Richard II (play)
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The Tragedie of King Richard the Second is a play written by William Shakespeare around 1595 and based on the life of King Richard II of England. It is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's successors: Henry IV, part 1, Henry IV, part 2, and Henry V, and may not have been written as a stand-alone work.
Although the First Folio (1623) edition of Shakespeare's works lists the play as a history play, the earlier Quarto edition of 1597 calls itself The tragedie of King Richard the second.
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[edit] Performance and Publication
Richard II has one of the most detailed and unusual performance histories of all the plays of the Shakespearean canon.
- The earliest recorded performance was on December 9, 1595, when Sir Robert Cecil watched it at Sir Edward Hoby's house in Canon Row. Such specially-commissioned private performances were not unusual for Shakespeare's company.
- Another commissioned performance of a different type occurred at the Globe Theatre on Feb. 7, 1601. This was the performance paid for by supporters of the Earl of Essex's planned revolt. (See Historical Context below.)
- On September 30, 1607, among the oddest of all early performances: the crew of Capt. William Keeling acted Richard II aboard the British East India Company ship Dragon, off Sierra Leone.
- The play was performed two days in a row at the Globe on June 11 and 12, 1631.
The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on August 29, 1597 by the bookseller Andrew Wise; the first quarto was published by him later that year, printed by Valentine Simmes. The second and third quartos followed in 1598 — the only time a Shakespearean play was printed in three editions in two years. Q4 followed in 1608, and Q5 in 1615. The play was next published in the First Folio in 1623.
The play retained its political charge in the Restoration: a 1680 adaptation at Drury Lane by Nahum Tate was suppressed for its perceived political implications. Lewis Theobald staged a successful and less troubled adaptation in 1719 at Lincoln's Inn Fields; Shakespeare's original version was revived at Covent Garden in 1738.[1]
[edit] Text and Sources
Richard II exists in a number of variations. The quartos vary to some degree from one another, and the folio presents further differences. The first three quartos (printed in 1597 and 1598, commonly assumed to have been prepared from Shakespeare's holograph) lack the deposition scene. The fourth quarto, published in 1608, includes a version of the deposition scene shorter than the one later printed, presumably from a prompt-book, in the 1623 First Folio. The scanty evidence makes explaining these differences largely conjectural. Traditionally, it has been supposed that the quartos lack the deposition scene because of censorship, either from the playhouse or by the Master of the Revels Edmund Tylney and that the Folio version may better reflect Shakespeare's original intentions. There is no external evidence for this hypothesis, however, and the title page of the 1608 quarto refers to a "lately acted" deposition scene.
Shakespeare's primary source for Richard II, as for most of his chronicle histories, was Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles; the publication of the second edition in 1587 provides a terminus ad quem for the play. Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York appears also to have been consulted, and scholars have also supposed Shakespeare familiar with Samuel Daniel's poem on the civil wars.
A somewhat more complicated case is presented by the anonymous play The First Part of Richard II. This play, which exists in one incomplete manuscript copy (at the British Museum) is subtitled Thomas of Woodstock, and it is by this name that scholars since F. S. Boas have usually called it. This play treats the events leading up to the start of Shakespeare's play (though the two texts do not have identical characters). This closeness, along with the anonymity of the manuscript, has led certain scholars to attribute all or part of the play to Shakespeare; currently, though, most critics view this play as a secondary influence on Shakespeare, and not as his work.[2]
[edit] Historical context
The play was performed and published late in the reign of the childless Elizabeth I of England, at a time when the queen's age made the succession an important political concern. The historical parallels in the succession of Richard II may have been intended as political comment on the contemporary situation, with the weak Richard II analogous to Queen Elizabeth and an implicit argument in favour of her replacement by a monarch capable of creating a stable dynasty.
That the history surrounding the descent from Edward III was viewed as politically explosive is evidenced by the treason trial of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex in 1600. Among the evidence presented at this trial was John Hayward's history of Henry IV, which was dedicated to Essex, whom the crown may have suspected of commissioning the work. Hayward was committed to prison, and he was examined again in January 1601, just before Essex led a failed rebellion against Elizabeth.
Shakespeare's play appears to have played a minor role in the events surrounding the final downfall of Essex. On Feb. 7, 1601, the day before the uprising, supporters of the Earl of Essex, among them Charles and Joclyn Percy (younger brothers of the Earl of Northumberland), paid for a performance of the play at the Globe Theatre on the eve of their armed rebellion. By this agreement, reported at the trial of Essex by the Chamberlain's Men actor Augustine Phillips, the conspirators paid the company forty shillings to stage this play, which the players felt was too old and "out of use" to attract a large audience. Eleven of Essex's supporters attended the Saturday performance.
Elizabeth was aware of the political ramifications of the story of Richard II, according to a well-known but dubious anecdote in which she asks William Lambarde, "I am Richard II, know ye not that?" In the same document, the Queen is reported as having complained that the play was performed forty times in "open streets and houses"; there is no extant evidence to corroborate this claim. At any rate, the Chamberlain's Men do not appear to have suffered at all for their association with the Essex group; they performed for the Queen on Shrove Tuesday in 1601, the day before Essex's execution.
[edit] Synopsis
As the title suggests, Richard II is the main character of the play. The first Act begins with King Richard sitting majestically on his throne in full state. We learn that Henry Bolingbroke, Richard's cousin, is having a dispute with Thomas Mowbray, and they both want the king to act as judge. The subject of the quarrel is Bolingbroke's accusation that Mowbray killed Richard's uncle the Duke of Gloucester. What is more, Mowbray is also accused of having stolen money which would have been used for military purposes. Richard cannot pass judgement because it is later revealed that he ordered Mowbray to kill the Duke of Gloucester. Bolingbroke and Mowbray challenge each other to a duel, over the objections of both Richard and John of Gaunt, Bolingbroke's father.
