Part One: Text

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Last Updated August 15, 2024.

SOURCE: “Part One: Text,” in Richard II: Text and Performance, Macmillan Education, 1987, pp. 13-47.

[In the following essay, Page reviews the themes, structure, and plot of Richard II and comments on issues related to the staging and performance of the play.]

1. INTRODUCTION

Richard II begins in the middle: no Chorus, as in Henry V; no explanatory talk among waiting Gentlemen. This could easily be Richard II, Part II, particularly if we know that Richard has already been king for 21 years when the play begins. Instead of any setting of scene and situation, the king is seen presiding while two nobles quarrel cryptically. We cannot tell who is right and who is wrong in the argument, who is lying or whether both are. Our inability to grasp the issues forces our attention on the king, on his way of dealing with troublesome subjects.

Does Shakespeare intend to puzzle spectators with this bitter argument about complicity in the murder of the Duke of Gloucester, the king's uncle? Or does he assume that the first audiences in 1595 brought knowledge lacking in audiences now? Shakespeare here seems to expect spectators to know that Gloucester was killed, directly or indirectly, on the king's orders and that Mowbray is implicated. Audience members who had seen the anonymous play, Woodstock, probably staged a little earlier, would know all about the murder of Gloucester. When Richard's involvement is finally mentioned by John of Gaunt, ‘Correction lieth in those hands / Which made the fault that we cannot correct’ [I. ii 4-5], the reference is too oblique to be readily grasped.

The problem of adequately informing audiences of the situation at the start was alleviated at the Bristol Old Vic in 1985 by playing the second scene first, spotlighting Mowbray, Bolingbroke and York when they are named.

Another difficulty initially is that Bolingbroke is also referred to as Hereford (sometimes ‘Herford’ in the Quarto and Folio texts, which gives the usual pronunciation as two syllables), Mowbray is also Norfolk, John of Gaunt is also Lancaster and the dead Gloucester is also Woodstock (these can give as much initial difficulty as the multiplicity of names in Chekhov's plays). Shakespeare spelt Bolingbroke ‘Bullingbrooke’ and the recent Riverside and New Cambridge editions have returned to authenticity (but for the final ‘e’) at the risk of creating confusion. Titles are important: for instance, Bolingbroke on his return in II.iii says ‘As I was banished, I was banished Hereford; / But as I come, I come for Lancaster’ [112-13]. A Duke receives a new title: ‘We create … Our uncle York Lord Governor of England’ [II. i 219-20]. Aumerle's title is reduced to a lesser one: ‘Aumerle that was; … And, madam, you must call him Rutland now’ [V. ii 41, 43]. Titles matter because the characters ‘exist by virtue of their names and titles rather than as individual beings; and like [Richard] express themselves in prescribed forms and set rhetorical figures which mask direct personal response. The being of the man resides in his name. … Apart from their formal titles they are nothing’ (James Winny, The Player King, pp. 48-9). Andrew Gurr stresses the implications of the use of different titles: ‘Names work in their context as an index of value and a register of order. … When names lose stability, language is equally unstable’ (New Cambridge edn, 1984, pp. 33, 34). Nevertheless, prompt copies show that recent productions often deal with the audience's difficulty by changing the text and always using the better-known name.

This opening scene shows us the king and the nobility, an all-male world. The young king, with only old John of Gaunt as a counsellor, is faced with disrespectful yet powerful courtiers. Eloquent words half-conceal both the issues and the true nature of the men. Procedures are formal, with kneeling and the throwing down of gages: the play will feature dignified ritual more than action throughout. The quarrel is not resolved: Richard finally orders the duel, which will provide ‘justice’ [203]. We know we are in a medieval world, remote to the first Elizabethan audiences of the play, as well as to us. Formality just conceals the actual passionate hates—the play's underlying themes of power and principles are already emerging.

The first scene is a formal court occasion with the stage filled with ‘other nobles’ and ‘attendants’; the king probably wears his crown. The second scene is domestic, with only two characters. This is the pattern, the alternation of formal and informal scenes, and of long and short ones. Though Dover Wilson writes that it ‘should be played throughout as ritual’ (New Shakespeare, [Cambridge, 1939], p. xiii) some scenes are clearly casual and small scale.

Structurally, the play moves forward in four parts: Richard as king [I. i to III. iii]; the transference of power [III. iii and III. iv]; the deposition [IV. i] and Bolingbroke as king [V]. While the play advances from one king to his successor, events are repeated so the drama can almost be seen as circular. In the first act Richard struggles to deal with his violently-quarrelling nobles and in IV. i Bolingbroke has to cope with exactly the same problem. Richard II begins with a king to some degree responsible for a murder and ends with the new king also partly responsible for the killing of his predecessor. Richard is faced with plots and rebellions; so is Bolingbroke in both V. iii and V. vi.

The verse of the opening scene from time to time switches to rhyme [41-7, 82-3, 122-3, 150-1, 154-95, 200-5]. While some argue that these lines show the characters' prepared speeches, in contrast to spontaneity, the point seems more Shakespeare experimenting, wondering whether the tradition of rhyme is compatible with his kind of tragedy.

This first scene introduces such themes as pride in being English [66, 94]. The four elements are all mentioned in the opening lines: ‘deaf as the sea, hasty as fire’ [19], ‘the heavens, envying earth's good hap’ [23] and ‘sky’ [41]. The continuing pattern is that ‘Richard, the sun-king of fire, contends with Bullingbrook, the flood. Their stormy conflict drowns Richard's fire in the water of tears and changes Bullingbrook into the sun’ (Gurr, New Cambridge edn, p. 23). Richard's end is burial, in earth. Most conspicuous in scene one is blood (nine mentions, and ‘bleed’ and ‘bleeding’) and the humour of blood combines fire and water. Blood connotes the noble birth of Richard and the aristocrats at court and also the blood of murder, conflict and battle, the fear of bloodshed staining the fair earth of England.

2. RICHARD: MAN AND KING

ACT I—ACT II 1: RICHARD'S MISTAKES AND CRIMES

The opening exchange of the play between king and subject shows the traditional and appropriate relationship. Richard reminds John of Gaunt of ‘oath and band’ (‘band’ is a form of ‘bond’) in the second line and Gaunt answers ‘my liege’ [7] (Richard is entitled to receive allegiance, even from an elderly member of the royal family). A violent quarrel, stage-managed by the apparently all-powerful monarch, follows.

Richard faces a difficult problem in resolving the quarrel. Bolingbroke is his cousin and a member of the royal family, another descendant of Edward III. Mowbray knows of Richard's involvement in the murder of Gloucester and could incriminate the king. Bolingbroke and Mowbray are both noblemen and invoke a tradition of chivalry which challenges the royal authority Richard wants to exercise. Bolingbroke invokes ‘all the rites of knighthood’ [76] and Mowbray similarly:

                                                                                By that sword I swear
Which gently laid my knighthood on my shoulder,
I'll answer thee in any fair degree
Or chivalrous design of knightly trial

[78-81]

The old chivalric code of the nobility is set against the new style absolutism of the king.

Richard, as king and man, conducts himself well at first, questioning carefully in five of his first six speeches, asserting his impartiality [115], promising freedom of speech [123] and seeking a peaceful solution: ‘Let's purge this choler without shedding blood’ [153]. He spoils his effect by adding a half-hearted, self-conscious joke, ‘Our doctors say this is no month to bleed’ [157].

Derek Jacobi, who played the king for television, explains the actor's difficulty at the beginning of the play: ‘Shakespeare hasn't really given any indication from Richard's point of view that he actually saw that the murder [of Gloucester] was done. If you're playing Richard you have to decide “Did I do it or didn't I?” and inform the lines from there. The first scene is frightfully difficult—it's so sketchy for Richard. He doesn't say very much and what he says is frightfully kingly and public, but the man's got a lot to hide and a lot to lose and a lot to gain from the situation, and it's completely understated by Shakespeare' (BBC TV edn, pp. 22-3).

Richard completely changes his mind and orders trial by combat instead, contradicting his aim of avoiding bloodshed. On the personal level, he shows his impulsive side. On the political level, he has abandoned his authority and permitted the old chivalric practice.

