RE: The Henry Explications - Part A

I did not see the clear subtextual connections between "unrestrained loose companions" and "dissolute" (indifferent to moral restraints) and "wanton" (dissolute or unrestrained) in this speech. Now that King Henry's concern about restraint emerges more clearly, we can look also at that first line: "Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?" Signet (Kenneth Muir) defines "unthrifty" here as "prodigal," fitting with King Henry's growing spiritual observances. However, the more common definition of frugality suggest yet another form of restraint, extending Henry's expectation of it to social, moral, and economic.

What is the king's attitude about restraint? Is it a particularly Medieval concept? Is it particular to his character? Is it also couched in religious observance? Do we see it equally in 1 Henry IVand 2 Henry IV? Is it, as Paul suggests, wrapped up in Henry's attitudes about class, a euphemism for sticking with your own kind? Thoughts?

Randall

The Henry Explications - Part A

The following is one in a series of mini-articles resulted from an exercise I had my St. Paul Academy 2011 Shakespeare students complete. The articles focus on selected speeches spanning Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.

HENRY BOLINGBROKE
Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?
'Tis full three months since I did see him last.
If any plague hang over us, 'tis he.
I would to God, my lords, he might be found.
Inquire at London, 'mongst the taverns there,
For there, they say, he daily doth frequent,
With unrestrained loose companions,
Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes
And beat our watch and rob our passengers,
Which he, young wanton and effeminate boy,
Takes on the point of honor to support
So dissolute a crew.

(Richard II 5.3.1-12)

King Henry IV's speech to the court in Richard II, Act 5, scene 3, reveals his strong disappointment in his son, the prince. He criticizes Hal's carelessness, criminal behavior, femininity, and overall poor demeanor. Motivated by this overwhelming disappointment and embarrassment, the king angrily vilifies Hal's life, citing both his poor behavior and his decision to associate with socially inferior friends, a lifestyle not befitting royalty.

Stating that Hal "takes on the point of honor to support so dissolute a crew," the king's belief that his son wastes honor by associating with criminal, roguish commoners, such as Falstaff and Poins, reveals several character traits, including social classism and anger. Labeling such fellows as "unrestrained loose companions" and "a dissolute crew," Henry makes it clear that appropriate behavior involves restraint, both moral and social. Given Henry's own actions, including deposing a king, one might consider his complaints a bit ironic. Or it may be that Henry simply would rather his son associate with others of higher social stature.

The king's concern about restraint is also evident in his attack on Hal's masculinity. When criticizing Hal for his conduct and lifestyle, King Henry IV describes him as "wanton" and "effeminate." Yet Henry offers no support for this effeminacy. It seems enough that Hal is not involved in activities similar to Hotspur's, activities steeped in leadership and testosterone and honor, and instead involves himself in "wanton" activities, robbing and drinking and rebelling against his father's wishes. To Henry this is womanish because it fails to follow his concept of order, and that which defies order (unrestrained) is automatically unmanly.

Paul Micevych (SPA '12)

Introduction to Stu

Sadly, I haven't read Orson Welles' cut of the Henry IV plays. I did perform in a 1996 production entitled Henry IV: The History Plays, which, I have no doubt, borrowed heavily on previous sources, including Welles. Clearly, you lose something in the cutting, but there are benefits to putting the two together. The role of Northumberland, for example, is certainly enhanced by putting the two parts together―we see both the run up to his son's death and the aftermath.

I read Randall's post regarding Thomas of Woodstock with interest, since I am currently playing Mowbray in Richard II, which would make me "Sir Not Appearing in This Play" in Woodstock. Odd to think that if Shakespeare had actually had a hand in Woodstock, the movers and shakers in the first act of Richard II, Bolingbrook and Mowbray, would be absent. Looking forward to hearing from you all. You'll have to excuse me if, new to your group, I lurk for a while. I doubt that, with two jobs for the summer, I will be as prolific as Randall.

Stu

Also, check out my theater company: Shakespeare and Company

RE5: Thomas of Woodstock - Oh No He Di'n't

Plus, Shakespeare isn't in the habit of attacking either the British polity and/or the reigning royals.

Ernst

RE4: Thomas of Woodstock - Oh No He Di'n't

Essex is an interesting comparison, but that's 1599 or 1600. Most scholars ― Malone Society, Corbin and Sedge, Eagan according to Wikipedia ― date the play prior to 1595, even if the manuscript doesn't come until later. And if the play has anything to do with Shakespeare, it can't possibly come after more competent plays like Richard III or Richard II.

Randall

RE3: Thomas of Woodstock - Oh No He Di'n't

As I thought more about this, I thought about Essex's rebellion and its supporters, whose vision of Elizabeth may have been something akin to the play's attitudes. And Catholicism? Dunno. I still can't find the date, but I have something that will give me a pretty good idea at home. In terms of politics, I do know that several plays praising (the late) Elizabeth appeared about eight years or so after her death.