The tournament scene is very formal with a long, ceremonial introduction. But Richard interrupts the duel at the very beginning and sentences both men to banishment from England. Bolingbroke has to leave for six years, whereas Mowbray is banished forever. The king's decision can be seen as the first mistake in a series that will lead eventually to his usurpation and death. Indeed, Mowbray predicts that the king will fall sooner or later.
After that, Bolingbroke's father, John of Gaunt, dies and Richard II seizes all of his land and money. This angers the nobility, who accuse Richard of wasting England's money, of taking Gaunt's money to fund a war with Ireland, of taxing the commoners, and of fining the nobles for crimes their ancestors committed. Next, they help Bolingbroke secretly to return to England and plan to usurp Richard II. However, there remain some subjects faithful to Richard, among them Bushy, Bagot, Green and the Duke of Aumerle. King Richard leaves England to administer the war in Ireland, and Bolingbroke takes the opportunity to assemble an army and invade the north coast of England. When Richard returns, Bolingbroke first claims his land back but then additionally claims the throne. He crowns himself King Henry IV and Richard is taken into prison to the castle of Pomfret. After interpreting King Henry's "living fear" as a reference to the still-living Richard, an ambitious nobleman goes to the prison and murders the former king. King Henry hypocritically repudiates the murderer and vows to journey to Jerusalem to cleanse himself of his part in Richard's death.
[edit] Structure and language
Shakespeare used a fall and rise structure in the plot. At the beginning, Richard is in power and therefore can banish Bolingbroke from England. As Richard II falls and dies, Bolingbroke rises to become king of England.
Unusually for Shakespeare, Richard II is written entirely in verse. The play contains a number of memorable metaphors, including the extended comparison of England with a garden in Act IV, and of its reigning king to a lion or to the gun.
[edit] Dramatis Personae
- King Richard II
- John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, uncle to the king
- Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, uncle to the king
- Henry Bolingbroke (sometimes spelled Bullingbrook), Duke of Hereford, son of John of Gaunt, afterwards King Henry IV
- The Duke of Aumerle, (Edward, Duke of Albermarle, later Duke of York), son to the Duke of York
- Thomas Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk
- Duke of Surrey (Thomas Holland, 1st Duke of Surrey)
- Earl of Salisbury (John Montacute, 3rd Earl of Salisbury)
- Lord Berkeley (Thomas de Berkeley, 5th Baron Berkeley)
- Sir John Bushy, Sir John Bagot, Sir Henry Green, all favourites to King Richard
- Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland
- Henry "Hotspur" Percy, his son
- Lord Ross
- Lord Willoughby (William Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby de Eresby)
- Lord Fitzwalter (Walter Fitzwalter, 5th Baron Fitzwalter
- Bishop of Carlisle (Thomas Merke)
- Abbot of Westminster
- Lord Marshal
- Sir Stephen Scroop
- Sir Piers Exton
- Queen to Richard (Isabella of Valois)
- Duchess of York (Isabelle of Castile)
- Duchess of Gloucester (Eleanor de Bohun)
- attendants, lords, soldiers, messengers, etc.
[edit] Famous Lines
- This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
- This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
- This other Eden, demi-paradise,
- This fortress built by Nature for herself
- Against infection and the hand of war,
- This happy breed of men, this little world,
- This precious stone set in the silver sea,
- Which serves it in the office of a wall,
- Or as a moat defensive to a house,
- Against the envy of less happier lands,
- This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
- This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
- Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth
—John of Gaunt, II,i,42-54
- Of comfort no man speak:
- Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
- Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
- Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth;
- Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
- And yet not so — for what can we bequeath
- Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
- Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's,
- And nothing can we call our own but death,
- And that small model of the barren earth
- Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
- For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
- And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
- How some have been depos'd, some slain in war,
- Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd,
- Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
- All murder'd. 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 fear'd and kill with looks,
- Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
- As if this flesh which walls about our life,
- Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
- Comes at the last and with a little pin
- Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
—King Richard, III,ii, 148-164
[edit] Actors who have played Richard II
- Maurice Evans
- Ralph Fiennes
- John Gielgud
- Alec Guinness
- Derek Jacobi
- Ian McKellen
- Alex Jennings
- Briana Sanazzaro
[edit] References
- Barroll, Leeds. "A New History for Shakespeare and His Time." Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988), 441-4.
- Bergeron, David. "The Deposition Scene in Richard II." Renaissance Papers 1974, 31-7.
- Bullough, Geoffrey. "Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare". Early English History Plays: Henry VI Richard III Richard II, volume III, Routledge: London, New York, 1960.
- Chambers, E. K. William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems. 2 Volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930.
- Rose, Alexander. Kings in the North - The House of Percy in British History. Phoenix/Orion Books Ltd, 2002, ISBN 1-84212-485-4
- Shakespeare, William. Richard II, ed. by Andrew Gurr, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1990.
- Smitd, Kristian. Unconformities in Shakespeare's History Plays, St. Martin's Press: New York, 1993.
- Tillyard, E. M. W. Shakespeare's History Plays, Chatto&Windus: London,1944.of Virginia
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Complete text of play at University of Virginia: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/MobRic2.html
- King Richard the Second - text from Project Gutenberg
- GradeSaver study guide - background, analysis and research essays.