Richard, the king, and a medieval king, ‘is in perfect accord with this pageant-like ritual. He is the spire of court ceremony; he is on display as an incarnation of the anointed king’ (Travis Bogard, ‘Shakespeare's Second Richard’, PMLA, 70, 1955, p. 202). Already we start to doubt whether the man wielding all this authority deserves to, whether he is wielding it intelligently.

Not only is the switch to decision by duel arbitrary, this way of settling disputes may be questioned by Elizabethans as well as by ourselves. Diane Borstein notes the 16th-century argument between anti-duel Christian humanists and pro-duel supporters of a neochivalric cult of honour. She aligns the writer with the former, so that, by the end of I. i, ‘Shakespeare shows the king to have an attitude that is presumptuous, unjust, unpatriotic, and un-English. … Richard expects God to perform a miracle on demand. On the contrary, John of Gaunt states that it is necessary to leave a quarrel “to the will of heaven / Who, when they see the hours ripe on earth, / Will rain hot vengeance on offenders' heads” [I. ii 6-8]’ (‘Trial by Combat and Official Irresponsibility in Richard II,Shakespeare Studies, 8, 1975, pp. 131-41).

When the day of the duel arrives [I. iii], Richard presides with dignity and formality, until, at the last possible moment, he halts the combat. He delays so long, in fact, that perhaps he seeks a dramatic effect. Again he has abruptly changed his mind, or, worse, planned his effect from the start, as John Palmer suspects: ‘For him the whole elaborate to-do, with its heralds and trumpets, solemn appeals to heaven, ceremonious farewells and heroic attitudes, was matter for a May morning. He knows that these doughty champions are inflating themselves to no purpose. The actor playing Richard should watch them with a twinkle, impishly awaiting the moment when he will knock the bottom out of all these political high jinks. … The whole scene is in the nature of a practical joke’ (Political Characters of Shakespeare, [London, 1945], p. 131).

Though the way in which the duel is stopped may be theatrical, the motive appears worthy: ‘That our kingdom's earth should not be soiled / With that dear blood which it hath fostered’ [125-6]. Even here, Richard may be insincere: ‘The tortuously long sentence [123-39], the involved construction, the piled-up relative clauses, the pronouns with ambiguous antecedents, the excess of hyphenated adjectives, all go to show how a poetically gifted but mentally dishonest and frightened man expresses himself when he opens his mouth and lets what will come come. Examine the speech, and it falls to pieces like the pack of—words it is’ (Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, [Chicago, 1951], p. 151).

Richard follows with more questionable decisions, blunders, misjudgements. He exiles Bolingbroke for ten years, Mowbray for life: unequal punishments for no sound reason. Alec Guinness in the role dwelt with ‘conscious pleasure’ on the ‘sly slow hours’ and ‘the dateless limit of thy dear exile’ [150-1]. When Mowbray protests, ‘Richard's tone changes to summary condemnation. Richard is, in fact, making a poem out of the idea of perpetual banishment. Of [Mowbray] as a person he simply does not think at all’ (Harold Hobson, Theatre, 1948, p. 168). As Mowbray starts to go, Richard—impulsive again—demands that both men swear an oath that they never will meet ‘To plot, contrive, or complot any ill / 'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land’ [189-90]—which might just be putting an idea into their minds! A fourth startlingly abrupt decision follows: because John of Gaunt looks so ‘grieved’ and ‘sad’ [209] at the exiling of his son, the sentence is cut to six years.

In the next scene, for the first time Richard is off-duty, with friends. His first question is about Bolingbroke's departure. He shows no interest in Mowbray and we may start to suspect that he was less impartial than he claimed to be. Richard then describes Bolingbroke's ‘courtship to the common people’ [24]. While this may be very calculating on the part of the ambitious Bolingbroke, common people ourselves, we wonder about a king who speaks contemptuously of his subjects as ‘slaves’ [27]. ‘Poor craftsmen,’ ‘oyster-wenches’ and ‘draymen’ [28-32] are Richard's countrymen too, though rarely mentioned in the play. Then Green has to prompt Richard to remember ‘the rebels which stand out in Ireland’ [38] and Richard makes what may well be yet another impulsive decision to lead the army against the rebels himself. By now, late in the first act, we are dubious about Richard's character and the quality of his decision-making. He moves to more overtly immoral acts, tax-farming and ‘blank charters’ for use against the rich. When news comes that John of Gaunt is grievous sick, Richard's response is startlingly callous: may he die quickly so that his wealth can be used to help finance his war. However strong Richard's sense of the grandeur of kingship, he has few abilities in dealing with everyday political and personal realities and his morality is also severely questioned.

Richard visits the dying Gaunt in II. i and, criticised by him, speaks brutally to the old man, ‘a lunatic lean-witted fool’ [115]. As soon as Gaunt's death is reported to him, Richard illegally seizes his lands and goods, acting against the very laws of inheritance which gave him the throne, stating ‘The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he. / His time is spent, our pilgrimage must be’ [II. i 153-4]. This is flippant doggerel. He continues ‘Now for our Irish wars’: his immediate pilgrimage is not a religious one, but in a dubious cause. When York protests at Richard taking Gaunt's inheritance, he is rudely dismissive: ‘Why, uncle, what's the matter?’ [186]. Two minutes later—unpredictable and perverse again—the king appoints York as Lord Governor during his absence in Ireland. At worst, this is indifference to the fate of England; at best, a political gamble, an attempt to ensure York's continued loyalty. Richard sets off for Ireland, a king whose every act has shown him unworthy to be a king.

Richard is away in Ireland for a time. We never learn whether taking command personally is responsible or—given the troubles he leaves behind in England—irresponsible. That his decision to go is a whim casts doubt on the expedition. Neither do we ever hear whether or not he is victorious. He returns to an England occupied by Bolingbroke. He may return a changed man, as John Neville, playing the role at the Old Vic in 1955, found: ‘The difficulty for the actor playing the King is the fact that there are two different characters. As he appears in the first part of the play; then, he goes away to Ireland, there's a pause, and he's not on a great deal. Then he comes back to England and appears to be a very different kind of character. We quite blatantly made no attempt to link the two; he came back from Ireland a different man, that is what he was, and that's the way we played it’ (Acting in the Sixties, ed. Hal Burton, [BBC, 1970], p. 101).

III 111: UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

In III. i Bolingbroke acted like a ruler in ordering executions; and at the end of III. ii Richard discharged his followers. The rising Bolingbroke meets the falling Richard at Flint Castle. As audience we wonder how they will behave in a situation new and awkward for both, reversing the power-structure seen in I. iii, when the king banished Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke is supported by the tough Northumberland, York, still uneasy at changing sides, and Percy, a new arrival, showing the rebels' strength growing. King Richard's supporters are Aumerle and three men who do not speak in the scene: the Bishop of Carlisle (the Church supports Richard; his opponents do not include any churchmen), Scroop and Salisbury. Bolingbroke is outside the castle as though laying siege. Richard is within the ‘lime and stone … of that ancient castle’ [26, 31] but the battlements are ‘tattered’ [52] (but the word may mean ‘having pointed projections’). In staging the scene, Bolingbroke and his party are first separate from the castle and his army marches across the stage [51]. Bolingbroke's trumpets outside are answered by Richard's from inside. When Richard appears he is on the balcony of the stage. By line 176 the space is no longer outside the castle, but in its lower courtyard. Richard's ‘Down, down I come’ [178] in an Elizabethan theatre would require him to go out of sight to descend a staircase; in modern theatres more effectively he can stay in view, walking slowly down as he speaks.

Bolingbroke at the start appears totally assured, while not intending unnecessary disrespect to Richard. When he says of the castle, ‘Royally? Why, it contains no king’ [23] he probably does not know Richard is close, though the Marlowe Society Actor's firm intonation1 shows that Bolingbroke no longer recognises Richard as king, any more than Northumberland has done at line 6. Bolingbroke's public message to Richard is of allegiance, on two conditions: ‘My banishment repealed / And lands restored again’ [40-1]. Keith Michell speaks these lines respectfully but the Marlowe Society actor leaves doubt about Bolingbroke's sincerity: maybe he, as well as Richard, is an actor. His threat, ‘I'll use the advantage of my power / And lay the summer's dust with showers of blood’ [42-3] is much fiercer than Michell's; he commands ‘Go signify as much’ [49]; his ‘Let's march without the noise of threatening drum’ [51] is calculating, not an honest sign that he wants peace. Bolingbroke as usual is quite direct, while Richard loves words and images for their own sake.

