ABSTRACT
The first of several Biblical allusions in Shakespeare’s Richard II comes at the midpoint of the play’s opening scene when Henry Bolingbroke accuses Thomas Mowbray of murdering the Duke of Gloucester: That he did plot the Duke of Gloucester’s death, Suggest his soon-believing adversaries, And consequently, like a traitor coward, Sluiced out his innocent soul through streams of blood: Which blood, like sacrificing Abel’s, cries, Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth, To me for justice and rough chastisement; And, by the glorious worth of my descent, This arm shall do it, or this life be spent. (1.1.100–8) 1
