His Majesty's Antic Disposition (Richard II, 3.2)

So fair and foul a day he had not seen.

Coming home after a major success at quashing the Irish rebellion, King Richard comes home to find out that his cousin Henry Bullingbrooke has returned from exile and has amassed a rapidly growing power.  Apparently, it is easier for the King to handle disturbances abroad than it is in his own home; or worse, in his own family.  As of right now, Richard is a King not without honor except in his own family.  He understands the nature of Henry (a subject for another post) and is very quick to throw in the towel.  Perhaps as quick as he was to throw down his warder in 1.3, before the duel between his cousin Henry and Mowbray--an interesting moment at which Richard basically announces his own death sentence.  If he had let the duel go through, instead of declaring the two men banished, then his cousin may not have been so inclined to topple him.  When Richard comes home to find out that his cousin has also come home, he realizes that any conquests brings he home from Ireland are basically all for naught.  Today is the day of doom: from Richard's poor night to Bullingbrooke's fair day.  What was gentle earth to Richard, is now barren earth.  Paste and cover to our bones.

A grave.

He shall not live.

Enough.

In light of this darkness, these are his words:

             For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
             And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
             How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
             Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
             Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
             All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
             That rounds the mortal temples of a king
             Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
             Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
             Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
             To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
             Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
             As if this flesh which walls about our life,
             Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
             Comes at the last and with a little pin
             Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

Like Isabella, here Richard articulates the transience of authority.  Of everything.  Nothing belongs to man.  Everything belongs to death.  Richard articulates this truth very sadly and prettily.  Death will scoff at the King's pomp, which will therefore feel what wretches feel.  Treasons that will make himself wish he were a beggar.  And so he will be.

The idea of sitting upon the ground, though.  That is very interesting.  The idea that the throne doesn't mean anything.  That ultimately, all men are doomed to the same seat: the earth.  I am not completely sure if Richard is completely humiliating himself here in the same way that Macbeth does when he says things like, "My dull brain was wrought with things forgotten," or when he makes light of his "strange infirmity," but it's close....

No more.

'Tis not so sweet as it was before.

Later, when Richard feels his death coming on and hears music, his response is very similar to that of another young, melodramatic nobleman, Orsino, in the midst of his heartache:

                                       ....how sour sweet music is,
             When time is broke and no proportion kept!
             So is it in the music of men's lives.

So let it be with Richard.