Richard II

Summary:

In the court of King Richard II, Henry Bolingbroke, a duke and the son of John of Gaunt, accuses another noble of murdering his Uncle, the Duke of Gloucester. Richard exiles both Henry and the accused, and it is strongly implied Gloucester died under the King’s order. While Henry is exiled, his father dies, and the king seizes these lands to fund his war in Ireland. Incensed at this mistreatment, Henry returns and raises a rebel army to usurp the throne from Richard. He succeeds, and is crowned King Henry IV. Richard is deposed and hands over his crown before being imprisoned and later murdered by one of Henry’s followers.

Some Historical Context:

Shakespeare wrote 10 plays that generally get classified as ‘histories’ - that is, plays concerning the history of England. Of these, 8 form a sort of semi-continuous series, chronicling the bloody, tumultuous period of civil war in English history that would come to be known as the War of the Roses. Richard II is the first play of that series, and dramatizes what Shakespeare sees as the inciting incident of the whole ordeal; Henry Bolingbroke, later Henry IV, deposing Richard and usurping the throne, splintering the royal family into factions. In reality, most historians reject the idea that Richard’s deposition somehow sparked the War of the Roses - rather, that conflict is seen as a continuation of the various forces already at work in the country. As we’ll see, Richard’s England was already plagued by internal strife, from peasant uprisings to unhappy nobles questioning the absolute authority of the King. It makes far more sense to see the War of the Roses as another in a long line of bloody civil conflicts that shaped English history through the 14th and 15th centuries.

The historical Richard II was the son of Edward the Black Prince, one of the heroes of the 100 Years War against France, and a legendary figure in his own right from whom we probably get a lot of our ideas about the chivalric knights of the middle ages. Edward died of dysentery before he could take the throne, and succession passed to Richard at the tender age of 10 in the year 1377. Richard’s reign was marked by a number of crises, in part because England was involved in several costly wars both abroad and at home, and he was forced to lean heavily on taxation to support these efforts. Not helping matters was Richard’s well established belief in the royal prerogative and the divine right of kings - that is, that he was God’s chosen representative of the divine will on Earth, and as such his decisions were above the judgement of the various lords that made up parliament. From 1377 to his deposition in 1399, he faced a full scale peasant revolt as well as two crises where this absolute authority was called into question, the second of which ultimately ending in him being deposed, and Henry IV taking the throne as dramatized in this play.

What It’s About:

What makes a King?

There are generally three ways to approach Richard II - none is necessarily more correct than the others, but rather they tend to rotate in and out of style depending on the sensibilities of the time. The first is that Richard is a tragic romantic hero who is beset and bullied by the usurping forces of his court. Connected to the historical Richard's belief in the royal prerogative, these adaptations paint Richard's deposition as not just wrong but heretical - a usurpation of the natural order of things. They play up the poetry of Richard's language - Richard II is written almost entirely in iambic meter, and Richard himself gets all the best speeches, filled with dramatic, theatrical language. This stands in contrast with the more plainspoken Henry, who rarely speaks more than a handful of lines at a time. This along with Richard's more artistic inclinations are then taken as a further sign of this divine blessing. He is brilliant, sensitive and romantic, more in tune with the higher pursuits of art than with the carnal business of war, and he ultimately loses his thrones to the thugs Henry and Northumberland, who are in the bloody pursuit of power and not, as Henry repeatedly claims, merely trying to restore lost titles and lands.

The second view takes the opposite side - Richard is an ineffectual and weak-minded king, easily misled by corrupt advisors and ultimately self-centered and vain. He has his own uncle murdered because he sees him as a pretender to his throne, and wrongfully seizes Henry’s lands and title following his exile to fund his self-glorifying conflicts in Ireland. Henry stands in contrast as a paragon of self-determination and plain-spoken humility - he is not seeking power, but rather has it thrust upon him as a side effect of his justifiable efforts to reclaim his title. In these adaptations Henry’s actions stand less as an effort to overthrow the rightful king, and more as an attempt to move from an absolutist monarchy to a more modern, democratic form of rule where the voices of the (aristocratic and powerful) people are heard. 

The final view splits the difference, arguing that both sides have their faults. Richard is ineffectual and vain, and ultimately loses his kingdom because of his poor decisions. Henry is ambitious and opportunistic, and ultimately also proves ill-suited the throne - he is too much a battle commander, more concerned with tactics and troop movements than affairs of pomp and state. A popular staging of this is to depict the government moving from an absolutist monarchy under Richard to a military dictatorship under Henry - both sides have their flaws and abuses of power. But whatever the staging, the main message is the same - power carries a heavy weight, and there is no simple answer as to who makes a good king. Rather, those that sit on the throne are just human beings, doing their best but ultimately making very human mistakes.

If This Were A Movie:

It goes without saying that every play from now through Richard III (the end of Shakespeare’s history cycle) could be considered as a historical drama - think Lincoln or The King’s Speech, the type of awards-bait prestige picture that has come to dominate the fall release schedule. Even in Shakespeare’s day, this was true - while awards as we currently know them weren’t quite a thing, historical plays were huge crowd-pleasers, and nearly every company and playwright working at the time had a few in their pocket to goose attendance. 

