SOURCE: Ruiter, David. “‘Awhile To Work, And After Holiday’: Richard II and the Roots of a Festive History.” In Shakespeare's Festive History: Feasting, Festivity, Fasting, and Lent in the Second Henriad, pp. 41-68. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2003.

[In the following essay, Ruiter maintains that festivity is a central theme in Richard II that becomes more fully developed in the succeeding plays of the second tetralogy. According to the critic, the common masses support Richard's deposal and Bolingbroke's subsequent ascension to the throne because the king dismisses community festivity whereas his challenger recognizes its importance to social stability.]

At least since 1959, when C. L. Barber included the two parts of Henry IV in his famous book, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom, there has been little doubt that Shakespeare's history plays not only contain festive elements, but that understanding the function of festivity within those plays is crucial to understanding the plays in essence.¹ By comparing Falstaff to the popular Shrovetide character, the Lord of Misrule, and demonstrating how the action and outcome of the plays mirror that of the Misrule festival, Barber showed how the thematic structure of the two Henry IV plays could be traced to Elizabethan social ritual (192-221). At the same time, he connected the two plays, making them seem less like individual plays than two long acts of one central drama, through the festive elements he described. Basically, then, Barber attached the plays through their use and portrayal of festivity.

The Henry IV plays, however, are really only slightly more of a self-contained unit together than they are apart because, of course, they still represent only half of the historical tetralogy often referred to as the Second Henriad, beginning with Richard II and ending with Henry V. In addition, as Charles Forker makes clear, the plays within Shakespeare's tetralogies are both distinct from each other and vitally connected (20-34).² Forker states:

Of course, each of the four plays in the two tetralogies has its own organic structure and may be performed as a self-contained unit. But all these plays contain prominent references to what went before as well as predictions or foreshadowings of what is to come, so that an important part of our experience of a history play consists of being caught up dramatically in the stream of events as they impinge upon us immediately, while being constantly made aware that there are longer vistas of cause and effect that cannot be ignored.

(20)

Forker here makes explicit what Barber had already, though only partially, implied—the plays of the Second Henriad are yoked in some fashion that not only keeps the four dramas ‘together’ in some sense, but that actually adds to the dramatic experience, the dramatic effect, of the plays both individually and as a set.³ While Barber only put the two central plays together with his explication of the elements of social ritual, he nonetheless provided a possible route by which to explore the entire tetralogy; he suggested that the key to the structural unity of the plays might lie in their festive elements. From the perspective presented in this study, that suggestion is correct.

At the least, it is clear that the plays are linked, and each subsequent sequel advertised, through the use of festive elements. Near the end of Richard II, having made no previous reference even to having a son, Henry IV suddenly asks,

Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?
'Tis full three months since we did see him last.
If any plague hang over us, 'tis he.
I would to God, my lords, he might be found.
Inquire at London, 'mongst the taverns there,
For there they say he daily doth frequent
With unrestrained loose companions,
Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes
And beat our watch, and rob our passengers—
While he, young wanton and effeminate boy,
Takes on the point of honor to support
So dissolute a crew.

(5.3.1-12)⁴

In answer to the king's question, Hotspur (referred to as ‘Percy’ at this point in the tetralogy) reports that Prince Hal will not be joining his father at the ‘triumphs held at Oxford’ (14), but, instead, will occupy himself in ‘the stews’ of London (16). In all, only twenty-two lines of the play concern Hal, and they are devoted entirely to his festive and unruly, even unprincely, behavior. Therefore, when the audience finally meets the prince in the following play, he certainly lives up to his billing—cursing with Falstaff, talking of women, and planning a robbery (1 Henry IV, 1.2). A short preview to the festive prince at the end of Richard II has now led to a play dominated by Hal, and especially, as Harold Bloom points out, by his festive relationship with Sir John Falstaff (271-314).⁵

Likewise, both parts of Henry IV use elements of festivity to set up their respective sequels. At the end of 1 Henry IV, just when Hal and the audience believe that the wildly festive Falstaff has died, he miraculously resurrects himself and, thus, makes himself available for action in Part Two (5.4). At the conclusion of 2 Henry IV, the fat knight is harshly rejected, as Henry V looks to reform himself and redeem the time; however, once again, Falstaff is ‘resurrected’ as the audience is promised that the story will continue ‘with Sir John in it’ (Epilogue.26). In addition, the Epilogue states that the ‘author […] will make you merry with Katharine of France’ (25-27). Clearly then, festivity is being used, over and over, to entice the audience to attend yet another sequel.

Still, the fact that Shakespeare uses festivity as advertisement in the tetralogy does not necessarily make festivity central to the plays, any more than a World Series advertisement showing a Bernie Williams home run makes the home run a central element of the game of baseball. As often as not, it seems, advertising has little to do with the actual product. On the other hand, a close observer of professional baseball, especially over the last decade, could justifiably conclude that home runs are indeed central to the games individually and as a whole. And such is my task here—to show, through close observation, that our understanding of Shakespeare's use of festive elements will add to our ability to appreciate the plays of the Second Henriad, both individually and as a whole.

To begin to discuss the centrality of festivity to the Second Henriad, we must first look to The Tragedy of Richard II, because it is the first play of the tetralogy. Of course, this play contains no festive character similar to Falstaff, no entertaining tavern scenes like those of the Henry IV plays, and no festive wedding plans such as those of Henry V and Katharine of France. In addition, one might find having elements of festivity intermixed with the serious aspects of dramatic tragedy a bit jarring to the literary senses. Still, Naomi C. Liebler, in her book Shakespeare's Festive Tragedy: The Ritual Foundations of Tragedy, has already argued persuasively that ‘tragedy’ and ‘festivity’ are not mutually exclusive terms (1-35).⁶ On the other hand, they are certainly not mutually inclusive—even mutually comfortable—terms either. That is, while Liebler is right in noting that the idea of tragedy does not exclude elements of festivity, neither does it necessarily include them. Therefore, while I will argue that festivity is indeed a politically useful attribute, as well as a central issue in Richard II, I will do so by arguing that the tragic King Richard essentially lacks festivity while his political challenger, Bolingbroke, does not. As a result, Richard falls out of the community he once ruled, while Bolingbroke climbs to the throne and does so by using a ‘politics of festivity’ that will become crucial not only to his reign, but also to his son's.

Considering Richard's fall and Bolingbroke's concomitant rise in terms of festivity highlights its socio-political value. Over the course of the play, Richard tends to disallow community festivity, to deny participation in such activities, and to maintain a strict social hierarchy. The king leaves his community feeling separated, their need for camaraderie unsatisfied. Bolingbroke, on the other hand, emphasizes festive participation, social leveling, and a sense of holiday community. With his festive rhetoric and actions, he is able to garner enough public support to undermine Richard's non-festive authority and turn him from the rightful English king into, in his own words, a ‘mockery king of snow’ (4.1.261). Therefore, as Bolingbroke usurps the throne, festive community replaces strict hierarchy.