Richard appears splendidly dressed, wearing his crown and probably a sun emblem above—a scene especially effective in open-air performance at Ludlow Castle. He looks ‘like a king’, as York observes [68], but it is ‘so fair a show’ [71]. Richard as usual is attractive but superficial: while looking like a king he does not behave or govern like one. Yet Richard's first response is formal and convincing; he assumes the sanctity of the monarch as a law of nature. He describes the aid given him by God, then breaks off when he sees Bolingbroke and rushes ahead of the actual situation in assuming battle is intended. Bolingbroke contrasted ‘blood’ and ‘crimson’ with ‘green’, ‘grassy’ England [43-50] and Richard develops this at greater length: ‘purple’, ‘bleeding’, ‘scarlet’ and ‘blood’ versus ‘flower’ and ‘grass’ [94-100].

Northumberland replies formally in his role as envoy. Carefully, he draws on traditional reverences, while urging subject's rights, pointing out that Bolingbroke is also of royal descent (‘by the royalties of both your bloods,’ [97]). As Northumberland has just refused to kneel to Richard, we may be sceptical when he says Bolingbroke begs ‘on his knees’ [114].

King Richard immediately accepts Bolingbroke's demands, surprisingly. His next words are as an intimate friend to Aumerle, who advises playing for time. Richard invokes God, meaningful for him, not a thoughtless oath:

O God, O God, that e'er this tongue of mine,
That laid the sentence of dread banishment
On yon proud man, should take it off again

[132-4]

                                                                                          Must he lose
The name of King? A God's name, let it go.

[145-6]

(Brian Bedford, who played the part at Stratford, Ontario, in 1983, remarks: ‘The relation between Richard II and God is probably the most important in that play. Being stripped of everything, he begins to see who he is, and consequently begins to see what God is’; Keith Garebian, ‘The Dramatic Art of Brian Bedford’, Performing Arts in Canada, Winter 1983, p. 36). Richard sinks into misery, switching to the first person singular, ‘O that I were as great / As is my grief’ [136-37], admittedly speaking only to Aumerle. Richard's moan is interrupted by Aumerle's effort to force him back to the urgency of the situation, ‘Northumberland comes back from Bolingbroke’ [142].

Incredibly, Richard gives up everything. He has not been asked to abdicate but states that he submits to deposition. By assuming this, he causes it: he has lost his grip on reality. Four lines of renouncing the throne lead to thirteen lines of lament, addressed to Northumberland, the least sympathetic person there. Aumerle weeps and Richard develops a conceit about tears for ten more lines, till laughter from someone finally reminds him of the situation. His tone is forceful as he speaks publicly but he has submitted to ‘King Bolingbroke’ [173]. His tone is cold and contemptuous: we may find that he sounds foolish.

Northumberland, now confident in his disrespect, coolly asks the king to come down to meet his visitor. Richard obeys, with a loud, passionate lament, almost the owls' shriek he mentions (by both Gielgud and Redgrave), ‘like a frantic man’, in Northumberland's phrase [185].

Richard comes down literally and symbolically, yet the balance of power is still shaky. Cautiously, Bolingbroke kneels and orders his followers to do so. They may be kneeling to the crown rather than to the wearer, and Nigel Davenport (Bolingbroke to Redgrave's Richard) puts irony into ‘my gracious lord’ [189]. Bolingbroke may indeed be deliberately overdoing a calculated pseudo-respect when he repeats this form of address [196] and just after, uses ‘my most redoubted lord’ [198].

Richard here for once manages to speak briefly and to the point, touching the crown as he tells Bolingbroke ‘Your heart is up, I know, / Thus high at least,’ [194-5]. Bolingbroke is still negotiating with the ambiguous ‘I come but for mine own’ [196]; Richard has given up, ‘I am yours and all’ [197]—self-pitying, self-dramatising and first person singular. At this point—unlike most of the deposition scene—Bolingbroke looks the worthier human being, as well as the more impressive leader. Richard retrieves dignity when he consoles the weeping York (contrasting with his indulging Aumerle's tears a little earlier) and accepts the realities of Bolingbroke's determination (he knows ‘the strongest and the surest way to get,’ [201]) and larger army: ‘do we must what force will have us do’ [207]. Richard, still wearing the crown, leads the way out, but he is escorted, almost a prisoner. He may manage a little last joke, as well as weary acceptance, with ‘Then I must not say no’ [209].

Richard can be seen in this episode as so much a medieval monarch, so dependent on ceremony and tradition, that he turns his submission into a ceremony, appearing in all his glory on high, an English roi soleil, then descending so spectacularly that he distracts us from seeing him as merely obeying the orders of Northumberland. Though Richard may be governed by the nature of kingship, a particularised human being is drawn for us.

If Richard is perceived in this scene more as an individual than as a king, or rather as an individual inadequately coping with the role of king, we will prefer Ernest Dowden's view;

His feelings live in the world of phenomena, and altogether fail to lay hold of things as they are; they have no consistency and no continuity. … He is at the mercy of every chance impulse and transitory mood. He has a kind of artistic relation to life, without being an artist. … Richard, to whom all things are unreal, has a fine feeling for ‘situations.’ Without true kingly strength or dignity, he has a fine feeling for the royal situation. Without any making real to himself what God or what death is, he can put himself, if need be, in the appropriate attitude towards God and towards death. Instead of comprehending things as they are, and achieving heroic deeds, he satiates his heart with the grace, the tenderness, the beauty or the pathos of situations. Life is to Richard a show, a succession of images; and to put himself into accord with the aesthetic requirements of his position is Richard's first necessity. He is equal to playing any part gracefully which he is called upon by circumstances to enact. But when he has exhausted the aesthetic satisfaction to be derived from the situations of his life, he is left with nothing further to do

(Shakspere, A Critical Study of His Mind and Art [London, 1875], pp. 194-5).

This description catches the Richard who sees the loss of his kingdom as the occasion for luxuriating in self-pity.

The key issue in Richard's failure in this scene is that he gives up, not only without a fight, but without taking time to bargain. In part this is the arrogance of a king, even of a king with few followers left, refusing to bargain with a subject. He does not seek time to think or seek advice; he surrenders his kingdom to a man who claims he only wants his inheritance. This is folly and stupidity; Richard is unable to handle a situation he has never faced before.

IV 1: DEPOSITION

Act IV contains Bolingbroke's assumption of the throne and Richard's renunciation of kingship. This scene too is a formal ceremony, in parliament. York begins it

Great Duke of Lancaster, I come to thee
From plume-plucked Richard, who with willing soul
Adopts thee heir, and his high sceptre yields
To the possession of thy royal hand.
Ascend his throne, descending now from him,
And long live Henry, fourth of that name!

Bolingbroke goes to sit on the throne, ‘In God's name I'll ascend the regal throne’ [107-13]. The ceremony is at once interrupted, with a protest by the Bishop of Carlisle. He is silenced and Richard brought in. Richard stages a symbolic pantomime, with Bolingbroke's hand and his on the crown. As Alec Guinness played it: ‘Balancing it lightly in his fingers, an inch from the usurper's nose, he says gently and with infinite scorn: “Here, cousin—seize the crown” [181]. The eyes spoke most compellingly as the actor dwelt, with pensive irony, on the long “ee” of “seize”’ (Kenneth Tynan, A View of the English Stage, [London, 1975], p. 62). When Bolingbroke asks ‘Are you contented to resign the crown?’ Richard answers ‘Ay, no. No, ay’ [199-200], the essence of his indecision, his ‘To be or not to be’. As Richard knows the reality of Bolingbroke's power, the wavering is part of his calculated performance. Finally he hands over crown and sceptre:

I give this heavy weight from off my head,
And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,
The pride of kingly sway from out my heart.
With mine own tears I wash away my balm
                                                            (balm = consecrated oil)
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duteous oaths.

