Barroll, Leeds. “A New History for Shakespeare and His Time.” Shakespeare Quarterly 39, No. 4 (Winter 1988): 441-64.

Suggests that some “confusions” exist within the field of “new historicism” and that these affect the endeavors to understand Shakespeare and his work within the context of the period in which he lived. Barroll examines Richard II within this framework, focusing specifically on the presentation of the play the night before the Earl of Essex's attempted rebellion against Queen Elizabeth, and on the attitude toward the theater under King James I.

Berger, Harry, Jr. “Ars Moriendi in Progress, or John of Gaunt and the Practice of Strategic Dying.” The Yale Journal of Criticism 1, No. 1 (Fall 1987): 39-65.

Examines Gaunt and his dying speech within the context of Gaunt's relationship to his son Bolingbroke, arguing that Gaunt's deathbed speech demonstrates his “shame and self-protectiveness” and reflects his desire to justify his own actions as well as to show up his son with his own patriotism.

Beringhausen, Thomas F. “Banishing Cain: The Garden Metaphor in Richard II and the Genesis Myth of the Origin of History.” Essays in Literature XIV, No. 1 (Spring 1987): 3-14.

Analyzes the rhetoric of the garden scene as well as the larger rhetorical issues related to the image of the “gardener-king.” Beringhausen demonstrates the ways in which the garden scene in the play is informed by the Biblical parallels to the Garden of Eden, as well as the origin myth found in Genesis; Adam, Beringhausen argues, represents ideal kingship, as the “gardener in the fallen world, while Cain “represents a kingship gone hopelessly awry.”

Jacobs, Henry E. “Prophecy and Ideology in Shakespeare's Richard II.” South Atlantic Review 51, No. 1 (January 1986): 3-17.

Maintains that the transition in Richard II, from Richard and an ordered, medieval worldview based in the rule of law to Bolingbroke and a view of power which is not based in the law, is paralleled throughout the play in smaller, more subtle developments in “language, action, and attitude.”

Kehler, Dorothea. “King of Tears: Mortality in Richard II.” Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 39, No. 1 (1985): 7-18.

Studies the “death-centered world” of Richard, arguing that our own fears of death often prevent us from thoroughly examining the sympathy Richard draws.

Luckacher, Ned. “Anamorphic Stuff: Shakespeare, Catharsis, Lacan.” South Atlantic Quarterly 88, No. 4 (Fall 1989): 863-98.

Argues that the play is organized around the issue of “cathartic purgation and clarification” and that Shakespeare employs a variety of tropes and figures, including those of the physician and patient, and king and country, in the development of the theme of catharsis.

Pye, Christopher. “The Betrayal of the Gaze: Theatricality and Power in Shakespeare's Richard II.” ELH 55, No. 3 (Fall 1988): 575-98.

Investigates the relationship between the power of kingship and theatricality in Richard II, focusing on the self-subversiveness of Richard's kingship.

Rackin, Phyllis. “The Role of the Audience in Shakespeare's Richard II.” Shakespeare Quarterly 36, No. 3 (Autumn 1985): 262-81.

Contends that the audience perceives the action of the play in two different ways. They are sometimes required to take a “long, historical view of the action” and are sometimes encouraged to see the action as “insistent, present reality.”

Schell, Edgar. “Richard II and Some Forms of Theatrical Time.” Comparative Drama 24, No. 3 (Fall 1990): 255-69.

Asserts that if the treatment of time in medieval and early Renaissance drama is properly understood, the contention that Bolingbroke mounts his armed return to England before he knows his father's lands have been seized by Richard must be reexamined. Schell explains that while later dramatic convention treated dramatic time as chronological, during the period in which Richard II was written, time schemes were “multiple and shifting.”