Richard II

In the deposition scene (4.1), Richard asks for a mirror. He wishes to use it in a process of self-examination, and the mirror becomes a symbol both of truth and falsity in The Crisis of Identity he is experiencing. At the surface level, Richard looks just the same as before he lost the crown, and as he gazes at his reflection, he asks, “No deeper wrinkles yet? hath sorrow struck / So many blows upon this face of mine / And made no deeper wounds?” (4.1.277-79). The mirror does not tell him what he feels is true and what he wishes to know—the “book […] that’s myself” (4.1.274-75), and in that sense it presents a false image. Richard knows very well he is no longer what he was: Bolingbroke has eclipsed (“Outfac’d” [4.1.286]) him.

He is also bitterly aware of the transience of the time in which glory shone in his appearance: “A brittle glory shineth in this face; / As brittle as the glory is the face” (4.1.287-88). The glory proved to be less solid, more easily breakable, than he had imagined. However, the mirror can be made to conform to or symbolize reality, which Richard accomplishes by throwing it to the ground and smashing it. “How soon my sorrow hath destroy’d my face” (4.1.291) he then says. When Bolingbroke points out that the mirror is not the reality, and that the “shadow of your sorrow has destroy’d / The shadow of your face” (4.1.292-93), Richard admits the truth of this: “My grief lies all within” (4.1.295). The shattered mirror thus serves as a symbol of this immense inner pain, the anguish of a broken self.