In fact, near the conclusion of the play, as Richard sits in the dungeon of Pomfret Castle and attempts to puzzle out the causes for his present condition, he ultimately expresses this very realization: that while he neglected festivity, and therefore lost its benefits of renewal, community, and solidarity, Bolingbroke focused his rhetoric and campaign on those very aspects and thereby gained the crown. In his maddening discontent, Richard sums up his life with the famous line, ‘I wasted time, and now doth time waste me’ (5.5.49). The line, like so much of Richard's speech, is eloquent in its exaggeration, for Richard has not so much generally wasted his time as he has, through his own actions and attitudes, separated himself from the community he was supposed to rule.⁷ As Irving Ribner explains, ‘That Richard's downfall was the inevitable result of his own conduct is one of the surest political lessons of the play’ (164). King Richard, having chosen to stand alone and aloof from the community and to deny it opportunities for festivity and social-leveling, now finds himself alone again, pondering his relationship to that same community of humankind. As a result, Richard now realizes that his ‘time / Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy, / While I stand fooling here, his jack of the clock’ (58-60); that is, Richard's time is out, while Bolingbroke's festive time is in. As if to emphasize this point, moments later, angered by his lack of proper food, Richard strikes out against the prison keeper and shortly meets his death (5.1.98-112). Of course, his former foe, the usurping Bolingbroke, was also once angered by his lack of proper food and sustenance, when Richard banished him and later seized his inheritance (3.1.16-29). Bolingbroke also struck back against his oppressors, even executing Bushy and Green (3.1.1-7, 30). However, as opposed to Richard, Bolingbroke campaigned with the promise of festivity and renewed community, and with these themes, he gained widespread support and, ultimately, the kingship. In these events, the time of strict hierarchy, represented by Richard, gives way to the renewal of community and festivity, represented by Bolingbroke.

Already in the play's first scene, the audience witnesses the initial evidence of the two kings' opposing views of festivity, when, against Richard's desire, Bolingbroke and Mowbray force the issue of a festive, albeit violent, resolution to their claims of treason. In the opening lines of Richard II, King Richard states,

Old John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster,
Hast thou according to thy oath and bond
Brought hither Henry Hereford, thy bold son,
Here to make good the boisterous late appeal,
Which then our leisure would not let us hear,
Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?

(1.1.1-6)

These lines allude to the initial conflict of the play: Bolingbroke accuses Mowbray of treason against England, while Mowbray denies such action (1.1.30-68). Richard, having taken his ‘leisure’ to hear Bolingbroke's accusations, finds both men to be ‘high-stomached’ and ‘hasty’ in their conflict (18-19). And while both ‘accuser and accused’ exchange barbs and threats (17), Richard sees no reason for the conflict to continue and commands both Mowbray and Bolingbroke to ‘forget’ their feud and ‘forgive’ each other (156). However, Bolingbroke and Mowbray oppose the king's non-bloody will, insisting that they be allowed to decide the matter with arms (165-95). Finally, in the face of their continued ire, Richard, against his will, sets the date for the duel on Saint Lambert's Day, a holy feast day (196-205).⁸ Therefore, the outcome of the clash between Bolingbroke and Mowbray will provide a resolution to their conflict, but the duel will also provide public entertainment for the crowd attending the annual feast of St. Lambert. In a sense, then, if all goes as planned, the martial feats will add spice to this holiday feast, provide a festive spectacle for the common people, and take care of the troubling political issue of treason.

Therefore, when the audience next encounters Mowbray and Bolingbroke as they prepare for the battle, the food and festive imagery, appropriate for the holiday feast, reappears. For instance, as the combatants stand armed and ready for the duel, each uses festive terms to discuss the coming event. Bolingbroke, saying his farewells just in case he does not gain the victory, states,

My loving lord, I take my leave of you;
Of you, my noble cousin, Lord Aumerle;
Not sick, although I have to do with death,
But lusty, young, and cheerly drawing breath.
Lo, as at English feasts, so I regreet
The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet.

(1.3.63-68)

Here, Bolingbroke makes an overt comparison between the current events and the celebration of ‘English feasts.’ He feels ‘lusty,’ he breathes ‘cheerly,’ and he hopes to make a ‘sweet’ end. Again, these comments occur within the larger context of the Feast of St. Lambert, which serves as the background to the duel. In addition, Mowbray emphasizes the idea that the current time is indeed festive, saying:

Never did captive with a freer heart
Cast off his chains of bondage and embrace
His golden uncontrolled enfranchisement
More than my dancing soul doth celebrate
This feast of battle with mine adversary.
Most mighty liege, and my companion peers,
Take from my mouth the wish of happy years.
As gentle and as jocund as a jest
Go I to fight. Truth hath a quiet breast.

(1.3.85-96)

Mowbray, in hoping for ‘uncontrolled enfranchisement,’ desires clear membership in the community gathered to witness the holiday festivities. Further, the Duke of Norfolk intensifies Bolingbroke's description of duel-as-feast by saying that not only is the event ‘as’ a feast, the clash is a ‘feast of battle.’ In other words, Mowbray, in reiterating Bolingbroke's view of battle and changing his simile to a metaphor, further stresses the festive nature of the coming events. Mowbray emphasizes festive freedom and community, festive rites such as dancing, and the festive mood of happiness. Together, then, the combatants establish and emphasize the nature of the duel. The ‘high-stomached’ rivals speak in terms of feasting and festivity, in terms of community, as they prepare to joust. At stake for both are truth, honor, enfranchisement, and life, but the combatants are not only willing, they are ‘jocund.’ Both believe that the issue will be settled, and order, harmony, and community will be restored.

However, shortly after their speeches, Richard throws down his baton and stops their violent festivity (1.3.118-122). Doing so creates a break in the festive progression, a break in the holiday ritual, as Mowbray and Bolingbroke must wait while Richard confers with his counselors. The audience within and outside the play feels uneasy, even impatient, at the delay. Auditors have endured all the pompous rhetoric and circumstantial evidence leading up to the big event, but now must wait for the council to break. At this moment, through the imagery of the combatants' rhetoric, the audience is essentially sitting at the holiday table, hungrily awaiting the promised English ‘feast’ (1.3.92). Therefore, when Richard returns to say that their appetites will go unsatisfied (123-143), he operates as a dramatic kill-joy because he kills the promised spectacle; Phyllis Rackin explains that when ‘Richard refuses […] to allow the contest to proceed, the anticlimactic effect is nicely calculated to make the audience resent Richard, since it is he who deprives them of the spectacle […]’ (263).⁹ While the king's reasoning, avoidance of civil war, may sound logical momentarily, it surely is not so; when the tickets are sold, the audience expects a performance, or, in this case, when the metaphorical table is prepared, the audience metaphorically desires to eat. When they do not see the performance or dine on the meal, they have a disaffection for the powers that kept them waiting with the promise of festive events.

