“Not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm from an anointed king.”
Performed as early as 1595, and first printed in the Quarto edition of 1597 notably as a tragedy rather than a history play, William Shakespeare’s Richard II is the first chronological work in his Henriad tetralogy. This tetralogy explores the Plantagenet dynasty prior to the Wars of the Roses, culminating in the rise of Henry V. The Wars of the Roses are further expounded upon in Shakespeare’s other tetralogy of history plays. Despite taking place chronologically earlier, the Henriad tetralogy was actually written after Shakespeare’s first tetralogy, which covers the tumultuous reign of Henry VI and Richard III, and ends right before the dawn of Henry VII and the Tudor regime. Chronologically the earliest of Shakespeare’s history plays was King John, and the last chronologically was Henry VIII, but the remaining eight plays are the tetralogies (Henriad Tetralogy: Richard II, Henry IV part I, Henry IV part II, and Henry V; and First Tetralogy: Henry VI part I, Henry VI part II, Henry VI part III, and Richard III) . In fact, the history plays represent the bulk of Shakespeare’s output – ten out of his thirty-seven or thirty-eight plays are history plays. Therefore it’s reasonable to sought to convey something important to his audience with these plays.
Shakespeare is believed to have written Richard II as early as 1595 or 1596, around the same time as A Midnight Summer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet. He wrote it on the heels of an anonymous play that was prominently staged at the time called Thomas of Woodstock, which depicts that historical events leading up to Richard II’s reign and so it is generally assumed that his audience would have a clear understanding of Richard kingship.
Richard II covers the fateful final year or two of King Richard II’s reign from the events of 1398, to his deposition by Henry Bolingbroke, and ultimately his death in 1400. In many ways, Richard II is a play about the political downfall of a king, but more broadly it is a theatrical demonstration of a larger emerging transformation taking place in Shakespeare’s day, namely the decline of medieval Christian politics and the emergence of a Renaissance political community. Nowhere is this more clear than in the opening scene of the play in which King Richard II arrives at Windsor Castle in Berkshire (located about twenty-five miles west of London) where two of his nobles are locked in heated dispute. Henry Bolingbroke, the earl of Hereford (and Richard’s cousin), is angrily accusing Thomas Mowbray, the duke of Norfolk, of treason among many other things. The primary charge Bolingbroke levels against Mowbray is the murder of Thomas of Woodstock, the duke of Gloucester, but he also accuses Mowbray of other things like embezzling royal funds that were allocated for raising an army, and for being a traitor to the crown for some eighteen years. Naturally, Mowbray vehemently denies these accusations. He appeals to the king for redress as both men (Bolingbroke and Mowbray) throw down their gages and demand a duel. In other words, the play opens in the High Middle Ages on a chivalric field of battle, the kind of honorable dispute between knights that we imagine took place during the reign of Richard’s grandfather Edward III –two Arthurian knights appear ready for combat as they appeal to God and their divinely anointed king for justice.
However, the whole scene turns out to be a mere façade with many words deliberately left unspoken. Bolingbroke’s charge against Mowbray is actually an unspoken accusation of treason against the king himself, since it is heavily implied that Richard was the one who ordered Mowbray to kill the duke of Gloucester on his behalf. Therefore, if Mowbray is found guilty, then Richard must also be found guilty. As it turns out, underneath this false veil of Arthurian pageantry, is Richard II’s complicated backstory. His unusual succession came about after the untimely death of his father Edward “The Black Prince,” a celebrated knight and commander during the Hundred Years’ War. The Black Prince was heralded as the future of England before he suffered a lengthy illness and died of dysentery at the age of 45 in 1376, preceding both his father and his son in death. Thus, when his elderly father Edward III gave up the ghost the following year in 1377, the crown passed down to the Black Prince’s young son Richard who was a mere ten years old when he assumed the throne. Naturally, a series of regency councils were put in place to oversee the king’s court, these were primarily led by Richard’s uncles, especially John of Gaunt, the duke of Lancaster, and Thomas of Woodstock, the duke of Gloucester. But as Richard grew up, he built himself a lavish court that taxed and spent liberally, while serving as patron to numerous arts and culture projects (one example is the pension Richard II gave to Geoffrey Chaucer). Additionally, Richard surrounded himself with a small group of much-despised “favorites” who came to replace the greater nobility with respect to the king. This tension led to a struggle for political control in 1387-1388 as a group of nobles called the “Lords Appellant” invoked an “appeal” to impeach several of the King’s favorites. The Lords Appellant was led by Richard’s uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, the duke of Gloucester (and he was later joined by both Bolingbroke and Mowbray among other nobles) but nearly ten years later, the king managed to exact his revenge on Gloucester. In 1397, he wrestled back control of his own kingship and ordered Gloucester killed at the hands of Mowbray (and several others), causing outrage among the nobles.
