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.
