One of Shakespeare's finest history plays, Richard II deals with
one of the most sensitive and politically explosive issues of its
day--the rights and wrongs of deposing a legitimately appointed king.
Forerunner to the two parts of Henry IV, the play deals with the
abdication of King Richard II in 1399, the subsequent succession of
Bolingbroke, the future King Henry IV, and Richard's death in the spring
of 1400. But the play has been celebrated above and beyond its stature
as historical drama. Richard II begins with a portrait of Richard
as a pompous, arrogant and self-regarding sovereign, with little sense
of his people or his political responsibilities. As he consistently
miscalculates in his attempts to destroy Bolingbroke, and watches his
own power wane, he becomes a far more appealing, Hamlet-like figure,
more interested in "talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs", and "sad
stories of the death of kings". Richard's speeches become increasingly
lyrical and poetic as his supporters desert him, until he finally takes
on the stature of the pilloried Christ in the climax of the play, the
deposition scene, one of the most politically risky scenes in all of
Shakespeare. The play remains most famous for John of Gaunt's "This
royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle" speech, but historians
believe that the play was also performed in the streets of London in
1601 in support of the Earl of Essex's attempt to depose Elizabeth I.
Whilst the plot failed, it showed the power of the theatre of the time,
and the politically controversial nature of Shakespeare's play.