Therefore, Bolingbroke’s charge against Mowbray at the start of the play is actually a clever attack on the king himself. However, Richard cannot simply dismiss the fight so, to honor the chivalric tradition of duel, Richard orders a tournament of “lists” that will take place at Coventry (located in the west midlands) on Saint Lambert’s Day (Saint Lambert’s Day occurs on September 17th in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, it honors Saint Lambert of Maastricht [c. 636–705], who served as the bishop of Maastricht-Liège from 670 until his death. He was a martyr known for defending marital fidelity primarily because he denounced Frankish nobleman Pepin II’s adulterous affair with Alpaida, the future mother of Charles Martel. For this, Lambert was murdered, or so the story goes). At any rate, the tournament between Bolingbroke and Mowbray marks a major event in Richard’s reign. Historically speaking, people come from all over Europe to witness this grand Edwardian chivalric battle, and the lengthy scene in the play is utterly saturated with long formal pronouncements suffused in the language of divinity. Both sides naturally invoke God as their moral arbiter –the winner of the duel will presumably be the result of God’s own divine justice according to the medieval chivalric view.
Of course, William Shakespeare would not have known terms like “medieval” or “Middle Ages” (they were later coined by thinkers like Hegel), however in his history plays, Shakespeare does acknowledge a fundamental political transformation beginning to emerge. In Richard II, we see a decaying feudal monarchy that is beset by its own fatal division of power. The king rules the realm, but he is beholden to his barons, each of whom have their own independent sources of power: they have their own castles, lands, serfs, soldiers, and even armies. This was a chief problem for a medieval king: his kingdom faced divided loyalty between king, baronage, and even church. This political problem brings to mind King John who was beholden to his barons, and forced to sign Magna Carta, or even Henry II, who spent much of his reign in open conflict with the church. Under a feudal monarchy, it was the barons who made the king, not the other way around. But since this was a repeatedly shown to be an unstable regime, over time, the monarchy showed itself to be more powerful by exerting its authority over the barons, causing tension and sometimes even civil war. By the arrival of Elizabethan England (Shakespeare’s day), the monarchy had become far more centralized, especially after the Wars of the Roses, which had destroyed so much of the old nobility, and Henry VII was able to establish the Tudor regime by appointing his own loyalist nobles. Under this more modern framework, the king made the barons.
But in Richard II, King Richard is still trapped in a fatal division of power between king and nobility. After finally reclaiming control over his crown from his uncles, nobleman like Bolingbroke simply refuse to let the murder of Gloucester be forgotten. Therefore, when Saint Lambert’s Day arrives, Richard is placed in a political bind. If he allows the duel to proceed, he risks Mowbray killing Bolingbroke, thereby fueling popular sentiments over Bolingbroke’s martyrdom (he knows there is nothing the masses love more than a martyr). However, if Bolingbroke triumphs, the people might praise him as a victorious hero, God’s chosen victor, this is especially concerning since Bolingbroke has been observed acting with unseemly “courtship of the common people” which perturbs the king. Note the seething resentment Richard privately exhibits toward Bolingbroke along with his contempt for the commons:
“Ourself and Bushy, Bagot, and Green
Observed his courtship to the common people –
How he did seem to dive into their hearts
With humble and familiar courtesy,
What reverence he did throw away on slaves,
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles
And patient underbearing of his fortune,
As ‘twere to banish their affects with him.
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench.
A brace of draymen bid God speed him well,
And had the tribute of his supple knee
With ‘Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends’,
As were our England in reversion his,
And he our subjects’ next degree in hope” (1.4.23-36).