However, to keep this section relevant, I’m also going to start using this space to draw some further comparisons modern readers might find interesting. As mentioned above, Shakespeare’s history plays dramatize the English conflict we now know as the War of the Roses. Beyond being historically significant, the War of the Roses has had a huge impact on fiction and pop culture over the last few centuries, and has been roughly adapted into a variety of mediums. Most notably, George R.R. Martin’s doorstopper series Game of Thrones, and the HBO series born from the books, takes a great deal of inspiration from this conflict. Richard II itself mostly corresponds to Robert Baratheon’s rebellion against the Targaryens that kick-starts the whole series. Robert serves as your analogue to Henry - the plainspoken soldier who is wronged by the King and eventually usurps the crown, while Richard acts as an imperfect combination of both the Mad King Aerys and Rhaegar Targaryen - an ineffectual King who mistreats his lords, while also a romantic leader ill-suited to battle. Much like how that rebellion would go on to have a far-reaching impact on the events of the series at large, so too will Richard’s deposition shape Shakespeare’s history to come.

The Line From The Play That You Know:

You may my glories and my state depose,

But not my griefs; still am I king of those. - Richard II 4.1.184-186

Richard’s line from the infamous deposition scene, wherein he resigns the crown and hands it over to Henry IV. As per usual, Henry is terse and plainspoken, looking to just do the deed and get the ordeal over with. Richard, however, has other ideas, and gives a series of long speeches, ceremonially stripping himself of his power, before dramatically handing over the physical crown to Henry while bemoaning his sorry state and the fact that, no longer a King, he has no real identity. Depending on how this is staged, it can be a moment where Richard wins back a great deal of sympathy from the audience, showing in these dramatic gestures his regal presence and bearing. Henry may have won the war on the battlefield, but they are fighting on Richard’s turf now, and he’s going to continue to get his hits in regardless of how hopeless the situation is.

The Line You Should Know:

For heaven’s sake let us sit upon the ground 

And tell sad stories of the death of kings - Richard II 3.2.150-151

This line comes earlier in the play, as Richard learns that Henry has returned from his exile and raised an army against him, including recruiting several lords to his side who had previously been loyal to Richard. He falls into despair, and delivers a long monologue bemoaning his fallen state as he knows he cannot stand against the forces Henry has mustered. The scene serves as an excellent reminder that, no matter how the play chooses to depict him, Richard II is one of Shakespeare’s great roles, comparable with Hamlet in terms of the weight and drama of his speeches, and adaptations are largely built around show-stopping performances by the lead.

Notable Adaptation:

Over the next two or so months, as we make our way through Shakespeare’s English history plays, Game of Thrones is going to come up a lot. That series is highly indebted to the Bard’s work in some of the ways outlined above, but beyond that it also re-popularized a style in which to present Shakespeare’s work - call it medieval realism; a depiction of the so-called middle ages that eschews chivalric romances and ornate speeches in favor of a ‘realistic’ approach, with all the blood and grime that that entails. While certainly not new, this style has had a profound impact on Shakespearean adaptations over the last few years, and the style has become not to update the time or setting of these plays, but rather to remain resolutely faithful to the period in its most real sense - 2015’s Macbeth, starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, is an example we’ve already discussed.

Similarly, there is 2012’s The Hollow Crown - a Sam Mendes-produced series of TV movies starring a who’s-who of British drama, adapting the main 8 plays of Shakespeare’s history cycle, starting with Richard II and working their way through Richard III. If you’re a fan of GoT, I cannot recommend this series highly enough. While it uses the original language, it captures the beats and action of the plays in ways that will be very familiar to those who’ve seen the HBO series, lifting the stories off the page and turning them into the bloody tales of ambition, betrayal and vengeance which they are. On top of that, this writer on this one actually knows how to end a series. 

General Notes:

Richard II has existed in a few different versions over the years - this in and of itself is not particularly surprising. None of the copies we have come straight from the author’s hand, and even then printing in the 16th century was hardly an exact science. Much of Shakespearean scholarship is taking the various versions of these plays and collating them into one definitive text. Richard II has some of the same errors that plague Shakespeare’s other works; misattributed lines, characters changing names, a lack of stage directions and scene breaks. But there’s another notable change as well - Richard’s deposition, arguably the most famous scene in the play and the dramatic event on which the entire conflict turns, is completely absent in the earliest versions of the play. Most scholars agree that it’s not the product of a later author - the text is consistent with the rest of Shakespeare’s work in the play, and it fits perfectly with the rest of the action in the scenes surrounding. Rather, the prevailing theory is that the earliest versions of the play had the deposition scene censored.

Shakespeare wrote the entirety of his work under the rule of Elizabeth I, who was herself a member of the House of Tudor - the dynasty who will ultimately take the throne at the conclusion of the War of Roses. This leads to some very interesting biases coming into play later in the the history cycle, and rest assured we’ll touch on those, but for the time being the focus is less on Elizabeth’s family, and more on her precarious position as an unmarried monarch in a thoroughly patriarchal society. Not only that, but Elizabeth would have been approaching 70 at the time the play was published, and with no lineal heirs succession was a concern throughout England. It’s hard to say if Shakespeare intended the play to be a commentary on Elizabeth, but certain audiences took it as such, seeing the week Richard II as analogous to the Queen, and the play as an argument for a strong and military-minded king to take the throne and ensure a clean line of succession. Supporters of Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex who led an uprising against Elizabeth in 1601, even paid Shakespeare’s company for a performance of the play on the eve of their planned revolt. 

All documents printed in Shakespeare’s time, plays most notably, needed certification from a royal authority before pressing. With this context, and with the politically charged nature of Richard willingly handing over his crown, it comes as no surprise then that the scene was suppressed. Nonetheless, it’s hard to imagine the play existing without that critical piece.

A Monologue For the Road

For within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,

Allowing him a breath, a little scene

To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks,

Infusing him with self and vain conceit,

As if this flesh which walls about our life 

Were brass impregnable; and humoured thus,

Comes at the last and with a little pin

Bores through his castle walls - farewell king. - Richard II 3.2.155-165