Edward’s sons,
Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first.
In war was never lion raged more fierce,
In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,
Than was that young and princely gentleman.
The Duke of York hyperbolically claims that his brother, the former King, was fiercer in battle than any lion and more gentle in times of peace than any lamb. The Duke of York, then, is one of many characters in the play who praise the “noble” former King in superlative terms, emphasizing his extra-human greatness.
The Duke’s hyperbole is deeply strategic; in heaping praise upon the former King, he flatters his grandson, King Richard II, but he also highlights the bloodline that they all share as close relatives. His references to Edward’s conduct in battle remind Richard that the Duke of York was present throughout the former King’s reign, when Richard was just a child. The Duke, then, is a reliable authority on the leadership style of the former King, who is described throughout the play as a perfect model of virtue and governance. Richard, the Duke suggests, should follow in the footsteps of this positive role model by treating his enemies harshly, but his friends kindly. The Duke praises Edward hyperbolically to emphasize to Richard that he must change his ways in order to preserve his father’s legacy.
Green hyperbolizes the difficulty of the Duke of York’s task in pacifying the rebellious lords. Speaking frankly with his companions Bushy and Bagot after the departure of the Queen, he states:
Alas, poor duke, the task he undertakes
Is numb’ring sands and drinking oceans dry.
Where one on his side fights, thousands will fly.
Farewell at once, for once, for all, and ever
Here, Green exaggerates the difficulty of the Duke of York’s quest to repel the rebel army raised by Henry Bolingbroke. He presents this task as an impossible feat akin to “numb’ring sands,” or in other words, counting all of the individual grains of sand on a beach, which would clearly be impossible given their small size and great volume. He then describes a similarly unthinkable feat: “drinking oceans dry,” or in other words, drinking all of the water in the ocean. These are typical expressions of exaggeration, akin to the contemporary cliche “finding a needle in a haystack.”
He also uses hyperbole in describing the size of Bolingbroke’s army, claiming that “where one” fights on the side of the Duke of York, “thousands will fly” to the opposing rebels. While Bolingbroke’s army is, at this point in the story, growing rapidly as he gains allies throughout England, the King is not nearly as outnumbered as Green suggests. In this scene, then, Green distinguishes himself from his fellows Bushy and Bagot by his stark pessimism regarding the outcome of the rebellion.