Before the lists can even begin, Richard’s envy for Bolingbroke leads him to suddenly stop the duel at the last moment. He tosses down his warder and briefly convenes with his dukes, apparently orchestrating a quiet deal, before surprisingly ordering the banishment of both Mowbray and Bolingbroke. For a king like Richard, banishment seems the best way to deal with a popular duke like Bolingbroke. However, Richard’s measures always seem to be half-hearted. He cannot seem to deal the king’s justice effectively. Mowbray is angry with the king over his lifetime banishment because all he did was loyally execute Gloucester on the king’s behalf. And as for Bolingbroke, Richard merely banishes him for ten years, “till twice five summers have enriched our fields” (a presumed deal the king has struck with Bolingbroke’s father John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster), but upon witnessing Gaunt’s sorrow, Richard quickly further reduces Bolingbroke’s sentence by four years (“Plucked four away…six frozen winters spent, return with welcome home from banishment”). Thus, Bolingbroke is banished for six years, while Mowbray is banished for life. Is there anybody who would argue this is a just sentence? Richard shows himself to be incapable of dealing punishments in full measure. He tenderly seeks the approval of his uncle John of Gaunt by allowing a degree of clemency for his son. However, as always in Shakespeare, there is nuance. Richard is not to be written off as a fool quite yet, there is still method to his madness. He is worried that Bolingbroke and Mowbray might unite in rebellion against him so he compels them to swear an oath before God, believing this will be a sufficient bulwark:
“Swear by the duty that you owe to God –
Our part therein we banish with yourselves –
To keep the oath that we administer:
You shall never, so help you truth and God,
Embrace each other’s love in banishment;
Nor never look upon each other’s face;
Nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile
This louring tempest of your home-bred hate;
Nor never by advised purpose meet
To plot, contrive or complot any ill
‘Gainst us, our state, our subjects or our land” (1.3.477-487).
It is precisely this retreat into divine oaths that contributes to Richard’s downfall. He relies far too heavily on religious protection over his kingship; he believes that mere ‘duty owed to God’ will be sufficient enough of a defense to keep rebellion at bay. Indeed, Richard’s whole crown is saturated in the poetic language of divinity (and the entire play Richard II is uniquely written entirely in verse, a rarity among Shakespeare’s plays). Having been raised within the soft court of London, surrounded by flatterers and sycophants, Richard has come to believe his words will hold special power over people. For Richard, arms matter less than letters. War will not come to England so long as God is poetically invoked. The king is, after all, divinely ordained by God.
After banishing Bolingbroke and Mowbray, Richard feels confident in his crown. In fact, so much so that he plans to depart for Ireland immediately where he will personally attend to a growing insurrection there. But his court has already been taxed and has spent lavishly on works of art and music (even more than other kings in wartime), so Richard decides he must continue to squeeze his nobles for money: “for our coffers with too great a court / And liberal largesse are grown somewhat light, / we are forced to farm our royal realm, / The revenue whereof shall furnish us / For our affairs in hand” (1.4.43-47). With this, Richard’s court lacks moderation and restraint. When the elder duke, John of Gaunt (Richard’s uncle) grows deathly ill at Ely House, Richard delays his Irish campaign and here we start to see a more malicious side to the king (Act II is when we truly see Richard’s villainy onstage). Richard grows greedy at the thought of Gaunt dying, hoping for God to put “in the physicians mind / To help him to his grave immediately!” Meanwhile, a dying Gaunt confesses his displeasure with the king. He calls Richard an “unstaid youth” who in his vanity will not listen to counsel. In the most famous passage in the play, Gaunt laments Richard’s brazen exploitation of the country, and with these words, Gaunt shows himself to be a true patriot of England:
“Methinks I am a prophet new inspired
And thus expiring do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
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,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!” (2.1.31-68).
In reality, Gaunt was a power hungry and arrogant noble, and he was not particularly well-liked, but this is just another example of Shakespeare’s imagination and invention in crafting his history plays. He uses characters in order to accentuate certain ideas about politics and philosophy. In this case, Gaunt represents a growing discontentedness among the nobles, many of whom are frustrated with the king. But since many of them feel constrained by medieval restrictions on speech (and the need for everyone to be endlessly praising God and so on) they are unable to clearly address the chief problems at hand. Therefore, Richard’s corrupt rule thrives a little while longer under this theocratic conception of kingship.