[203-9]

Richard turns his deposition into a kind of unholy rite, a reverse coronation; as he leaves, Bolingbroke announces, ‘On Wednesday next we solemnly proclaim / Our coronation’ [318-19].

‘The Form and Order of Her Majesty's Coronation’ in 1953 is remarkably similar to the 14th-century coronation. The ceremony begins with the Recognition, when the Archbishop of Canterbury says: ‘Sirs, I here present unto you Queen Elizabeth, your undoubted Queen: Wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service. Are you willing to do the same?’ ‘The people signify their willingness and joy, by loud and repeated acclamations, all with one voice crying out “God save Queen Elizabeth”.’ Then, the spiritual climax, the Archbishop anoints the Queen with holy oil, in the form of a cross, on the palms, breast and crown of the head: ‘Be thy head anointed with holy Oil: as kings, priests, and prophets were anointed: And as Solomon was anointed king by Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet, so be thou anointed, blessed, and consecrated Queen over the Peoples, whom the Lord thy God hath given thee to rule and govern.’ Next, the Queen is arrayed in the white Colobium Sindonis and the golden Supertunica. The Garter Principal King of Arms explains this part: these ‘vestments so closely resembling those of a bishop that some writers in the Middle Ages have argued that coronation makes the sovereign a “mixed person”, both layman and priest.’ Finally, the Queen receives the orb, the sceptre, ‘the ensign of kingly power and justice’, the rod and lastly the crown.

Returning to Richard's deposition, having surrendered the regalia, Northumberland demands that he read the accusations against him. Again the ceremony does not go as planned: Richard refuses to read. Richard, impulsive earlier, is calculating here. Ian Richardson comments: ‘It is perhaps unkind to imagine Richard preparing for his last great public scene, again as an actor, but it's irresistible. I am sure he dressed with care to present just the right image of humility and distress. He certainly pulls out all the stops when he renounces for ever his sovereignty before his cousin and the assembled lords. This is his swan-song and he is going to make sure that none of his audience forgets it. He is magnificent, and no doubt deeply embarrassing to Henry, who hardly speaks throughout the scene. Richard accuses the assembled company of betraying him, as Christ was betrayed. It becomes plain that this is the seed he wants to sow. However and whenever he dies, after this, it will be as a sacrificial victim, and Henry will be—at best—Pontius Pilate’ [238-41] (Shakespeare in Perspective, I, ed. Roger Sales, p. 44).

Richard comes to control the ceremony when he asks for a mirror and stages a second symbolic pantomime. He claims he wants it as a means to self-knowledge: ‘I'll read enough / When I do see the very book indeed / Where all my sins are writ; and that's myself’ [272-4]. Mirrors are richly ambiguous. They tell the truth, yet Elizabethan crystal glasses are murky enough to be misleading, and the word in the text is ‘glass’, usually transparent. Further, only the vain, seeking flattery, make much use of mirrors. At this moment the image of himself that Richard has had all his life is being questioned and he hopes the glass will reveal the depths of his misery. Instead, it lies to him, showing the outward semblance, not what he believes to be the inner truth.

Redgrave and the Marlowe Society actor begin with a strong, commanding ‘Give me that glass’ [275] and remain in control asking the five rhetorical questions. Gielgud, on the other hand, breaks down in his distress. Northumberland's demands infuriate him and his high-flown line, ‘Fiend, thou tormentst me ere I come to hell’ [269] is sincere. He is genuinely surprised that his change in status is not reflected in a change in his face. The first two questions are to himself, the remaining three directed to his onstage audience, forcing them to realise what they are doing, to an ex-king and to a man. He continues, wonderingly, is this really the same face which employed ten thousand men and ‘like the sun’ made beholders wink. A moment earlier he had recognised that not only was he no longer the sun but that the usurper had become ‘the sun of Bolingbroke’ [260].

The questions lead to the flamboyant gesture of smashing the glass: David Warner, at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1964, punched out the glass with his fist, clearly hurting himself. Richard points what is the ‘moral’ [289] for him: ‘How soon my sorrow hath destroyed my face’ [290], the most unhappy line in the scene in Gielgud's reading. Sorrow has not destroyed his face: he has a kind of control in being able to break the representation of his face. Being easily broken, it shows the brittleness of his former image. Pretending rejection of his old self in destroying the mirror, he continues his pattern of histrionic gestures. The destruction of the mirror-image of Richard's face anticipates the destruction of the man. (This commentary on the significance of the mirror episode draws on Peter Ure, ‘The Looking-Glass of Richard II,Philological Quarterly, 34, 1955, pp. 219-24, and Janette Dillon, Shakespeare and the Solitary Man, [London, 1981], ch. 5.)

The Marlowe Society Richard speaks fast, quite decisive till the final line of the speech. Redgrave appears to have planned the whole performance, down to relishing his little wordplay of ‘Is this the face which faced so many follies, / That was at last outfaced by Bolingbroke?’ [284-5].

Bolingbroke, weary and impatient in his two preceding speeches, comments quietly, ‘The shadow of your sorrow hath destroyed / The shadow of your face’ [291-2]. Nigel Davenport here enjoys both the words which echo Richard's final line and his use of ‘shadow’ in two senses, literal and metaphorical. The other actors make the remark a matter-of-fact one. Bolingbroke is ostensibly sympathising with Richard, commiserating with his grief. ‘To Richard the remark seems to be a sympathetic remark, and so he takes up its surface meaning. But actually Bolingbroke means something else. … He knows the king won't understand it. … When he says “The shadow of your sorrow”, he really means “The unreality of your sorrow”. … Your false sorrow has destroyed your false, playerly face. Bolingbroke is telling Richard that his sorrow is as unreal as the rest of his public persona’ (John Barton, Playing Shakespeare [London, 1984], pp. 122-3). If Bolingbroke speaks with this double meaning, he has some measure of control and is not out-manoeuvred by Richard. Bolingbroke could not point to insincerity when opposed by Gielgud's heartbroken Richard.

V V: DEATH

Richard's moving, poetic farewell to his Queen follows [v i] and he is next seen imprisoned in Pomfret Castle, with a long and complex soliloquy. For the first time without a stage audience, he has no role to play and thus is forced to a kind of confrontation with himself. This has been highly praised: ‘In [Richard's] final despair and failure, his mind is thrown back on pure contemplation and he sinks on to the restful sweetness of impersonal and wandering thought. In so doing, he finds that he has made a small world of his own: which state is now exactly analogous to the creative consciousness which gives birth to poetry’ (G. Wilson Knight, The Imperial Theme, 3rd edn, [London, 1951], p. 351). Though Richard begins by trying hard to be content with this freedom of the imagination, he cannot be [32]. Even being king of his own mind is difficult. Perhaps, though, this is the human condition, that no man is pleased in life, eased only by death [40-1]—ironically, his own is closer than he knows. He is ‘but man’ [39], no longer a king. Has Richard here been able to free himself from the burden of kingship, since its powers and responsibilities are lost? He continues to wrestle with painful adjusting to being an ex-king. Music brings him to self-knowledge: ‘I wasted time’ [49]; deep meditation on time follows. He ‘dwells on the lack of proportion, of measured rhythm, in his reign as it is set against his “true time”, the time he ought to have kept. … Richard knows he has violated natural and political order. … He reiterates his painful sense of being at the mercy of forces beyond him. But the difference between this and his previous expressions of helplessness is that now he knows it is his own fault’ (Robert L. Montgomery, Jr, ‘The Dimensions of Time in Richard II,’ Shakespeare Studies, 4, 1968, pp. 82-3). The harmony of music is ‘specially perceived in the field of human relations. Time is also the times, that is to say the age with its characteristics of temper and spirit depending upon social life. It is this social sense of the word that Richard has in mind when he speaks of the “concord of (his) state and time” and regrets that he “had not an ear to hear (his) true time broke” [47-8]. The harmony is one not of sounds but of men’ (Michel Grivelet, ‘Shakespeare's “War with Time”: The Sonnets and Richard II,Shakespeare Survey, 23, 1970, p. 75). Richard reverts for a moment to the self-pity of the third and fourth acts with ‘sighs and tears and groans’ [57]. His mind inevitably turns again to Bolingbroke and his futile anger is directed against the music. Abruptly, he blesses the musician because he thinks he is playing for love of Richard.

