Cry woe, destruction, ruin, loss, decay;
The worst is death, and death will have his day."

Who does not hear Hamlet speaking in this memorable last line? Like
Hamlet, too, this Richard is quick to suspect even his friends' loyalty.
He guesses that Bagot, Bushy, and Green have made peace with
Bolingbroke, and when Scroop seems to admit this, Richard is as quick as
Hamlet to unpack his heart with words:

"O villains, vipers, damned without redemption!
Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!
Snakes,"

and so forth.

But as soon as he learns that his friends are dead he breaks out in a
long lament for them which ranges over everything from worms to kings,
and in its melancholy pessimism is the prototype of those meditations
which Shakespeare has put in the mouth of nearly all his favourite
characters. Who is not reminded of Hamlet's great monologue when he
reads:

"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,