Richard states that instead of making England ‘wade in our kindred's blood,’ he will simply banish both combatants (1.3.138-43). In doing so, he again attempts to create a bloodless peace.¹⁰ The king banishes Mowbray for all time and Bolingbroke for first ten, then six years (1.3.140-143, 148-153, 208-212).¹¹ For added security, the king also disallows the two from reaching a communion or peace between themselves (183-190). In other words, Richard seems to want national peace, but neither true justice nor reconciliation. In addition, as Liebler explains,

The joust is (or would have been) one of several ritual events depicted in the play whose close observation mark the normative relationship of king and state but here, in Richard's crisis of kingship, are aborted or evacuated of meaning.

(60)

Richard wants to maintain community without maintaining community rites, such as the promised duel to decide the guilt and innocence of the two parties.

As a result, the audience feels much like Bolingbroke and Mowbray do—frustrated by the lack of the imagined feast. For instance, when Gaunt attempts to cheer his son by telling him to imagine that he has not been banished, but merely sent away to learn ‘honor’ or to escape disease (1.3.275-293), Bolingbroke, impassioned, replies,

O who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
O, no, the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.
Fell Sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more
Than when he bites but lanceth not the sore.

(1.3.294-303)

Here, Bolingbroke returns to food and feast imagery in discussing the unsatisfying banishment. He cannot be happy or feel satiated by merely imagining the feast; he desired to participate in the ‘English feast’ with Mowbray, to settle their warm dispute decisively. Cold banishment does nothing for this hunger for justice. In fact, he suggests that the mouth of Sorrow is left infected, unable to heal with such a passive solution. There is no peace, none of Mowbray's hoped-for return to community, without the feast. Ultimately, Richard's solution creates just the opposite for the two; instead of restored community through festive ritual, they receive isolation through banishment and broken ritual.

Interestingly, in making sure that Bolingbroke and Mowbray never have their hoped-for feast of blood and so resolve the issue with arms, nor allowing them to make peace and sit at table again as English brothers, Richard actually shows himself as a king who is trying to find and hold onto the tenuous edge between peace and justice, but not actively pursuing either. In this way, as Liebler explains, the cancelled event and subsequent banishment begin to reveal ‘a complex portrait of the king as one who attempts to hold on to certain aspects of a traditional order while violating others’ (60). The people of his kingdom, at least the audience at the duel, go away unsatisfied, feeling no resolution and having been offered very little of the dramatic action they were hoping for. The reader feels the same tension, and it is this strain of no resolution that will eventually drive Richard from the throne. This uneasy tension will become a central pattern to Richard's rule, a pattern of governance which leaves the community dangling and unsatisfied, never taking hold of society's need for the camaraderie found through feasting, festivity, and community ritual. Bolingbroke, on the other hand, through his rhetoric and action, will create the sense of both holiday and community over and over again.

In disallowing the feast of battle, Richard not only creates isolation for the combatants, but also brings on a period of fasting for both Bolingbroke and Gaunt.¹² Bolingbroke, as shown above, feels that while he may imagine a feast, he cannot participate in one, and, therefore, cannot feel satisfied or well-nourished. Likewise, at the beginning of Act Two, his dying father, Gaunt, responds to Richard's greeting with the following speech:

O, how that name [Gaunt] befits my composition!
Old Gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old.
Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast,
And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt?
For sleeping England long time have I watched;
Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt.
The pleasures that some fathers feed upon
Is my strict fast—I mean my children's looks—
And therein fasting, thou hast made me gaunt.

(2.1.74-81)

Gaunt suggests here that he has been fasting on two accounts. First, he has kept a vigilant watch over England and has maintained the state with such great care and energy that the work has left him thin. Second, Richard has rewarded him for this vigilance by taking away his one source of sustenance, his son Bolingbroke. Gaunt points out that for his work, he might expect food, a feast even, but instead he has received the opposite, a fast. In this way, his situation mirrors his son's: Bolingbroke expected participation in ‘English feasts,’ but he is forced out of the community before he is allowed to participate; Gaunt feels that he, too, is leaving the community without proper participation, for he will soon die without the nourishing presence and affection of his banished son.

In addition, Gaunt suggests that while he fasts, Richard continues to feed off the flattery of his favorites and the revenues gained from ‘leasing’ out the nation (2.1.31-64). Richard, growing irritated, calls Gaunt a ‘lunatic lean-witted fool’ and threatens his life (2.1.115-123),¹³ to which Gaunt replies that the king has ‘tapped out and drunkenly caroused’ with the English resources, including the blood and body of Gloucester, another of the king's uncles (2.1.127). Gaunt's message here is that Richard carelessly feasts at the expense of his community, rather than as part of community ritual or to promote the community welfare; or, as Thomas Berninghausen demonstrates, ‘rather than feeding the realm, Richard feeds upon it’ (7).¹⁴ In other words, the king's feasting promotes the fasting of his subjects, takes the food off their tables and leaves them further separated within the political and economic hierarchy. Certainly, such has been and will be the case for both Bolingbroke and his father. In addition, while the words of Gaunt aggravate Richard, they are clearly accurate, for upon hearing the news of Gaunt's death only moments later, Richard excitedly exclaims, ‘The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he’ (2.1.153). The king immediately tells his retinue to ‘seize to us / The plate, coin, revenues, and movables / Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possessed’ (160-162). Richard is feeding again, sucking the life-blood out of his national and even familial community.

This blood-sucking economic policy also shows the king capriciously violating community ritual once again: first, Richard denied the promised, public duel between Norfolk and Hereford; now, the king disregards the law of inheritance.¹⁵ The result of violations against the community is, not surprisingly, diminishing popular support.¹⁶ For example, Ross points out that Richard's behavior, his drunken ‘carousing,’ has alienated him from his subjects. Ross states, ‘The commons hath he pilled with grievous taxes, / And quite lost their hearts; the nobles hath he fined / For ancient quarrels, and quite lost their hearts’ (2.1.246-248).¹⁷ Northumberland, fearing that Richard will soon begin feeding off of his blood or property (238-245), states that he will look to gain some ‘comfort’ in the unlawful return of Hereford (272, 278-298). In other words, desiring to avoid the pangs of fasting which Gaunt described, Northumberland turns to Bolingbroke for a better chance at sustenance. Given this line of thinking, it is little wonder that Northumberland describes Bolingbroke's return and presence in terms of food imagery: ‘And yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar, / Making the hard way sweet and delectable’ (2.3.7-8). For Northumberland, and soon for the majority of the nation, Bolingbroke represents the ‘hope to joy,’ the hope for food and festivity (15). In fact, as Edgar Schell compellingly argues, Ross and Northumberland, along with Willoughby, because of their relative anonymity at this point in the play, represent through their words ‘an impersonal community responding to Richard's seizure of Bolingbroke's property’ (264-265). Richard has left the English people malnourished, and they want something to eat; the king has disallowed festivity, banished would-be participants, and fed off the taxes of the people and the blood of his own kin.¹⁸ Meanwhile, Bolingbroke has fasted like the people, suffered like the people, and now, like the people, desires to return to clear participation in the English community, even if that means settling the score with King Richard himself.