Richard here tries to adjust to his change in status and to life in jail; he has still not found peace. Harold Toliver finds Richard's creation of a mental kingdom and his view of time as ‘extravagant’ and ‘ineffectual’ (‘Shakespeare and the Abyss of Time’, JEGP, 64, 1965, p. 242. On the soliloquy, see also John Baxter, Shakespeare's Poetic Styles pp. 136-43). When he says ‘I wasted time’ is he repenting idleness and listening to flatterers or is he wishing that he had fought against Bolingbroke? Richard Pasco sees no resolution here: ‘Richard's tragedy was that he never actually discovered himself’ (Barton, Playing Shakespeare, p. 122). On the other hand, Graham Holderness sees Richard as satisfied because now his task is one that he can achieve: ‘The prison is a world without people, a kingdom without subjects, which he can fill with his own personality: he can be both ruler and ruled. At last Richard's imagination and will are supreme—now his kingdom has been reduced to the confines of his own mind’ (‘Shakespeare's History: Richard II,Literature and History, 7, 1981, p. 18). The imprisoned Richard is wiser: the Richard seen earlier in the play was not capable of such speculations. He has become, through misfortunes, a better man, though much too late to change him to a good king. In this soliloquy he more than once attains a subdued, sad acceptance, then breaks off suddenly, rejecting the consolations of such a state of mind.

The Marlowe Society actor offers a wise, balanced philosopher here. ‘Nor I, nor any man that but man is, / With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased / With being nothing’ [39-41] is made to sound profound. He is stirred only on the one line where anger is unmistakable, ‘This music mads me’ [61].

Michael Redgrave's reading is much more varied. He is a trifle amused at the inevitable failure of his first flight of mind, ‘I cannot do it’ [5], then enjoys his achievement of forcing his thoughts to ‘people this little world’ [9]. When his mind turns to his ‘ragged prison walls’ [21], he is irritated, and bitter when he comes to name Bolingbroke [37]. Though the music he hears is cheerful, it drives him to passionate fury, ‘This music mads me’. He recovers to bring out forcefully the contrast between love and the ‘all-hating world’ [66].

Gielgud reveals all the contrasting feelings in the scene, guided by the contradiction of ‘I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out’ [5]. He is slow and thoughtful, close to a laugh at the chance that ‘in this thought they find a kind of ease’ [28]. He changes at line 37, furious when Bolingbroke comes to mind. The sound of music—sweet rather than bright—delights him; that he stands fooling here [60] exasperates him; he screams in self-contempt when ‘this music mads me’. Gielgud's interpretation requires agitated pacing and sudden movement; the Marlowe Society approach calls for a man sitting, quiet and thoughtful.

Richard has shown himself increasingly unworthy and unscrupulous from the beginning of the play to the seizure of Gaunt's wealth in II. i. At some point between his return from Ireland in III. ii and the end of the deposition scene our sympathies swing to him as he is the underdog, though our sympathy is always troubled by the extent of his self-pity. Pitiable in his farewell to the Queen (V. i), he may have acquired wisdom in his prison soliloquy. Whatever his faults, even in their medieval dog-eat-dog world, he does not deserve death (he only banishes his enemies: the killing of Gloucester was offstage and before the play). If the last two scenes are to affect us, Richard the suffering human being matters to us, so his killing of two of his murderers is a belated burst of heroism.

However, one critic, Harold Goddard, despises Richard even in his last moment; ‘It is just the reflex action of a man without self-control in the presence of death, as little willed as the galvanic twitching of a frog's leg. It is a fury of desperation pure and simple, a particularly ignominious and ironic end for a king who pretended to believe that everything from stones to angels would come to his rescue in the hour of need’ (The Meaning of Shakespeare, [Chicago, 1951], p. 159).

During the deposition scene Richard had audaciously compared himself to Christ:

Did they not sometime cry ‘All hail!’ to me?
So Judas did to Christ. But He in twelve
Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none.

[IV. i 169-71]

At Stratford, Connecticut, in 1968 Richard was seen as Christ, or a Christian martyr, at the moment of his death: he was stabbed with his arms outstretched in a crucification attitude, the light of a halo round his head.

RICHARD AS ACTOR

Richard II sees himself as a performer, centre stage, when he submits at Flint Castle and when he deflects attention from the new king with his business with the crown and the mirror at his deposition.

Shakespeare at several points reminds us that we are seeing a play performed. ‘I play the torturer’, says Scroop bringing bad news to Richard [III. ii 198]. After the deposition, the Abbot of Westminster observes ‘A woeful pageant have we here beheld’ [IV. i 320]. York describes the way the crowd turned its attention from Richard to the new king:

As in a theatre the eyes of men,
After a well graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious:

[V. ii 23-6]

When the Duchess follows York to plead for the life of her son, King Henry comments lightly:

Our scene is altered from a serious thing,
And now changed to ‘The Beggar and the King’.

[V. iii 78-9]

While Richard in his last soliloquy in prison realises ‘Thus play I in one person many people’ [V. v 31]. Richard is an actor and knows it; we watch a play in a theatre.

3. BOLINGBROKE AND YORK

Bolingbroke is outwardly straightforward, a bluff and hearty figure. Commentators use such adjectives as matter-of-fact, cool, level-headed, practical, resolute, pragmatic, vigorous, uncomplicated. Compared to Richard, he uses few words. Exiled, Gaunt asks him ‘To what purpose dost thou hoard thy words?’ and he replies ‘I have too few to take my leave of you’ [I. iii 253, 255]. During the deposition Richard addresses him as ‘silent king’ [IV. i 289].

Some hints point to a more calculating, more ambitious man. He invokes ‘the glorious worth of my descent’ [I. i 107], the same ancestry as Richard's, entitling him to impose justice. His father offers ambiguous consolation as he goes into exile: ‘Think not the King did banish thee, / But thou the King’ [I. iii 279-80]: imagine that you were the more powerful, making the decision. Bolingbroke is calculating when he tells his friends

I count myself in nothing else so happy
As in a soul remembering my good friends;
And as my fortune ripens with thy love
It shall be still thy true love's recompense

[II. iii 46-9]

Which means ‘I'll reward you when I've won.’ When he justifies executing Bushy and Green [III. i 1-30], ostensibly he argues the cause of Richard and the Queen; equally, he argues his own cause here.

Once Bolingbroke is king, he is competent and capable, choosing carefully who to pardon (Aumerle, the Bishop of Carlisle) and who to execute. Problems flood in on him and we end wondering if he is going to be swamped by the sheer volume of the difficulties put in his path—especially if we suspect that Northumberland is too ambitious to remain a loyal counsellor. Finally, Richard's corpse is brought to him. Timothy West speaks of playing this moment:

The question that you've got to ask yourself is ‘How much of a shock is it when you're confronted by Richard's body?’ I don't think it's a factual shock, but I do think it's a huge emotional shock to him because this is the moment, really the first moment in the play, when he becomes aware of the appalling responsibilities of kingship which stay with him and begin to destroy him as a man all through Henry IV, Part I. It's interesting that the imagery of growth, of harvest, that has been used so much through the play, is used in this last speech when he says: ‘Lords, I protest, my soul is full of woe / That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow’ [45-6]. It's a terrible prophecy. It's a reign which is entirely fed by blood.

(Shakespeare Superscribe, ed. Myra Barrs, [Harmondsworth, 1980], p. 172).

Bolingbroke reveals more of himself in Henry IV. He explains how subtly he courted popularity:

By being seldom seen, I could not stir
But like a comet I was wond'red at …
And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,
And dressed myself in such humility
That I did pluck allegiance from men's hearts

[H IV, Pt I, III. ii 46-7, 50-2]

He also denies aiming at the throne:

                                                  God knows, I had no such intent
But that necessity so bowed the state
That I and greatness were compelled to kiss.

[H IV, Pt II, III. i 68-70]

On his deathbed, talking to his son: ‘How I came by the crown, O God, forgive!’ [H IV, Pt II, IV. v 218].

