why did the king get angry with the gardener?
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While Richard, Bolingbroke, and their respective allies have been having their fateful encounters in the west of England and in Wales, Queen Isabel has been staying at the house of the Duke of York (at Langley, not far from London). Although she has not yet heard the news of Richard's capture by Bolingbroke, sadness and foreboding weigh very heavily upon he. As she walks in the Duke's garden with her waiting-women, they try to cheer her up by suggesting of games, singing, dancing, and storytelling. The Queen rejects all these ideas, saying that making any attempt to forget her grief would only add to it.
An aged gardener and his assistant enter the garden to tend to some of the plants. At the Queen's suggestion, she and her ladies conceal themselves in the shadow of a grove to overhear what the men will discuss. She has noticed that the common folk have been discussing affairs of state, as if expecting an imminent change in the government.
The older gardener tells his assistant to bind an apricot tree against a wall, and the two then begin to talk about the state of the country, using the garden as a metaphor. Why, the assistant asks, should the two of them bother to maintain order within their garden, when the country surrounding it has been allowed to sprout weeds and be infested by insects (a reference to Richard's mismanagement and his unpopular advisors)? The elder gardener tells him to keep quiet, since the person who caused the country's disorder has "met with the fall of leaf" (49)--that is, King Richard has been overthrown. He informs the assistant that letters came last night to a friend of the Duke of York's, bearing the news that the King's allies-- Bushy, Greene, and the Earl of Wiltshire--are dead, and that King Richard himself has been caputed by Bolingbroke. It seems almost certain that the king will soon be removed from power.