When York, therefore, calls Bolingbroke his ‘own carver’ for his bold attempt, the uncle's judgmental remark highlights the exact reason behind Hereford's growing public support (2.3.144). That is, Bolingbroke does indeed hope to be his own carver—literally, his own butcher cutting off a slab for his own nourishment—in returning from banishment to claim his inheritance.¹⁹ In fact, Bolingbroke's attempt to get his fair share in the community is just the sort of action that many of the English people wish they could do for themselves. The populace feels overtaxed and undernourished by the king. Bolingbroke's civil disobedience makes him appear heroic; he will fight to get what is his own, what he believes is his by right.²⁰

Notably, Hereford's first stated intent in his attempt to regain his inheritance is ‘to weed and pluck away’ the ‘caterpillars’ who feed on Richard's garden (2.3.166-167), which he quickly accomplishes in sending Bushy and Green to their executions (3.1.1-30).²¹ Further, in accusing them, Bolingbroke specifically mentions that they deprived him of proper food, saying that while the king's sidekicks ‘fed upon my seigniories,’ the exiled Hereford was left ‘eating the bitter bread of banishment’ (3.1.21-22). Again, the emphasis is on the idea that, under Richard's rule, some eat well, but others do not. The community is not unified but divided, with the favored feeding well, and the others eating only ‘bitter bread.’ Once Bushy and Green are removed, Bolingbroke immediately pronounces a new way of doing business, saying, ‘Come, lords, away / To fight with Glendower and his complices. / Awhile to work, and after holiday’ (42-44). In these words, Bolingbroke again touches on the language and lives of the common people. His words here ring out in their simplicity of theme and language. In essence, Bolingbroke asserts, ‘I eat bread as you do; I work as you do; and later, if all goes well, I will participate in the holiday feast and community with you.’ Again, Bolingbroke emphasizes community participation and festivity.

When Richard next appears, it is with just the opposite sentiment. In fact, he returns to England wishing for Hereford's continued lack of English sustenance, saying, ‘Feed not thy sovereign's foe, my gentle earth, / Nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense’ (3.2.12-13). Bolingbroke is hungry and looking for food, planning to share the wealth when he gets it (2.3.59-62), while Richard is hoping to deny the bounty of his garden.²² Richard sees Bolingbroke as a ‘puny subject’ standing far below Richard's ‘great glory’ and as a ‘thief’ who ‘hath reveled in the night’ and now attempts to steal the king's property (3.2.36-53, 83-90).²³ Though Richard appears somewhat hypocritical in calling Bolingbroke a thief, the king is correct in pointing out that Hereford remains beneath him as a subject of the English crown. Still, while the king's overall gist may be correct, his tone is dangerously haughty and condescending. Richard scorns the idea of having a hungry reveler take any of his garden's bounty. He sees Bolingbroke as unruly and out of order in his attempts to reclaim his lost inheritance, in his attempt to partake of Richard's exclusive feast. In this, Bolingbroke tends toward festive and socially-leveled community, while Richard clings to the idea of strict hierarchical order—the feast by invitation only—and, according to Leonard Tennenhouse, ‘exercises his authority for penurious and exclusionary ends’ (76).

When Richard does, finally and in the face of mounting adversity, attempt to create solidarity, his effort comes off as more pitiful than believable. Realizing his cause is lost for want of soldiers, Richard says, ‘strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we? / Greater he shall not be; if he serve God, / We'll serve Him too, and be his fellow so’ (97-99). Certainly the idea ends with Bolingbroke and Richard now living as ‘fellows,’ but the overall impression is that Richard is still trying to create a means by which Bolingbroke cannot get above him. Richard may, of necessity, be willing to condescend to the same level as Bolingbroke, but he cannot imagine being beneath him in any way. In fact, the king continues to talk of his ‘subjects’ (100), going so far as to call them ‘dogs,’ ‘snakes,’ and ‘Judases’ with ‘spotted souls’ (130-132). Again, his words and judgment create separation: he is a man, while his subjects are animals, or he is Christ-like, while they are damned and despicable men.

Eventually, the thought of his own mortality does make Richard understand that he at least shares that much with the common person, and the insight could make him gain pity for humanity and could make the audience gain pity for the king. He says,

For you have but mistook me all this while.
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends. Subjected thus,
How can you say to me that I am king?

(3.2.174-177)

However, the speech is pitiable mostly because it demonstrates Richard's central lack of understanding; as John W. Blanpied notes, even in Richard's discussion of mortality, the king ‘continually maintains his insularity’ (129).²⁴ The fact that he must ‘eat,’ ‘feel,’ ‘taste,’ and ‘need’ does not indicate his inability to be king. While the idea may be unclear for him, the audience knows that Richard, while certainly a king, is also most certainly a man like Bolingbroke or any person of the kingdom. Still, the common touch, the sense of pathos for others, eludes Richard, even eludes his basic thought process. He finds degradation in the idea of needing even to eat like other men, let alone with them—claiming that such activities make him more ‘subjected’ than regal.²⁵ Therefore, he does not adapt to the view of the festive, socially-leveled community.

Richard does, however, cleverly use language to acknowledge the events he now knows will soon transpire, saying, ‘Discharge my followers. Let them hence away, / From Richard's night to Bolingbroke's fair day’ (3.2.217-218). He makes this final regal pronouncement to disband his forces, before giving up his throne. In addition, he may create a subtle pun here in describing the coming time under the potential rule of Bolingbroke. ‘Fair day,’ of course, means a day of pleasant weather, and, in this instance, suggests the brightest and most successful period of Bolingbroke's life; however, Richard may also be suggesting that Bolingbroke's rule will be like a day at the fair, festive and unruly. Such a concept will make sense, in light of the play's conclusion and the overall scheme of the tetralogy, as Henry IV's rule will indeed be marked by both the festive and unruly behavior of his subjects.