York is third in importance among the characters, deliberately made by Shakespeare into a more thoughtful and willing political figure than York actually was. He is first seen sensibly telling Gaunt that rebuking Richard is useless: ‘Direct not him whose way himself will choose’ [II. i 29]. The well-meaning York, Lord Governor in Richard's absence, is overwhelmed by the demands of the job and probably too old for these responsibilities. Meeting the returned Bolingbroke, he denounces ‘gross rebellion and detested treason’ [II. iii 108]. He adopts the easier course, submission to Bolingbroke, then, asked to go to Bristol Castle, shows typical indecision: ‘It may be I will go with you, but yet I'll pause; / For I am loath to break our country's laws’ [167-8]. In fact, he is at Bristol, silent. This Grand Old Man of the court, a Marshal Pétain, readily accepts the inevitable and invites Bolingbroke to ascend the throne [VII. iii]. In V. ii he still laments Richard's fall. Finding his son plotting against the new king, he is suddenly at his most active, begging King Henry to punish the treacherous Aumerle, overeager to prove his loyalty. ‘New and sinister motives are in control and there is a large element of panic in York's vehement insistence that Aumerle has earned a traitor's death’ (M. M. Reese, The Cease of Majesty, [London, 1961], p. 250). In the final scene York is present but does not speak, pushed aside by the rush of events.

York may be viewed in widely differing ways. Swinburne dismissed him as ‘an incomparable, an incredible, an unintelligible and a monstrous nullity’. Often he is played for comedy onstage. Struggling to deal with all the problems, most of all Bolingbroke's invasion, he splutters ‘Go, fellow, get thee home, provide some carts’ [II. ii 106], which, writes Reese, is ‘a classic in the annals of military helplessness’ (Ibid., 248). His ‘Come, cousin, / I'll dispose of you’ [II. ii 116-17] is unintentionally comic: demanding his boots three times in V. ii is also absurd. Comic interpretations of York arise more from the lack of other humour in the play than centrally from the character.

Coleridge praised him: ‘The admirable character of York. Religious loyalty struggling with a deep grief and indignation at the king's vices and follies; and adherence to his word once given in spite of all, even the most natural feelings’. He has been seen as representing England, and as expressing Christian stoicism and magnanimity as the Elizabethans understood these (by James A. Riddell, ‘The Admirable Character of York,’ Texas Studies in Literature & Language, 21, 1979, pp. 492-502). The York of the play is simply vacillating and elderly, unequal to the tasks and challenges—finally, perversely, overenergetic to prove his loyalty even at the expense of his son.

4. ‘RICHARD II’ AS HISTORY PLAY

Critics used to worry about defining the history play, for example, whether the form was the same as the chronicle play. Coleridge tried to place the form as between epic and tragedy. Lily Campbell wrote that ‘tragedy deals with an ethical world; history with a political world’ (Shakespeare's Histories, [San Marino, California, 1947], p. 307), that the subject of tragedy was private relationships and that of history public life. This distinction does not fit with the texts; though Richard is accorded little private life, he is clearly viewed as man as well as king. John Wilders makes a rather more accurate distinction: ‘A tragedy is devoted chiefly to the struggles of one character, and his death. … The impression created by a history play is that the life of a nation has neither beginning nor ending’ (The Lost Garden, [1978], pp. 5-6). Northrop Frye expresses succinctly the way Shakespeare's histories have both elements: ‘Richard II and Richard III are tragedies insofar as they resolve on those defeated kings; they are histories insofar as they resolve on Bolingbroke and Richmond, and the most one can say is that they lean toward history’ (Anatomy of Criticism, [Princeton, N. J., 1957], p. 284).

In modern times we have readily accepted the form of the history play. Gordon Daviot's popular 1930s play, Richard of Bordeaux, ends with Richard deposed but still alive (though from Shakespeare or textbooks we know his fate). Famous plays like Bernard Shaw's St. Joan, T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral and Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons all end in the execution or killing of a noble main character, though this has not required them to carry the label, ‘historical tragedy’.

That some plays are set in the past and show actual figures from that time can be easily accepted. As audience we hold in mind the particular period (shown at least in costume, if not by dirt, cruelty and disease), the historical figures and the story, shaped by a writer toward a moral, a tragic effect or a theatrical experience. The subject may appeal as an escape to a different world, as a study of a remarkable man or woman, or as a think-piece with a message. (Brecht argued that the less the audience could readily recognise on stage, the more their minds were freed for thinking.)

Richard II shows the fall of a king. Watching this, we certainly wonder how far Richard is to be blamed for his defeat and how far sympathised with. What should Richard have done differently? What might we have done differently in Richard's position? Are Richard's advisers to be blamed? And what will Bolingbroke be like as king? Is the change for better or worse? Such questions readily come to mind. The Elizabethans, however, probably more than ourselves, looked to history for lessons. Shakespeare was pointing to issues of monarchy, government and power relevant to his own times. Two facts indicate just how crucial this was in the 1590s, with Queen Elizabeth I in her sixties and without an heir. The Earl of Essex, on the eve of a desperate, futile attempt to overthrow the Queen in 1601, commanded a performance of this play, presumably to show the possibility and desirability of deposing a monarch—Shakespeare and the actors were probably fortunate to escape punishment. Second, although Richard II was printed in 1597, the deposition scene was omitted: the content was too subversive at that date. It was first printed in 1608, by which time James I was securely enthroned.

Shakespeare may have intended only to start his audiences asking questions. York states the dilemma clearly, the conflict of two rights:

                                                                                Both are my kinsmen.
T'one is my sovereign, whom both my oath
And duty bids defend. T'other again
Is my kinsman, who the King hath wronged,
Whom conscience and my kindred bids to right.

[II. ii 111-15]

If deposition was ever justified, was it justified in the case of Richard?

Scholarly discussion has continued for decades on these problems: the pace of scholars' discussions is usually very slow. E. M. W. Tillyard in Shakespeare's History Plays in 1944 announced clear views which were generally accepted for a long time. Tillyard saw Shakespeare forming his view of the events of the previous 220 years from some of ‘the best educated and most thoughtful writers outside the theatre as well as within’ (p. 70), notably the historical chronicles of Edward Hall (1548) and the multi-author moralistic historical poems, A Mirror for Magistrates (1555, published 1559). These texts expressed ‘the Tudor myth’ of a golden age in the long reign of Edward III (1327-77) followed by the inadequacies of Richard II and then nearly a hundred years of disaster attributed to the deposing of Richard. Though Richard admittedly made mistakes, only tyrants and usurpers could be overthrown and Richard's shortcomings did not justify Bolingbroke's seizure of power. That rebellion was almost always wrong was the chief message of Hall, A Mirror for Magistrates, and—according to Tillyard—of Shakespeare.

Tillyard went on to argue that Shakespeare planned the sequence of four plays, Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V, from the start, though these plays were not in fact written till a few years later. Thus, writes Tillyard, the formal, archaic style of Richard II is a deliberate contrast to that of Henry IV. Bolingbroke's world is kept purposely embryonic and the hints about future discord are carefully placed.

Tillyard based his view of Shakespeare's message not only on Hall and A Mirror for Magistrates but on his understanding of how Elizabethans saw their world: he described this as The Elizabethan World Picture, his even more influential 1943 study. The key was order, as set out in Ulysses' speech in Troilus and Cressida:

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre
Observe degree priority and place
Insisture course proportion season form
Office and custom, in all line of order.

[I. iii 85-8]

Political order on earth mirrored cosmic order. And, Tillyard was able to argue, this doctrine was not often clearly set out in the writings of the time precisely because it was universally accepted—always a difficult proposition to counter. Tillyard, in fact, gave readers history plays which expressed Tudor ideology and the commonplaces of their time.

But would Shakespeare, innovative elsewhere, be ‘content to follow the lead of the plodding didacticists who supposedly created the genre of the History Play, and like them dedicate his art to moralistic and propagandistic purposes’ (Robert Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage, p. 2)?

