Richard II (Vol. 39) | H. M. Richmond (essay date 1967)
H. M. Richmond (essay date 1967)
SOURCE: "Richard II," in Shakespeare 's Political Plays, Random House, 1967, pp. 123-40.
[In the following excerpt, Richmond demonstrates a shift from the medieval notion of kingship represented by Richard to the early modern idea of kingship represented by Bolingbroke.]
Richard II may be related to King John by its deliberate choice of yet another reign whose erratic character invited an ambiguous response in Elizabethan Englishmen, like the "saintly" incompetence of Henry VI's administration, or the feebly crafty yet anti-papal orientation of John's. The play also achieves a more exciting recombination of the political resources previously shared between John and the Bastard, which are now shown to be not in alliance but in opposition. John's cunning and the Bastard's pragmatic political sense fall to the lot of Bolingbroke, while the verve and rhetorical color of the Bastard...
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