In the ensuing scene, the difference between Bolingbroke and Richard is witnessed in their relative separation from common humanity. Bolingbroke appears on the ‘plain’ (3.3.50), while Richard looks down from the castle walls (61-62). Richard haughtily pronounces that God's forces will secure his kingship (72-100), while Bolingbroke, through his spokesman Northumberland, begs for his inheritance and for ‘[e]nfranchisement immediate’ (111-114), the same request for community, incidentally, that he and Mowbray made at the beginning of the play (1.3.90). Richard is concerned that he not ‘debase’ himself in talking with Bolingbroke (3.3.127-128), and bridles at the idea of coming down to speak with him in the ‘base court’ (176). In fact, in eventually honoring Bolingbroke's request, Richard exclaims,

Down, down I come, like glistering Phaethon,
Wanting the manage of unruly jades.
In the base court? Base court, where kings grow base,
To come at traitors' calls and do them grace.
In the base court? Come down? Down, court! Down, king!

(3.3.178-182)

Here, Richard's poetic imagery, delivered as he stands high above his rival, emphasizes, once again, his sense of superiority over his community in general and Bolingbroke in particular. The king compares himself to a god, but refers to his subjects as ‘jades’—that is, nag horses, non-humans. He does not want to come down to Bolingbroke's or the people's ‘base’ level, fearing that in doing so some of their baseness may rub off on him. In truly Lear-like fashion, Richard goes ‘frantic’ when he cannot retain his superior position (185); rather than accepting Bolingbroke's terms—the return of his inherited property and the repeal of his banishment—the king, dissatisfied by having to do something so unkingly and base as to communicate with a relative at his level, paradoxically gives him everything, including the English throne (190-210).²⁶ Without the ‘mounting’ height and superiority of an unchallenged kingship, Richard can barely stomach living at all.

The famous garden scene, which immediately follows, is also highly indicative of Richard's rule. The queen begins the scene suggesting some festive events be brought into the garden, saying, ‘What sport shall we devise here in this garden, / To drive away the heavy thought of care?’ (3.4.1-2). However, she then turns down all suggestions, deciding against playing at bowls, dancing, telling tales, or singing (3.4.3-23). In doing so, she parallels Richard, who set up the ‘English feast’ of the duel between Mowbray and Bolingbroke and then arbitrarily disallowed participation in that feast. When Richard felt the pressure of Bolingbroke's presence, he spoke in terms of himself as owner of the garden of England (3.2.4-26). Here, the queen is in an actual garden, trying to ward off the sorrows brought on by Bolingbroke's advance. But just as Richard is forced to acknowledge the approach of Bolingbroke's ‘fair day,’ so is the queen when she overhears the conversation of the gardener and his man (3.4.25-70). When the queen confronts the gardener, he explains the situation in compelling terms.²⁷ The gardener suggests that both Richard and Bolingbroke have been ‘weighed’ as in a scale (84). The king, with his haughty separation from the English community and his disregard for community ritual and festivity, has lost his place in that same community and is left with ‘nothing but himself’ (85).²⁸ Bolingbroke, on the other hand, having desired participation in the community feast, and having suffered as they have under the hand of the condescending Richard, now has the support of ‘all the English peers’ (88). Bolingbroke's community support, then, has outweighed Richard's inherited right in the battle for the kingship.

Still, even in his loss of authority, Richard cannot let go of his hierarchical separation from the masses, while Bolingbroke continues to fulfill their wishes as best he can. For example, in the deposition scene, Richard only confirms his disaffection with community ritual and all things ‘common.’ Northumberland asks the nobility to grant the ‘common's suit’ to have Richard publicly tried (4.1.154-155), and Bolingbroke requests that, in order to satisfy the community, Richard be brought to surrender ‘in common view’ (156-158). Once again, Bolingbroke acts to satisfy the community's desire for ritual, and once again Richard will first delay and then deny them (223-274). To Richard's refusal, Northumberland states that ‘The commons will not then be satisfied’ (274), but, indeed, satisfying the commons has never been high on Richard's political agenda. Instead, sounding strangely like Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Richard grandly mourns his own losses, saying,

[…] Was this face the face
That everyday under his household roof
Did keep ten thousand men? Was this the face
That like the sun, did make beholders wink?
Is this the face which faced so many follies,
That was at last outfaced by Bolingbroke?

(4.1.282-287)

In this speech, however, Richard does not look to the beauty found in the face of another, as Faustus does with the image of Helen, but instead focuses almost vainly on his own visage, as well as on the destiny he now faces.²⁹ In fact, as M. M. Reese explains, Richard's ‘imagination was incapable of directing itself outwards’ and tended ‘to people the world just as he wished to find it’ (246).³⁰ Reese's assertion is further justified by Richard's continued attempt to parallel his life to Christ's, calling his opponents ‘Pilates’ (4.1.240-243) and comparing his former friends to ‘Judas’ (171-172). In addition, when Bolingbroke refers to the deposed Richard as ‘fair cousin’ (306), Richard boldly argues that he is, in fact, now ‘greater than a king’ because he now has a ‘king,’ Bolingbroke, serving him as a ‘flatterer’ (307-310).

Though commenting specifically on Richard's imprisonment in the Tower, the Abbot of Westminster also reflects on Richard's desperate shenanigans, saying, ‘A woeful pageant have we here beheld’ (4.1.322). Certainly, Richard's sorrow and the act of deposition add to the ‘woeful’ tone of the event. Additionally, Richard's refusal to provide the public statements desired by the commons has made the official transfer of power a rather sorry spectacle. Nonetheless, this ‘pageant,’ which at least partially fulfills the people's hunger for community ritual, has taken place, which is more than can be said of Richard's previous attempt to provide a sort of pageant to decide the guilt/innocence of Norfolk and Bolingbroke. In that situation, the still-empowered Richard dismantled the event with his words and banished the participants. In the current situation, with the kingship now clearly swaying in the direction of Bolingbroke, but still not fully in his control (after all, that is what this particular event is attempting to accomplish), Richard would again decline the fulfillment of the pageant, but he no longer has the power to do so. The pageant is woeful because of Richard's refusal to participate with the ‘rules’ of the event, but it is, still, a pageant. In other words, when Richard was fully in power, he denied the community ritual; now that he is losing his power, he can still deny his participation, but he cannot deny the event. And with Bolingbroke's understanding of the public's desire for community ritual, the event ultimately does take place.³¹

Once Richard is politically defeated, though not yet dead, Bolingbroke's scheme of community ritual takes over completely, as witnessed in the ‘misrule festival’ of Act Five, scene two. In light of all of Richard's refusals to provide community ritual in general, and community festivity in particular, his statement during the deposition that he wishes that he were a ‘mockery king of snow’ is interesting (4.1.261). Here, Richard desires to leave the scene, to ‘melt’ from the presence of ‘the sun of Bolingbroke’ (262-263). Certainly, Richard's sentiment is understandable; he feels embarrassed, ashamed, and wishes to leave the kingship quietly, rather than publicly. However, if the idea of a ‘mockery king’ is taken to mean ‘a king to be mocked,’ then not only does Richard become such a king, but he also simultaneously, and ironically, fulfills the festive role of a ‘king of misrule.’