When Richard arrives at Ely House, Gaunt has one final confrontation with the king, brazenly warning him “thy deathbed is no lesser than thy land/wherein thou liest in sick reputation” and he boldly claims Richard’s grandfather (Edward III) would be ashamed and want to depose him. However, Richard brushes the elder duke’s words aside, chocking them up to mere freedoms felt on one’s deathbed. And when Gaunt is led away to die, Richard glibly remarks: “So much for that. Now for our Irish wars.” He then makes his final error which will soon cost him his kingdom: he seizes the “plate, coin, revenues, and movables” of Gaunt. In other words, he confiscates Gaunt’s wealth and thereby takes Bolingbroke’s inheritance away from him. Richard’s greed and confidence in his own kingship has gotten the better of him. He has now crossed into tyrannical rule. As Machiavelli notes in The Prince (Chapter XVII), a modern prince “must refrain from seizing the property of others, because a man is quicker to forget the death of his father than the loss of his inheritance.” The nobility will put up with a great many offenses, but not the threat of being disinherited. Thus to recap, Richard’s foibles include: farming out the kingdom, raising excessive taxes on the commons, spending more money in peacetime than prior kings during wartime, and now taking the noble’s inheritance. The latter is surely the most egregious. After all, Richard’s own kingship rests on the presumption of inheritance. The notion of disinheritance removes the king’s own legitimacy. The rest of the nobles see Richard’s wanton disregard for the House of Lancaster and they realize the king could easily disinherit them, too. Edmund of Langley, the Duke of York, even cautions the king: “for how art thou a king / But by fair sequence and succession?” But Richard does not listen. As he leaves for Ireland (after having stolen all of Gaunt’s wealth), he appoints the Duke of York as Lord Governor of England in his absence.
Meanwhile, three lords—the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Ross, and Lord Willoughby – bemoan their “declining land” as the king has been surrounded by “flatterers.” They discuss amongst themselves that if the king can freely disinherit Bolingbroke, he can surely to do the same to them. And since Bolingbroke has recently landed back in England (in violation of his flimsy vow before God), these three nobles decide to defect from Richard to Bolingbroke. Thus, Richard has taxed the commons and lost their hearts, and he has fined the nobles and also lost their hearts. He is now a king only in name, lacking the support of his people, relying only on his divinely-ordained name. He believes God will surely protect him. But will divine protection be enough?
Interestingly, Henry Bolingbroke has already arrived back in England before Richard confiscates his inheritance, lending credence to the theory that Bolingbroke was, in fact, a Machiavellian political actor from the start. Bolingbroke has been furnished with eight ships carrying three thousand men headed from the shores of northern England. And he is joined by other defecting nobles at Ravenspurgh (or “Ravenspurn,” a port located along the Humber River, now underwater due to coastal erosion). When the Duke of York is confronted, in the absence of the king, he is forced to declare himself “neutral” in the dispute. As the uncle of Bolingbroke, he sympathizes with his claims over stolen inheritance. Going through the country, Bolingbroke proceeds from castle to castle, like Bristol Castle (an old Norman stronghold), gathering more nobles and reminding us of what truly matters in kingship –the threat of force. After all, what is a king if he cannot raise an army? Richard’s favorites Bushy, Bagot and Greene flee, but Bolingbroke captures two of them, Bushy and Greene, and promptly executes them both (Bagot survives and later offers intelligence to Bolingbroke). Whereas Richard delivered half-hearted banishments at the start of the play, Bolingbroke simply executes his enemies.
Richard learns of these rapidly moving events back home in England, yet he seems undeterred. He continues to rely on himself as an anointed king by “heaven” and he likens himself to the rising sun in the east while Bolingbroke is a wandering traitor in the dark. Richard believes he cannot be deposed – “Not all the water in the rough rude sea / Can wash the balm off from an anointed king. / The breath of worldly men cannot depose / The deputy elected by the Lord” (3.2.54-57). He continues to maintain excessive reliance on divine protection (thanks in part to the frivolous counsel of the Bishop of Carlisle), but when Richard learns that thousands have fled from his standing Welsh army, he grows pale and despondent. A king needs an army if he is to remain a king. But many of Richard’s loyalists have died or abandoned him amidst spreading rumors of dark omens, withered bay trees, meteors in the sky, and chatter that the king has died. Richard grows somber and poetic (his natural demeanor) when he sees a vision of his “glory” falling like a shooting star to earth. He realizes no gods are coming down from the heavens to rescue his kingship. Thus, he departs from Barkloughly castle in Wales to “pine away” in Flint Castle with his only allies: Lord Aumerle, Lord Salisbury, Sir Stephen Scroop, and the Bishop of Carlisle.