So Ornstein in 1972 returns to the Tudor chroniclers and finds that they all condemn Richard for ‘his personal vices and his political rapacity and disregard of law’ (Ibid., p. 14). If Shakespeare is defending Richard and denouncing Bolingbroke, he appears to be the one out of step with prevailing opinions of the time. Ornstein also demonstrates that, if Shakespeare were expressing the ‘Tudor myth’ in his history plays, he does it very badly: the Epilogue to Henry V does not mention the original sin against Richard II and the three mentions of Richard in Henry VI ‘scarcely convince us that it was the cause of Henry VI's calamities’ (Ibid., p. 16). Primarily this critic argues for the major point of the play to be personal, not historical-political: Shakespeare ‘places as great a value on the sanctity of personal relations in the History Plays as in the tragedies, because he intuits that order depends, not on concepts of hierarchy and degree, but on the fabric of personal and social relationships which is woven by ties of marriage, kinship and friendship, by communal interests, and ideals of loyalty and trust’ (p. 222).

Jan Kott, from Poland, in his influential 1960s book Shakespeare Our Contemporary, sees a harsh, unchanging, relentless world-view: ‘If one wishes to interpret Shakespeare's world as the real world, one should start the reading of the plays with the Histories, and in particular with Richard II and Richard III … Shakespeare exposes in them the mechanism of power directly, without resorting to subterfuge or fiction. He de-thrones regal majesty, strips it of all illusion’. Shakespeare's view of history, he asserts, is ‘that history has no meaning and stands still, or constantly repeats its cruel cycle’ (pp. 3, 49, 37). The only available roles are victor and victim.

Rethinking the attitudes displayed in the history plays starts for John Wilders in his The Lost Garden in the conviction that chiefly they are ‘brilliantly constructed works for the theatre’ (p. 9). Shakespeare has of course a viewpoint on moral and political conduct, that he sees a corrupt—or at least prosaic—world, with a contrasted heroic, inspiring one in the distant past. Mere mortals struggle to make decisions knowing the inevitable imperfection of their judgements; Time and Fortune combine to thwart and limit human achievement. The monarchy may possibly have been glorious before Richard II's reign but this view is bleak and pessimistic about both kings and their subjects, now and in the times depicted in the plays.

That Richard II was seen by Shakespeare from the start as the first of a sequence of four history plays has been widely believed. On the other hand, some years elapse before Shakespeare continued writing the supposed quartet and dramatists cannot expect audiences to see four related plays in the correct order. References back to Richard II in the later plays may be seen either as providing the context in the broader sweep of English history or as Shakespeare's ‘commercials’ for his other works, like the reminder of Julius Caesar given in Hamlet. That Richard II is stylistically different from Henry IV is more easily explained as Shakespeare trying out a different style than by his deliberately planning a contrast with unwritten texts to follow.

Current opinion leans to seeing Shakespeare as thinking critically and independently about the events he depicts, with his own interpretation—which may or may not coincide with a prevailing Tudor myth of history, which itself may or may not have existed. Shakespeare, in fact, was a critic of ideas, not their mouthpiece. Probably too his view was not a rapid response to the facts in Holinshed but based on wide and thorough reading.

We may legitimately argue—endlessly—about what view of history is expressed in Richard II and whether it is distinctively Shakespeare's view, the received opinion of his time or some blend of both. However, there is no need to argue about whether this drama is about historical events or about a man's tragic fall. Clearly, Richard II is both and the Tudor doctrine, a legal fiction, of the two bodies of a king enables us readily to keep both facets of the play simultaneously in mind. Edmund Plowden expressed the crown lawyers' belief of the mid-16th century: ‘For the king has in him two Bodies, viz, a Body natural, and a Body politic’. The former is mortal; the latter abstract, ‘consisting of Policy and Government, and constituted for the Direction of the People, and the Management of the public weal … What the king does in his Body politic cannot be invalidated or frustrated by any disability in his natural Body’. The two natures are fused at the moment of coronation (J. Barton, The King's Two Bodies, [Princeton, N. J., 1957], quoted by Ernest H. Kantorowicz, p. 7). Elizabethans knowing this concept would see the drama's distinction between private life and public face, between good poet and bad king, between the individual and the role he had to play.

If the play is seen as historical fact, or as the Hall/Holinshed/late Elizabethan view of those facts, we may miss the timeless abstract themes. James Winny identifies in Shakespeare's histories man's ‘instinctive desire for society and friendship, and for the deeper satisfactions of true allegiance, faithful service, and ordered prerogative’ (The Player King, p. 29). I would add several other themes: the lust for power, the disenchantment of achievement, the experience of defeat, the conflict between traditional loyalties and realistic adjustment to the winning side, the contrast between high-principled aims and the ruthless realities, the constant choice between punishment and forgiveness, the continued threat from the deposed.

The play is precisely located in different parts of England and Wales. The last scene [I. iii] is at Coventry, in the Midlands. Bolingbroke, though coming from Brittany in France, lands on the north coast and makes the long march south-west through the Cotswolds to Berkeley and to Bristol. Richard's return from Ireland is to Barkloughly and he moves on north-west to Flint, where he is met by Bolingbroke. The deposition takes place in the presence of parliament in London, then Richard is sent to the dungeon of Pomfret (Pontefract) Castle, in Yorkshire. These castles remain, in ruins, scanty at Pontefract though part of the room in which Richard was probably held survives, as do fragmentary battlements at Flint and substantial ruins at Harlech (the Barkloughly of the play).

Gaunt's famous dying speech makes England the play's subject (though we should note the irony that he speaks to York, who does not need this inspirational address, and that Gaunt manages little more than scolding once Richard has arrived). Gaunt pictures the potential of England and its present decline. The Gardeners talk of ‘our sea-walled garden, the whole land’ [III. iv 43] and how it should be governed. In Richard II the destiny of England is determined by conflict among the nobility: six dukes (Gaunt; Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford; Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; Aumerle; York; Surrey), two earls (Northumberland and Salisbury); four lords (Ross, Willoughby, Berkeley, Fitzwater) and five knights (Bushy, Green, Bagot, Scroop, Exton). The Commons are present at the deposition [IV. i 271]: they are wealthy gentry. The emblematic verse-speaking Gardeners may plausibly be played as monks rather than as eloquent workers.

The unseen ‘common people’ are contemptuously dismissed by Richard as ‘slaves’ [I. iv 24, 27]; York is scornful of them for the way in which they mocked Richard and welcomed Bolingbroke as their new king [V. ii 11-36]. Richard's indifference to his subjects finally alters because of his suffering and in his last moments he responds to the simple humanity of the Groom [V. v 67-97].

5. WHAT DOES THE PLAY MEAN TO US NOW?

Richard II looks as thought it should provide evidence on what Shakespeare himself really believed. The current fashion is to see him as conservative, as Graham Greene places him: ‘If there is one supreme poet of conservatism, of what we now call the Establishment, it is he’ (‘The Virtue of Disloyalty’, The Portable Graham Greene, [Harmondsworth, 1977], p. 606). Colin MacInnes concludes: ‘It is hard … to pinpoint Shakespeare's moral attitudes, unless to say that he respected formal society, disliked cruelty, and seemed to believe evil won its own retribution’ (No Novel Reader, [London, 1975], p. 18). And Martin Fido: ‘When we look at the plays, we find the cautious conservatism of his business dealings and social aspirations confirmed … From start to finish we find an acceptance of the status quo, a respect for the established social order, and a distaste for change … The truest description we can from our knowledge give of Shakespeare the man is, I believe, an unusually cautious conservative’ (Shakespeare, [London, 1975], p. 140). Richard II perhaps presents what might be called a fatalistic view of human affairs: problems continue, whoever is king. Once Bolingbroke is ruler, like his predecessor, he has to deal with quarrelsome gage-throwing nobles, with Aumerle's plot [V. ii, V. iii] and then with more rebellions at the start of the last scene. The sense of events endlessly recurring is in fact such that I half-expect at the end the arrival of messengers with news that York is dying and that the Irish are rebelling again.

On the other hand, Richard II shows that rebellion is possible, and can succeed (though none of the plots of Shakespeare's lifetime against Elizabeth I had succeeded). Richard II might also be said to demystify the remote figure of the monarch, showing not only feet of clay but multiple incompetencies. The play shows us the actuality of a forced handing over of a crown, the legalising of a coup d'état. Further, clearly God and His angels do not rescue the king of England when he is in difficulties. And the true character of many of the Top People is exposed: Bolingbroke comes back to claim what is due to him, not to restore those past glories of England which John of Gaunt hymns.