As C. L. Barber points out, the Lord of Misrule, a popular figure during Renaissance Shrovetide festivals, was essentially a silly (mis)representation of the actual king (24-30, 194-197). The Lord of Misrule would preside over the holiday festivities for a time, but would ultimately be de-throned, mocked, and symbolically banished or killed, while the rule of the actual king would be reestablished (213-221).³² In the deposition scene, the audience sees Richard dethroned. Soon after, York will describe the scene in which Richard and Bolingbroke parade through the streets of London (5.2.1-40). Therefore, the audience sees that if Richard wanted earlier to be a ‘mockery king,’ he certainly finds an ironic and humiliating wish-fulfillment now.³³ Richard is paraded through the streets as a king to be mocked. The commoners throw dust and rubbish on him, and they pile abuse on him with the vigor of those who have had little holiday release or festive fulfillment under their former king. They cheer the ‘real king,’ the hero of the common man, Bolingbroke, now made Henry IV. They banish the ‘mockery king,’ society is rejuvenated, and order is, at least temporarily, restored.

In welcoming the new king, the community is also reunited, for ‘all tongues cried, “God save thee, Bolingbroke!”’ (5.2.11), and the new king, ‘bareheaded’ and bowing low, endears himself to this newly united community saying, ‘I thank you countrymen’ (19-21); in this way, Tennenhouse points out, we see that Bolingbroke's ‘England incorporates the robust features of festival’ (80). His son later will use this same endearing phrase when he most needs the support of the community before the battle at Agincourt. Here in Richard II, the community is leveled and united both in their festive abuse of Richard and in their holiday welcome for Bolingbroke. And, to make the ritual complete, Richard is banished to Pomfret and separated from the community entirely, even from the community of his own wife (5.1.51-54).³⁴ In other words, in ‘this new world’ which Bolingbroke is creating (4.1.79), even Richard must participate in community festivity; he may have never done well as a kingly participant, but he does serve to re-unite the community in his new role as a ‘mockery king.’

The queen also discusses the idea of the new, festive rule of Henry IV, calling the usurping Bolingbroke ‘an alehouse guest’ in his ‘triumph’ (5.1.15). Certainly, her term is derogatory, but it is also accurate. Henry, the new ‘bareheaded’ king of his ‘countrymen,’ now eats, drinks, and lives as the head of the community, while Richard is banished from the common view, sent poisoned food (5.4.98-103), and ultimately murdered (5.4.108-113). Therefore, the former kill-joy is killed. The mockery king of the old hierarchy is dead; long live the new king of the festive community.³⁵

Of course, Henry IV will soon learn that his political concept has its own implicit difficulties and tensions, which will be seen more clearly in the following chapters, but already at this point in Richard II the dangers are evident. Holiday festivity, in its leveling effects, can create a chaotic state. If the king is truly on the level with his countrymen, then why should one of them not be on his level, that is, the throne? Richard aptly presents this question to Northumberland, who will retain his rebellious posture throughout the coming plays. Richard states,

Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal
The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne,
The time shall not be many hours of age
More than it is ere foul sin, gathering head,
Shall break into corruption. Thou shalt think,
Though he divide the realm and give thee half,
It is too little, helping him to all;
He shall think that thou, which knowest the way
To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again,
Being ne'er so little urged another way,
To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne.

(5.1.55-65)

Here, Richard clearly articulates what will come to pass—the political instability of Henry's rule; as Clayton G. MacKenzie states, ‘Bolingbroke is the archetype of an altogether new order, an order that threatens a “crimson tempest” (3.3.46) if it does not have its way, and yet, by having its way, ensures the same’ (325).³⁶ And it does not take long for Richard's forecast to find its proof; in fact, the potential rebellion of Aumerle and the Abbot, to be carried out during the ‘jousts and triumphs’ at Oxford (5.2.51-52), demonstrates that the new, more festive time of Henry IV may actually increase, rather than abolish, the political disorder that Richard's rather capricious reign began.

Moreover, the difficulties of disorderly festivity and right rule even infect Henry's own family, as we see when the new king calls for his son Hal:

Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?
'Tis full three months since I did see him last.
If any plague hang over us, 'tis he.
I would to God, my lords, he might be found.
Inquire at London, 'mongst the taverns there,
For there, they say, he daily doth frequent
With unrestrained loose companions,
Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes
And beat our watch, and rob our passengers—
While he, young wanton and effeminate boy,
Takes on the point of honor to support
So dissolute a crew.

(5.3.1-12)

Clearly, this scene sets up the ensuing action of 1 Henry IV, with the Boar's Head crew and the Gads Hill robbery, but it also points out a clear parallel between Hal and Richard. Richard also supported a dissolute crew, a group that stained his royal reputation.³⁷ Additionally, while Richard and his friends never thieved in narrow lanes, they did effectively steal in their taxation, fines, blank charters, and seizure of property. This is not to say, however, that Hal is a parallel character to Richard, but only that they have some similarities.³⁸ After all, the company Richard kept cost him his kingdom. Both presently and in the following plays, Henry will worry greatly that the same will happen to Hal. However, there is a distinct difference, as Richard's crew is noblemen, and, as shown, the former king views commoners consistently as sub-humans. On the other hand, Hal here demonstrates that he, like his father, has a common touch, even if that touch is far more vulgar than Henry can tolerate.

When told of the triumph celebrations for his father, Hal responds that he will, ‘unto the stews, / And from the common'st creature pluck a glove, / And wear it as a favor, and with that, / He would unhorse the lustiest challenger’ (16-19). Ironically, Hotspur reports Hal's response, which will soon turn out to be prophecy, with Hotspur playing the role of the unhorsed, lusty challenger. Still, Hal's answer is tawdry, as Henry points out, exclaiming that his son is ‘As dissolute as desperate!’ (20). However, Henry goes on to say that through these vices he sees possibility: ‘Yet through both / I see some sparks of better hope, which elder years / May happily bring forth’ (20-22). Henry sees a base would-be king in his son, just as Richard saw a base would-be king in Bolingbroke.³⁹ Certainly, Hal is more base in his appetites than his father ever appears to be, but Henry is shrewd enough to see the parallel to his own ‘politics of festivity’ which center on finding a kinship with common people.

