Richard II | Criticism
- Overview
A.L. French analyzes the characters and structure of Richard II, maintaining that the play presents an inconsistent rendering of one of the key events in the play— the deposition of Richard. Author M. Charney explores the primary themes and characters in and comments on the relevancy of key scenes to events occurring in Shakespeare's England.
- Kingship
Richard II presents several aspects of kingship, including the notions of the legal right to rule as king, the divine right to rule, and the effectiveness of one's rule as king.
- Language, Imagery and Symbolism
The language of Richard II and the images and symbols it contains can help illuminate the significance of the play's themes.
- Richard
L. Potter asserts that Richard is often veiled as a sympathetic, virtuous character by the end of the play, despite his misdeeds. Potter argues, however, that Richard is in fact consistently ironic and duplicitous throughout the entire play. The second essay authored by J.R. Sublette traces Richard's systematic abuse of power throughout the play.
- Bollingbroke
In the following essays, Baines and Thayer both examine Bolingbroke's silence regarding the motivations for his actions. Baines argues that Shakespeare's sympathetic portrayal of Bolingbroke stresses that the dominant theme of the play is not Bolingbroke's ambition, but rather Richard's incompetence.
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