On the political level, the play asks questions. What is a good monarch like? What may morally and legitimately be done by a nation faced with a bad ruler? Will a change of monarch be an improvement? Whether or not Richard II is seen as a prologue to Henry IV, the change solves few problems. I doubt if we can decide whether or not Shakespeare approved of the deposing of Richard. I find clarity on the level of the individual: Shakespeare can identify readily with the misery of the man deposed.

The specifics of Divine Right are remote to late 20th-century audiences, as is hereditary monarchy to most of the world. It is also difficult to find any equivalent to the position Richard believed himself to have (which was not exactly power, for it crumbled as soon as Bolingbroke dared his challenge). Charles I, Louis XVI, the last Tsar took it for granted that they had absolute authority for life. Drawing this parallel, the 1981 Young Vic production was set in Russia in 1917, with Richard as the Tsar, a complacent monarch who could not see how his world was changing. Nikolas Grace, playing Richard, commented: ‘This is a play about how society can unbalance a seat of power, and it doesn't much matter whether that seat of power is Richard Nixon or the Shah. People are interested now in the chemistry of radical politics’ (The Times, 22 Feb. 1981). Bolingbroke, though, represents himself much more than society or radical politics. As for the emotions of the deposed, the Dalai Lama, god-king of Tibet, deposed, driven into exile by the Chinese invasion in 1959 and still living in India may be the one man today who can understand the astonishment and the misery of the divinely-appointed ruler ruthlessly overthrown.

Ian McKellen tells of the impact of the play in Czechoslovakia:

In 1969 I played Richard II in a production which we took round England and then briefly to Europe and we went to Czechoslovakia … We concentrated on the humanity of the characters rather than their political nature. We thought of the political factions as a family, Richard II as a man with cousins and uncles and other relatives, and I think it was in that sense that we looked at the politics in it. However, we landed in Czechoslovakia only six months after the Prime Minister, Dubcek, had been removed by his neighbouring allies, the Russians. One result of this political change was that they didn't want visiting foreigners with their plays. They tried to stop our visit, but it was too late. … When I came to the speech where Richard II returns from Ireland to discover that his nation has been overrun by his cousin Bolingbroke, and he kneels down on the earth and asks the stones and the nettles and the insects to help him in his helpless state against the armies who had invaded his land, I could hear something I had never heard before, nor since, which was a whole audience apparently weeping. It shakes me now to think about it, because in that instant I realised that the audience were crying for themselves. They recognised in Richard II their own predicament of only six months previously when their neighbours and as it were their cousins had invaded their land, and all they had were sticks and stones to throw at the tanks.


I would never have talked about the play in those terms.


We hadn't seen it as directly relevant to any modern political situation. Shakespeare couldn't have known about communism, about the East or the West. Afterwards I said to one of the new men, the anti-Dubcek faction, to one of their leaders who was in the audience, ‘Who did you side with in the play, Richard II or Bolingbroke? The man on the ground or the invader? And he said, “Both right, both wrong.”’

(Playing Shakespeare, [1984], pp. 191-2, quoted by John Barton.)

Richard II prompted Mark Amory to recall the events in Uganda in 1970: ‘It suggests the deposing of Frederick Mutesa, Kabaka of Buganda, 36th of his line, elegant, sophisticated, but careless of his country and, when faced by squat Milton Obote, fatally lacking in troops. The chaos that followed led to Idi Amin … The Kabaka died in Bermondsey’ (The Spectator, 21 Nov. 1981).

The play reminds Samuel Schoenbaum of the fall of President Richard Nixon, forced to resign in 1974 by the threat of impeachment for his involvement in the Watergate burglary: ‘The parallels are imprecisely general, except for one haunting detail which escaped nobody. When Richard in the deposition scene has divested himself of crown and sceptre, and with his own tears washed away his balm, ‘What more remains?’ he asks his tormentors.

Northumberland, implacable, presses on:

                                                                      No more but that you read
These accusations and these grievous crimes
Committed by your person and your followers
Against the state and profit of this land,
That by confessing them the souls of men
May deem that you are worthily deposed.

[IV. i 222-7]

This was, as you will recall, the burning issue after the other deposition. In neither instance was a confession of wrongdoing insisted upon or obtained, although Nixon had his Northumberlands. Nor need I remind you of the consequences for his successor when pardon followed' (‘Shakespeare's Histories: the Presence of the Past,’ Shakespeare and Others, [1985], pp. 101-2).

Finally, in this quest to find an immediacy in these 600-year-old events, the playwright John Arden quotes Richard's speech on the Irish when he sets out to reconquer the island:

We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns
Which live like venom where no venom else
But only they have privilege to live

[II. i 156-8]

Arden comments: ‘Not “the Irish are being a nuisance so we have to subdue them”: but “it is our absolute duty to supplant them simply because they exist in their own way in their own country”’. Arden explains: ‘In Richard II almost everything the King says and does is heavily (and in the end successfully) challenged by someone—Bolingbroke, Gaunt, or whoever. His Irish wars alone escape criticism, except in so far as they are criminally funded and ineptly timed. In fact, they are seen to be one of his few attempts to behave like the proper English King so desired by John of Gaunt to redeem the country from degradation: “England, that was wont to conquer others, / Hath made a shameful conquest of itself” [II. i 65-6].’ So, Arden argues, Shakespeare has contributed to an attitude of mind which continues to support the English presence in Ireland. Arden even audaciously supplies the lines which Shakespeare should have written to challenge Richard's attitude, giving these to York:

Nay, nay, my lord, rug-headed Irish kerns
Spit no more venom than our English sea-dogs do
Who bravely strive for liberty of this isle
'Gainst Frenchmen or the pirate wolves of Spain.
Therefore disturb them not; they'll prove good friends
Once left in calm enjoyment of their own.

(‘Rug-headed Irish Kerns and British Poets’, New Statesman, 13 July 1979, p. 56, and ‘Shakespeare: Guilty’, New Statesman, 10 Aug. 1979, p. 199).

Approaching from a different tack, we may ask what is the present-day appeal of a piece about a man who wallows in self-pity. Harold Hobson in 1947 accounted thus for the appeal of the play in our time: ‘Self-pity; lamentation; hysteria. We come closer to the secret of Richard II's popularity in such considerations as these. We have lost the robust confidence of the nineteenth century. The world today darts hither and thither directionless. It grieves over the hardness of its fate, just as Richard did. Of all Shakespeare's kings, he is its prime spokesman. And, if not with spirit, if not with courage, he speaks beautifully, with words that twine about the heart. Let us not be too hard upon him, though. But we might well be harder upon ourselves’ (Theatre, 1948, p. 141).

A Canadian critic finds an approach to the drama that avoids issues of power and authority. Gina Mallett writes: ‘The only way to go to most of Shakespeare's history plays is to go with the firm understanding that you're going to see the British Wild West, a great mythic landscape peopled with outsized folk, heroes, rascals, double-dealers, politicians, and not surprisingly, very few women’ (Toronto Star, 7 June 1979, C3). This emphasises the naked struggles, the uncomplicated emotions and the sense of rival groups, rather than individuals.

Notes

  1. Here and later I draw on three recordings of the play. Sir John Gielgud's performance is preserved in the Caedmon Shakespeare Recording Society version of 1960. The impressive cast includes Keith Michell as Bolingbroke, Leo McKern as John of Gaunt, Michael Hordern as York, Jeremy Brett as Mowbray and Harold Lang as Northumberland. The other full-length version, recorded by Cambridge students of the Marlowe Society with some professionals in 1958 for London records, is well-spoken, but the Richard is under-characterised. Michael Redgrave plays Richard on the abridged one-record Living Shakespeare version, with Nigel Davenport as Bolingbroke, and Hordern again John of Gaunt. Spoken Arts has an abridged text with Christopher Casson and Fred Johnson and Allegro one with Robert Harris and John Ruddock.

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The Genre of Richard II