On a final note, the play concludes with the idea of the untimely. Richard's death is untimely, but Richard also has found that his life is untimely. His time—the time which Jean Howard and Phyllis Rackin refer to as that of the ‘hierarchically ordered medieval kingdom’ (30)⁴⁰—is out, and Henry's time is in. Still, as good a politician as Henry is, he will not be able to control time either. In fact, it is arguable that festive time, that is the riotous time of the festival, which takes center stage as soon as Henry gains the crown, is even more difficult to control than the time of Richard's strict hierarchy; out of Richard's time grew the usurping Bolingbroke, but out of Henry's time will grow both further rebellion and the riotous Falstaff. Therefore, the question becomes how an English monarch can manage the time of festivity, how festive disorder and leveling, with their values and vices both, can be wed to a well-ordered social and political state.⁴¹

Throughout the remaining three plays of the tetralogy, Hal/Henry V will have to solve this problem. The following chapters will show Hal working to create his own politically productive scheme of community festivity. In 1 Henry IV, using his actions and rhetoric, the prince will create a metaphorical ‘feast’ centered on the ever-festive Falstaff; Hal will use this event to gain public support in his attempt to catapult himself from roguish prince to glorious king. In 2 Henry IV, public appreciation of this festivity will grow even as it loses much of its political value for the prince. As a result, Hal will feel the tension between the festive disorder he has helped to create and the hoped-for order of his eventual kingship. When he finally does step into his father's throne and away from Falstaff, the festivity, like the fat knight himself, will eventually disintegrate and appear to die. Therefore, much of Henry V will be occupied not by the spirit of the feast, but by the spirit of Lent, as the king and his countrymen suffer and pray on the fields of France. However, with the English victory at Agincourt and the ensuing marriage of Henry V and Katharine, festivity will regain a prominent role, and the community will be nourished and restored. In this way, the politics of community festivity, established by Bolingbroke in his usurpation of Richard's throne, remain central in the development of both Prince Hal and the entire tetralogy. In addition, the characters and the plays show the complexity of these politics and demonstrate a festive cycle. In the few lines concerning Hal at the conclusion of Richard II, the audience gets a sample, a taste, of what is to come. As they turn their attention now to 1 Henry IV, however, they will be offered much more, a full feast even, as they bear witness to the mad-cap prince and his fat-witted friend at the height of their festive glory.

Notes

1. C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom (New York: Meridian, 1963). The book was originally published in 1959.

2. Charles Forker, ‘The Idea of Time in Shakespeare's Second Historical Tetralogy,’ The Upstart Crow 5 (1984): 20-34.

3. For another extended argument on this point, see Robert B. Bennett, ‘Four Stages of Time: The Shape of History in Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy,’ Shakespeare Studies 19 (1987): 61-85. Bennett, like Forker, sees a ‘grand unity’ in the tetralogy (61), but he also emphasizes that all of the plays deserve attention, claiming that ‘Shakespeare has written four plays because he is describing a four-stage, not a two-stage, process’ (63).

4. This and all subsequent references to Shakespeare's works are from The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, updated 4^th ed. (New York: Longman, 1997). Act, scene, and line numbers will be noted parenthetically throughout.

5. Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998) 271-314. Bloom ultimately goes so far as to say that the ‘two parts of Henry IV do not belong to Hal, but to Falstaff’ (272). Still, it is the relationship between the two that dominates his analysis of the two plays, which Bloom, like Barber, essentially sees as a unit.

6. Naomi C. Liebler, Shakespeare's Festive Tragedy: The Ritual Foundations of Tragedy (New York: Routledge, 1995).

7. Irving Ribner, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).

8. See Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, vol. 2 (London: J. Johnson, 1808) 846. Holinshed lists three possible dates for the duel, but Shakespeare chose the one associated most closely with a holy feast day. The typical date for the Feast of St. Lambert, as Holinshed states, is September 17.

9. Phyllis Rackin, ‘The Role of the Audience in Shakespeare's Richard II,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 36 (1985): 262-281.

10. See R. J. Dorius, ‘A Little More than a Little,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 11 (1960): 13-26. Of Richard's desire for a bloodless peace, Dorius writes, ‘Like a physician maintaining a balance among the body's humors, however, Richard should promptly have made a “deep incision” to “purge” blood overproud and too rich […]’ (19).

11. For an extensive explication on the ‘degradation’ Mowbray and Bolingbroke experience through their banishments, see Margaret Loftus Ranald, ‘The Degradation of Richard II: An Inquiry into Ritual Backgrounds,’ English Literary Renaissance 7 (1977): 170-196. Ranald explains how the punishment suggests that both of the would-be combatants are guilty and strips them of social position and honor (177-183).

12. See David M. Bergeron, ‘Richard II and Carnival Politics,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 42 (1991): 33-43. Bergeron states that Bolingbroke's banishment makes him a sort of ‘Lenten representative’ (37). I avoid using such terms here largely because Bolingbroke demonstrates relatively few of the characteristics of Lent as I will discuss them in this study.

13. The serious and political Gaunt is indeed ‘lean-witted’ when compared to the ‘fat-witted’ Falstaff (1 Henry IV, 1.2.2).

14. Thomas F. Berninghausen, ‘Banishing Cain: The Gardening Metaphor in Richard II and the Genesis Myth of the Origin of History,’ Essays in Literature 14 (1987): 3-14. In making this statement about the king's governance, Berninghausen stresses the idea of Richard as the negligent gardener of England.

15. For more on Richard's capricious behavior, see Bergeron 36-37.

16. See Michael Grivelet, ‘Shakespeare's “War with Time”: the Sonnets and Richard II,’ Shakespeare Survey 23 (1970): 69-78. In discussing Richard's improper seizure of the Lancaster estate, Grivelet states, ‘Devotion to the individual when it obscures the claims of society is ultimately an aggression upon time, an act of violence which causes further violence and disorder’ (76).

17. Edgar Schell, ‘Richard II and Some Forms of Theatrical Time,’ Comparative Drama 24 (1990): 255-269.

18. Rackin, taking note of Richard's multiple errors up to this point, states that the ‘opening scene of Act II puts the finishing touches on the case against Richard and completes the process of the audience's alienation from him’ (265).

19. This and all subsequent word definitions are from The Oxford English Dictionary, 1989 ed., unless otherwise noted.

20. For a discussion of the linguistic shift from ‘Bolingbroke-as-rebel’ to ‘Bolingbroke-as-hero,’ see Geraldo U. de Sousa, ‘The Semiotics of Kingship,’ Shakespeare and Deconstruction, ed. G. Douglas Atkins and David Bergeron (New York: Peter Lang, 1988) 173-191.