Bolingbroke then arrives, professing to be a loyal subject to the king. He is prepared to surrender his army if the lands and titles which Richard seized from the late John of Gaunt are returned. Bolingbroke speaks from the ground to Richard who is perched atop the walls of Flint Castle. But instead of sparking war against a recalcitrant noble, Richard simply abdicates his crown. He calls his cousin “King Bolingbroke” and comes down from the castle walls like Phaëthon, the mythological son of Helios who led a disastrous voyage that crashed down to earth. This is an apt metaphor for Richard’s kingship; he is then taken captive in a bloodless coup.
In the end, Richard is transported to the Tower of London where he is berated by the common people and redirected instead to Pomfret Castle (or “Pontefract Castle” located in West Yorkshire). There we see a dramatic deposition scene in which Richard formally hands over the crown to Bolingbroke (Act IV, scene I), during which Richard displays his penchant for long poetic diatribes (he has long believed he can defeat a man like Bolingbroke with puns and clever wordplay). Richard gradually stops using the royal “we” as he laments his life, admitting that the loss of his kingship means he becomes “nothing” since a king cannot simply lose his crown and go on living as a commoner. The play displays the descent of Richard from his highness to lowness and finally to “nothingness.” He has effectively been stripped down to “nothing” onstage, and reduced to a mere prisoner (though not quite a beggar like the lowly King Lear). Notably, this whole deposition scene was widely censored in publications in Shakespeare’s day as a result of popular comparisons drawn between Queen Elizabeth and Richard II, both of whom were childless monarchs, who were known for levying taxes on the realm, and who were highly susceptible to flattery. It’s also worth noting that in 1601, Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex (a celebrated warrior who fought against Spain and the Spanish Armada) led an ill-fated revolt against Queen Elizabeth. He was one of the queen’s favorites who had been sent to Ireland to deal with the unending “Irish problem,” but then against Elizabeth’s orders he returned to England and was put on trial. Humiliated, he tried to lead a coup against Elizabeth. Believing he was more popular with the people than he actually was, he marched against the queen from his heavily fortified home but was quickly captured and beheaded. Interestingly enough, he and his cohorts paid Shakespeare’s company to stage a production of Richard II shortly before the insurrection. In response, Queen Elizabeth reportedly acknowledged: “I am Richard II, know ye not that?” to her attendant William Lambarde. And while this may be a slightly apocryphal tale, it nevertheless highlights the political risks for staging a play like Richard II at the time. Hence why the deposition scene was removed from first three quarto publications of the play (it was later published in the folio edition of 1623 after Shakespeare’s death).
The play ends with Bolingbroke being crowned Henry IV as a new dynasty begins under the Lancastrians. He puts down a conspiracy of Richard loyalists, including the Bishop of Carlisle, the Abbot of Westminster, and Aumerle (son of the Duke of York), who planned to assassinate the king at Oxford. With the pleading of the Duchess of York, King Henry relents and pardons Aumerle (though the young man is demoted to Rutland) while planning to kill the rest of the traitors. Though Henry curiously spares the Bishop of Carlisle to live in a “secret place” because he has seen “High sparks of honour” in him. Additionally, Bolingbroke’s one-time opponent, the exiled Mowbray, reportedly dies in Venice after fighting “black pagans, Turks, and Saracens” in the Crusades. And Richard’s wife, Queen Isabel, is told to return to France while Richard faces his ultimate demise when Sir Pierce Exton at Windsor Castle overhears Henry say “Have I no friend who will rid me of this living fear?” and he interprets this to be a request to kill Richard. First, there is an attempt to poison Richard before Exton and his friends rush in and attack the former king. Richard manages to slay two of the men before Exton strikes him down. With his dying words, Richard curses Exton (however, in reality, Richard was likely starved to death). King Henry, however, feels mixed about the murder of Richard. While on the one hand he knows Richard needed to die, he is aware that his own kingship is now marred with the shadow of illegitimacy and regicide. He repudiates Exton and exiles him from court before taking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, himself, to wash himself of his guilt. The play ends in mourning.