Ernst

RE2: Thomas of Woodstock - Oh No He Di'n't

Ernst,

Absolutely. Woodstock comes off as champion of the oppressed, clear-headed patriot, and saintly. I was being sarcastic about his being "boorish." (I included a lot of sarcasm in the synopsis.) In that scene, Richard's concerns are so far from anything kingly, Woodstock's rebukes seem almost school-marmish. You raise an interesting point about contemporary attitudes toward historical characters. Where does one pick up that kind of info? How did the Elizabethan audience feel about Bolingbroke, for example, usurper of a rightful, but foolish king?

Randall

RE: Thomas of Woodstock - Oh No He Di'n't

Yep, I read that one years ago, but have pretty much forgotten it ― except that it cast Woodstock in a very positive light, as I recall. For example, Woodstock may be boorish in I.iii, but you can be pretty sure most theatre-goers agreed with him. I got the sense he was a very popular figure in Tudor days. (An acceptable Puritan?)

IV.i: the disguised masquers is the same trick used in a number of plays, most especially The Malcontent and its parodic/comic successor, The Revenger's Tragedy. I forget when Woodstock was written.

V.i. Many things come in pairs in The Revenger's Tragedy also. And, it is refreshing to read something in which a Cheney is a good guy.

Ernst

Thomas of Woodstock - Oh No He Di'n't

Once more into the interim, dear friends!

A wonderful perk of summer and its generous grant of a free hour here and there is the ability to read peripherally. I don't know if this happens to you, but reading one book usually inspires me to pursue others, and I end up keeping a book list cataloging the inspirations, most of which I never expect to get to. For example, I'm currently reading James Salter's novel A Sport and a Pastime, in which I came across this line:

“Henri is forty, perhaps. Juliette about twenty-nine. But Dean has read Radiguet. Twenty-nine isn’t old.”

That’s it. A one word allusion to a French writer who died young, having written only two novels. I’ve read Radiguet’s curious and spare Count D’Orgel’s Ball, but what Salter is probably evoking here is his other, The Devil in the Flesh, a love story set in France, as is Salter’s book, that Radiguet wrote when he was 17. I put it on my list.

Sometimes the peripheral connection is more oblique, a barely visible path of implications and associations, blazable only with the luxury of time. I followed such a path as I was re-reading The Tragedy of King Richard the Second and Bolingbroke’s accusation against Thomas Mowbray:

“Further, I say and further will maintain
Upon his bad life to make all this good,
That he did plot the Duke of Gloucester's death,
Suggest his soon-believing adversaries,
And, consequently, like a traitor coward,
Sluiced out his innocent soul through streams of blood."
(1.1.98-103)

Prodded by my Signet Classic's tiny superscript degree symbol indicating a footnote next to "Duke of Gloucester," I glanced down to read the agate type: "Gloucester Thomas of Woodstock, who had been murdered at Richard's orders." Now during the school year, this results in a brief “isn’t that interesting,” but during the summer, I’m off to Google to see what other information I might turn up about Thomas of Woodstock.

The Google search turns up two Wikipedia entries, the first biographical, the second an odd reference to Richard II, Part 1, "an untitled, anonymous, and incomplete Elizabethan play." Hmmm. Amazon reveals a copy of the play, also titled Thomas of Woodstock because the script that was discovered lacked a title page as well as the final pages of the text, edited by Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge, and priced at $75, too rich for my blood. Back to Google.

I love the Internet. The Hampshire Shakespeare Company (Amherst, Massachusetts) staged the American debut of Thomas of Woodstock in 1999, and because the play is incomplete they had a contest challenging people to write a conclusion. They posted the play online and the winning text, by a musician and supermarket porter named Frederick Carrigg.

As one begins to dig up commentary on the anonymous play, one finds a frequent provocative suggestion that Shakespeare had something to do with it. The play may never have been published and even its initial performance date is hazy, but some scholars place it circa 1592. That, combined with its topical relation to Shakespeare’s Richard II, begs the question: could Shakespeare have had a hand in writing it?

Well, before we get to that, let me fill you in on the play, believed to be, by some, Richard the Second, Part One.

1.1 – We begin in medias res as Sir Thomas Cheyney has alerted Richard’s uncles, the Dukes of Lancaster and York, to a plot by Richard’s flatterers – Bagot and Greene – and a lawyer named Tresilian, to poison them. They avoid the wine. Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester, arrives and they discuss what Thomas should wear to Richard’s wedding. “Country habit” is passé.

1.2 – Tresilian, Bagot, and Greene moan about the failure of their plan. Tresilian tries on the title he expects to get from Richard – Lord Chief Justice of England – and trades insults with his henchman, Nimble.

1.3 – Woodstock has shown up at Richard’s wedding dressed in pounds’ worth of clothes, not measured in money, but weight. Despite this, celebrants make fun of his usual “tother hose,” an antiquated and common fashion. Woodstock boorishly politicizes the conversation by suggesting that haute couture leads to overtaxation of the poor. A verbal scuffle ensues and the king’s uncles try to warn him about the evil designs of his flatterers. Thumbing his nose at his elders, Richard bestows titles on Bagot, Greene, and Tresilian. There is word of rebellion in the land.

2.1 – The king’s flatterers give Richard a history lesson. They do not say “Edward the third had seven sons.” But they do point out that Richard is older than he thought, 22, and old enough not to be bossed around by grumpy uncles. York arrives to invite Richard to parliament.