21. According to The Oxford English Dictionary, 1989 ed., a person who is a ‘caterpillar’ is ‘one who preys on society.’ During the Gad's Hill robbery, Falstaff calls the travelers ‘whoreson caterpillars, bacon-fed knaves,’ and ‘gorbellied knaves,’ suggesting that they, like Bushy and Green, are feeding fat off the state while others are not (1 Henry IV, 2.2.84-88). Therefore, the theft provides more equal distribution of the community ‘store’ (89).

22. For a thorough explication of the garden metaphor in Richard II, see Berninghausen.

23. See Leonard Tennenhouse, Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare's Genres (New York: Methuen, 1986). Tennenhouse points out in these lines that ‘it is significant to find Richard describing Bullingbroke in language more appropriate to Falstaff than an English king’ (80). This point becomes especially intriguing later in the tetralogy, as it is Bolingbroke/Henry himself who in 1 Henry IV parallels his own son to Richard (3.2.60-91).

24. John W. Blanpied, Time and the Artist in Shakespeare's English Histories (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983) 120-141.

25. Bloom states that in understanding common mortality, Lear opens ‘to all others, to poor naked wretches, wheresoever they are, who suffer the merciless storm,’ while ‘Richard opens only to Richard’ (258).

26. It is important to remember that it is Shakespeare's Richard, not the historical king, who so willfully hands over the crown. For more on this issue, see Hyosik Hwang, ‘Does Shakespeare “Remain as Neuter”?: The Deposition of Richard II and the Dramatist's Use of History,’ West Virginia University Philological Papers 44 (1998-1999): 42-49.

27. See E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's History Plays (London: Chatto and Windus, 1951) 234-263. Tillyard goes so far as to say that, in this scene, ‘the gardener gives both the pattern and the moral of the play’ (250).

28. See Graham Holderness, ‘Theatres of History: Chronicle Plays,’ Shakespeare: The Play of History, ed. Graham Holderness, Nick Potter, and John Turner (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987) 13-82. Holderness argues that the gardener's metaphor of weighing Richard and Bolingbroke shows that a ‘king rules not by divine right but by hard work and a respect for the mutuality and reciprocal obligations of the “commonwealth”’ (40).

29. For much more on Shakespeare's indebtedness to Marlowe, and especially to Edward II, see Meredith Skura, ‘Marlowe's Edward II: Penetrating Language in Shakespeare's Richard II,’ Shakespeare Survey 50 (1997): 41-55.

30. See M. M. Reese, The Cease of Majesty: A Study of Shakespeare's History Plays (London: Edward Arnold, 1961). Reese's argument would explain, to some extent, Richard's odd ability to discuss past parties in the midst of his own deposition.

31. For more on Bolingbroke's public awareness, see Robert Hapgood, ‘Three Eras in Richard II,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 14 (1963): 281-283. Hapgood concisely explains that ‘Henry IV brings in a new era, in which the status and function of the king depend ultimately on the manipulation of public opinion’ (282).

32. In these pages, Barber explains the rejection of Falstaff in terms of the necessary rejection of a Lord of Misrule.

33. Liebler notes that although ‘Elizabeth promoted and supported various seasonal festivities in and out of court, Misrule was not one of them. Even a temporary release of control is fatal to the monarch in unstable times’ (84). Of course, in playing the role of Lord of Misrule, Richard finds that doing so is ultimately fatal, but long before his murder he realizes that his release of the kingship is not temporary.

34. For more on this separation from both the throne and his wife, see Kim Axline, ‘“Sad Stories of the Death of Kings”: The Revelation of Humanity in Richard II,’ On-Stage Studies 22 (1999-2000): 108-121. Axline makes the following insight:

    The world of Shakespeare's play is poised on the cusp between the forces and ideals of the fading medieval world and the revolutionary energies of the emerging Renaissance. The stronghold and mysticism of the Church, the Divine Right of Kings, and codes of chivalry must make way for a new humanism and pragmatism, just as the stable succession of kingship is about to give way to decades of turmoil. The argument between Richard and Bolingbroke embodies this splitting of worldviews, while the process of division is further underscored by Richard's lamentation that he is ‘doubly-divorced’ from both crown and spouse.

    (108)

    While I am not sure that there is such a clear division of views, so much as a problematizing of them, at this particular moment in the play it certainly appears to be such a division both to Richard and the audience.

35. Tennenhouse makes the following claim regarding these events:

    In actuality, it is Henry IV rather than Richard in whom Shakespeare invests the power of the artist, not a power detached from matters political, that is, but the power to incorporate disruptive cultural elements within the official rituals of state. Henry successfully stages Richard's resignation of the crown and the procession and coronation that legitimate his own claim to the throne.

    (81)

    In discussing Richard II singly, one might be encouraged to appreciate this claim. However, the success of Henry's staging in terms of legitimating his claim to the throne is partial, at best, if we consider the events of the Henry IV plays; in addition, Hal's reported behavior and Henry's concern about it at the end of Richard II make it hard to believe that the new king has completely mastered the ability to ‘incorporate disruptive cultural elements.’

36. Clayton G. MacKenzie, ‘Paradise and Paradise Lost in Richard II,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 37 (1986): 318-339.

37. Recall Bolingbroke's sentencing of Richard's followers:

    You have misled a prince, a royal king,
    A happy gentleman in blood and lineaments,
    By you unhappied and disfigured clean.
    You have in manner with your sinful hours
    Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him,
    Broke the possession of a royal bed,
    And stained the beauty of a fair queen's cheeks,
    With tears drawn from her eyes by your foul wrongs.

    (3.1.8-15)

38. See G. K. Hunter, ‘Notes on the Genre of the History Play,’ Shakespeare's English Histories: A Quest for Form and Genre, ed. John W. Velz (Binghamton, New York: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1996) 229-240. While I would not ultimately see Hal as a double for Richard, or vice versa, Hunter's idea about diversification through partial doubling is relevant, especially in his claim that the ‘point about diversification is to avoid […] categorizing’ (238). For a rhetorical connection between Richard and Hal, see Walter W. Cannon, ‘The King's Three Bodies: The Textual King and The Logic of Obedience in Henry V,’ The Upstart Crow 18 (1998): 84-94.

39. For more on how the prince's response is entirely appropriate to the new social and political atmosphere created by Henry's seizure of the kingship, see Derek Traversi, Shakespeare: From Richard II to Henry V (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957) 44-48.

40. Jean E. Howard and Phyllis Rackin, Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare's English Histories (New York: Routledge, 1997).

41. See Graham Holderness, Shakespeare's History (New York: St. Martin's, 1985). Holderness sees the tetralogy as ‘a contradictory fusion of chronicle and carnival’ (37). My argument supports the idea that there is such a ‘fusion,’ though it is only sometimes ‘contradictory.’

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