In Richard II by William Shakespeare, the queen hears a plethora of statements made by two commoners about her king. They describe the king’s decline in power and desire change, specifically equality. In the gardener’s first paragraph he says, “Give some supportance to the bending twigs,” and “Go thou, and like an executioner, cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays. All government must be equal.” The gardener demands support for the people that are bending over backwards for their king and are receiving nothing, and the wealthy that are depriving other commoners like him must be rooted away because they are “Sucking the land’s fertility from wholesome flowers.” The gardener and servant use weeds to describe blemishes in their kingdom just like how they blemish and taint a garden. The best points of society are being killed by these weeds because the king refuses to maintain his kingdom. The servant says “The whole land is full of weeds, her fairest flowers chocked up,” and “Her fruit tress all unpruned, her hedges ruined, her knots disordered and her wholesome herbs swarming with caterpillars.” The king’s laziness is costing him his country’s beauty.
The gardener continues to ridicule the king for not maintaining his land. He relates running a kingdom to trimming and dressing a garden; the king neglected to take care of anyone from the beginning so now he can never “taste their fruits of duty.” What is a king without loyal subjects? He is no one and that is why his status as king is jeopardy. He will most likely be deposed for disregarding the weeds in his garden.
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