Richard II

The Earl of Essex was a rising figure at the English court in the 1590s. One of his chief strategies was to portray himself as a product of a nobler age that had passed. He saw himself as a Julius Caesar, an image that eventually went to his head. On the eve of his rebellion against Queen Elizabeth in 1601, one of his fellow conspirators commissioned Shakespeare's acting company to put on a special performance of "King Richard II". The play's deposition scene was so sensitive at the time, early editions of the play censored it out. For Essex and his followers, it was exactly that detailed treatment of the removal of an ineffective monarch, and the lamentations of a declining chivalric England that captivated them. The conspirator who commissioned the play, Sir Gilly Meyrick, was sentenced to death for commissioning this performance among his other crimes. Theater was once a life or death matter.

Shakespeare's main source of English history appears to be Holinshed's Chronicles. Had Essex and his followers read the play closely, they would have realized the play was not so much about the politics of rebellion than it was a meditative study on a king's fall from power. This play marks Shakespeare's first play in a set of four that chronicles the rise of the house of Lancaster to the British throne.

According to the historians, the real King Richard ruled from 1377 until his deposition in 1399. He was very taken by the old tradition of the Divine Right of Kings and sat for hours alone wearing his crown. Under his rule, the royal court grew larger as the style of monarchy became more ornate and stylized. To Richard's credit, he had a fruitful relationship with Geoffrey Chaucer his entire reign, with Chaucer serving as a diplomat and Clerk of the King's Works.

The play opens with two dukes prepared to defend their own "spotless reputation". Honor is the hallmark of a true Englishman here. Henry Bullingbrook (sometimes spelled Bolingbroke) accuses Thomas Mowbray of embezzling crown funds and of plotting the death of Bullingbrook's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester. King Richard II stops the fight before it begins. His solution is to exile Bullingbrook for six years and Mowbray for ten. Act two scene one contains a famous speech by John Gaunt, Richard's uncle and Bullingbrook's father. It is a eulogistic lament for a divine England that has now been rented out: "…this sceptred isle,/ This earth of majesty,…/ This other Eden, demi-paradise,/…This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,/ …That England, that was wont to conquer others,/ Hath made a shameful conquest of itself" (II.i. 31-68). In this same scene, Gaunt boldly admonishes Richard for surrounding himself with self-serving flatterers as counselors ("a thousand flatterers sit within thy crown"), for wasting money, taxing people to heavily, and allowing the country to fall to ruins. He curses Richard with his dying breaths: "Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee:/ These words hereafter thy tormentors be!/ Convey me to my bed, then to my grave:/ Love they to live that love and honour have" (135-38). True patriotism, it seems, criticizes bad government. Richard is infuriated by these heated bolts of accusation. Shortly after, the Earl of Northumberland arrives to announce Gaunt is dead. Richard promptly seizes the land of Bullingbrook's father to fund his war in Ireland. The Duke of York, Richard's uncle, is greatly distressed and argues that Gaunt was a loyal subject whose worldly goods rightfully belong to his exiled son, Bullingbrook. Richard places York in charge of England while he himself sails for Ireland. Three lords, Northumberland, Lord Ross and Lord Willoughby agree that Richard is running England to the ground. Northumberland confides a secret: Bullingbrook, who has always been a favorite of the common people, has raised an army and plans to invade the north coast of England while Richard is away in Ireland. The idea is to stage a royal coup. The lords decide to join Bullingbrook. Bullingbrook convinces York that he returned to claim his inheritance not to lead a rebellion against the crown.

By the time Richard returns from Ireland, he discovers he has lost a country. His Welsh troops have left him, York has allied himself with Bullingbrook and the common people are rising against him. Bullingbrook promises to surrender his arms if his banishment is lifted and his inheritance restores. Richard agrees to the conditions. Richard also agrees to abdicate the throne.

In the most stunning scene of the play, Act four scene one, Richard is forced to proclaim that he adopts Bullingbrook as his heir. He sends for a looking glass, and then shatters the mirror, as if he was destroying his substance. The monarch was traditionally imagined to have two bodies: the body politic which imagines the king as the reincarnation of the nation and the body natural, the mortal self. Richard reflects on his image as a king as though he has been an actor all along, and now that he is no longer behind a guise, he wonders who he is. Richard II is a peculiar king for a Shakespeare play—he has a habit of studying himself from the outside.

A plot is conceived to restore Richard to the throne. York, Richard's uncle and Bullingbrook's ally, discovers that his son Aumerle is involved in a plot to kill Bullingbrook. Aumerle confesses to Bullingbrook and is pardoned. Richard is killed while imprisoned in Pomfret Castle. Exton presents Richard's body to Bullingbrook but is exiled. Bullingbrook vows to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to expiate his sins. The reign of the new king begins ill-omened for the curse of Gaunt will run its course in Shakespeare's history tetralogy.

Nahum Tate's 1960 adaptation of the play was called "The Sicilian Usurper" but it was silenced on the third day of performances. One legendary Richard in the twentieth century was Maurice Evans in 1934 at the Old Vic, who then became a 1937 Broadway sensation in the same role. John Gielgud's 1953 performance in the role of Richard was considered the definitive performance of the role. It was his third time playing Richard—his first try being in 1929. Later, in an accessible 1978 BBC production of "The Shakespeare Plays", Gielgud played John of Gaunt while Derek Jacobi played Richard.