It’s worth noting that in Richard II Shakespeare makes two interesting changes from the known historical record. In Raphael Holinshed’s The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1586-1587), Shakespeare’s chief resource (in addition to other sources by Edward Hall and Jean Froissart and the predecessor play Woodstock which depicts the murder of the Duke of Gloucester), Bolingbroke does not return to England until all the nobles want him to do so. This is a unique departure from Shakespeare’s play which shows Bolingbroke’s eager political ambition prior to the nobles joining his side. The other major change is that Holinshed primarily describes Bolingbroke as a cruel and violent usurper who murders his cousin, while in contrast, Shakespeare portrays his character as somewhat distant and mercurial. The chief subject of concern is Richard. In many ways, while departing from the historical record, Shakespeare’s revisions allow us the chance to consider politics through a modern lens, comparing the Renaissance works of Machiavelli to a character like Bolingbroke as he claims the crown for himself.
Again and again in Shakespeare’s plays, we see that the rule of hereditary succession almost never selects the best person to govern a kingdom. While Shakespeare often seems to show a fascination with the republican political regime, he also shows a deep skepticism toward it, and an interest in exploring the nature and limits of kingship, the regime ruling his own native country. Richard II shows us a soft, poetic king who is overly assured of his divine right to rule. But by the end, he is horrified to learn that he is, in fact, not a god. King Richard’s downfall demonstrates a political turn away from medieval kingship. Indeed, Shakespeare’s history plays in general display a movement away from monarchy based upon divine right to a different kind of monarchy based upon the will of the common people. While the medieval kingship was doomed to failure due to its fatal division of power between king and nobility, as well as the divided loyalty between king and church, Richard’s own fatal mistake lies in his overturning of the natural order when he callously disinherits Bolingbroke. This is the moment when he truly loses his crown. In many ways, inheritance undergirds order in society, it is akin to the cycle of day and night, and Richard seems detached from this natural order of things. He sees people beneath him as “slaves” rather than subjects, he believes their wealth and substance ultimately belongs to him. And Richard’s maudlin sentimentality is ornately displayed in his penchant for rhetoric and poetry, but it’s all mere vanity since words are assuredly not enough to defend his crown. Throughout the play, we are routinely confronted with organic poetic language of the “land” and the “earth” as well as “blood” (see the fascinating gardener scene in Act IV, Scene III). This is an earthy play that reminds us of the ground beneath our feet. Likewise, there is something natural about kingship, like the earth or a beating heart. And if this kind of nature is violated, a most unnatural political tempest is unleashed. For example, at the start of the play the word “blood” is compared to orderly inheritance, kinship, and hereditary monarchy; but by the end of the play, blood has been spilled and the throne has been drenched by the blood of beheaded “traitors.” In this way, blood comes to represent the rise of an illegitimate king who is nevertheless a better fit for the crown than his legitimate predecessor. Shakespeare shows us that politics is central to human life but that it is fundamentally tragic because it rarely succeeds in elevating the best person to rule. Plato’s philosopher king is little more than a pipe dream, even in the most stable of regimes, such as an English hereditary monarchy. For every Henry V there is a Henry VI (even if young Prince Hal is described as a spendthrift youth who spends all his time in brothels at the end of Richard II). Some political figures can accomplish great or ennobling things, like combating evil and so on, but there are temporal limits to these accomplishments. Shakespeare conveys a degree of doubt about politics in his history plays since the political attitude can be corrupting and dangerous. The regime often falls prey to the wayward whims of religion and superstition, conspiracy and fanaticism, and while the common people are endlessly delighted by humble martyrs and saints and so on, the virtues of forgiveness and humility do not necessarily make desirable traits for a successful ruler.
For this reading I used the impressive Arden edition of Shakespeare’s Richard II, Marjorie Garber’s Shakespeare After All, John Julius Norwich’s Shakespeare’s Kings, along with Paul Cantor’s excellent lectures, and a course I recently took at Stanford.