What Goes Around Comes Around

Seeing Richard II performed allowed me to pay attention to the interactions between the characters rather than just the words they speak; it put the characters in context of their relationships with one another. The two interactions that stood out to me the most were those between Richard and Mowbray at the beginning of the play, and Richard and Bolingbroke near the end. Richard, who has turned a blind eye to Gloucester’s murder (if not requested it), is forced to banish Mowbray in order to maintain a facade of justice. Mowbray, who acted under royal condonation, now faces condemnation that he cannot argue against without committing treason— merely suggesting that the king okayed the murder is a crime greater than killing a duke. If he claimed that Richard turned on him by banishing him, Mowbray would die— not only from admitting guilt, but from accusing Richard of plotting with him. So he is backed into a corner, banished by his inability to refute his sentence. As the play progresses, Bolingbroke is added to the list of Richard’s victims when his inheritance is usurped by the throne.

Richard’s final interaction with Bolingbroke parallels his interactions with Mowbray in the first act. When Richard’s title is stripped from him, he becomes powerless to speak out against the crown, just as Mowbray is, because doing so is treason. Richard’s land and goods are usurped while his back is turned, just as he stripped Bolingbroke from his inheritance. He is then covertly murdered in prison, with the intent of ridding the new king of a political threat, just as he had allowed Gloucester to die. Depicting Richard’s sins being visited upon his head in like kind shows that though he was king with a supposed divine authority backing his kingship, he is not exempt from divine punishment.

The Henriad

Upon perusing Richard II, I found myself wondering about the historical context of the play. After reading a bit about the play, I found that it was based greatly on a few historical texts of the time, and that it was likely written as a part of a whole; by that I mean that Richard II was written in a series of plays known as The Henriad, containing Henry IV parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. I'm sure many of you already know this fact, so instead of expanding on those details, I'd like to raise a question: is it beneficial to the reader to experience only one of the parts of the whole? Without reading all of them, how can a Shakespeare lover get the entire scope of work in one single text? More to the point, would reading Richard II along with all of the other supposed works included in that series make the single play of Richard II more meaningful?

Another thought that I had, pertaining particularly to history plays, is whether or not the writing of a historical work can properly enlighten a viewer. Throughout the entire play of Richard II, the king displays many behaviors that lead to his being overthrown. However, when looking into the life of Richard before the events of the play, there are many aspects of his ruling that were beneficial to his kingdom. In writing a play about a real historical figure, Shakespeare takes on the responsibility of portraying that person; however he chooses to do that is his decision and thus the responsibility is his burden. When undertaking that task, one must draw material from a source, be it original or otherwise. In this case, Shakespeare used an immense volume that chronicled the history of England, as well as other sources. However, the play is not simple fact. Although it is written based on events, the words used, the nuances, even the character traits had to come from somewhere, and despite the extensive historical records that may have existed, Shakespeare did not get all of his material from those texts. He embellished, for the sake of the story. Therefore, the reader can only draw conclusions based on what they themselves are exposed to--in this case, a play where the characters are not facts and figures, but have personalities. Again, I end in a question. How can a reader distinguish between fact and story, and how great is the bias that we inevitably glean from the works that read?