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I

Shakespeare takes care throughout Richard II to stress familial relationships, not only, as one would expect, to establish who the characters are, but more pointedly to emphasize the bonds and the power struggles of their interaction. This is so from the very beginning of the play, when Richard refers to Henry as Gaunt's son, and a few lines later, when Richard establishes his own relationship with Henry in emphatic and convoluted terms, the effect of which is to make the relationship seem even closer than it is, to make Bullingbrook and Richard more like brothers than cousins:

Were he my brother, nay, my kingdom's heir,
As he is but my father's brother's son, …
                                (I.i.l16-17)

The Duchess of Gloucester similarly exaggerates the closeness of relationship when she is effect equates the crimes of patricide and fratricide,...

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1. Introduction
2. I
3. Ii
4. Iii
5. Copyright