2.2 – At the parliament, York and Lancaster are discussing how much they like Richard, when he shows up, pissily points out that he’s a full king, watches Woodstock, York, and Lancaster hand over their various symbolic implements of protectorship, and dismisses both them and their parliament. After they are gone, Richard, Bagot, Greene, and Scroope discuss their budget. Scroope says “we must have money to buy new suits.”

2.3 – The Queen, Anne of Bohemia (referred to consistently as “Anne-a-Beame”) and the Duchess of Gloucester discuss the Queen’s practice of selling her valuables to provide money for England’s poor (“The wealth I have shall be the poor’s revenue.”) so that they will not rebel against Richard. Woodstock’s right-hand man, Cheyney, arrives to tell the Duchess they’re going home (Plashey) since they are no longer needed/wanted at court, where Richard and his cohorts “sit in council to devise strange fashions … such as this Kingdom never yet beheld: French hose, Italian cloaks, and Spanish hats, Polonian shoes with peaks a handful long, tied to their knees with chains of pearl and gold.”

3.1 – Tresilian arrives at court with an ingenious plan to fleece the English people. Sheriffs and officials all over the land shall be enjoined to have landed men put their names on blank charters, “documents with blank sections (for the insertion of names and amounts of money) for the collection of loans by … ‘executores’” (Dickinson, 377), an exotic loan method the lawyer believes will bring the king “cartloads of money.” Tresilian also intends to have the same sheriffs take down the names of anyone who grumbles about it, an early form of warrantless eavesdropping, and they shall be accused of being “privy whisperers” and have their goods and lands confiscated. Think of that the next time you mutter to yourself while you’re in the bathroom.

3.2 – At Plashey, Woodstock, Lancaster, and York do not go gently into retirement. Cheyney shows up with a blank charter, says the woods is full of them causing the people much distress. The Dukes magnanimously head off to tame rebellious thoughts among the people. A courtier shows up with a message for Woodstock, but mistakes him for a groom because of his plain attire. Once identities are cleared up, the two discuss, at length, what the king is wearing these days, then the courtier tells Woodstock his presence is requested at court.

3.3 – Cue the clowns. Nimble is out with blank charters, getting illiterate people to put their names on them. He is assisted by the Bailey (bailiff) of Dunstable, one Master Ignorance, whose favorite word is “pestiferous.” He says it every time he speaks.

4.1 – Back at the castle, the king is dismayed to learn that Woodstock has refused to visit. Simply forcing him to come won’t work because it will arouse rebellious thoughts in the people. Tresilian proposes that they disguise themselves as masquers, go to Plashey, catch Woodstock unawares, bop him on the head, dress him up as a masquer so he can’t be identified when they kidnap him, and drag him off to court. Richard says “I like it well.” The difficult business dealt with, Richard and the flatterers agree to divide up the kingdom with Bagot, Bushy, Greene, and Scroope as renters and Richard as their landlord.

4.2 – At Plashey, the masquers, including Richard, arrive and kidnap Woodstock, accusing him for good measure of treason. They plan to deliver him to Lapoole in Calais, far from any English people who might be inspired to rebellious thoughts, where he can be killed.

4.3 – The king’s policemen hear complaints from local sheriffs, who point out that blank charters are not in keeping with a) ancient liberties from William the Conqueror sparing the men of Kent from any fines or taxation and b) the rights of “free-born” men. These arguments, for some reason, are ignored and they go to jail. Word comes that the queen is sick. Oh, she’s dead. Richard arrives, very sad, and repents his harsh sentence on Woodstock. “Send post to Calais and bid Lapoole forbear/ On pain of life, to act our sad decree,” he says. Uh oh.

5.1 – Best scene in the play. At Calais, Lapoole wants Woodstock’s murder to look “a common natural death.” It’s a busy night in Woodstock’s cell, as he is visited by the ghost of Edward the Black Prince, the ghost of Edward III, Lapoole who suggests he write some letters to Richard airing his grievances, and finally two murderers who strangle him with a towel then smother him with a mattress. Everything seems to come in pairs in this scene.

5.2 – Tresilian and Nimble review the lack of success at pressing commoners into service in the coming war between Richard and the Dukes. They argue about which of them will run away the fastest.

5.3 – On the field before battle, the Dukes meet with Richard. Lancaster reveals Richard’s greatest crime – he’s not a king, but a landlord. Both sides call each other “traitors.”

5.4 – In battle, Cheyney and Arundel fight with and kill Greene. There’s no word of what he was wearing when he died. Richard finds Greene’s body and speaks words that might be misconstrued by future Queer Theory critics.

5.5 – Nimble and Tresilian in full flight consider their plight. Nimble realizes that he can escape punishment (and even earn a thousand marks) if he “captures” Tresilian and turns him over to the authorities. So much for honor among thieves.

5.6 – Richard’s flatterers are routed. Nimble arrives and turns Tresilian over to Lancaster.

Scholars may argue over authorship for centuries, but clearly Thomas of Woodstock is a play written by a tailor.

I have left off a summary of the final scene written by Mr. Carrigg as not relevant here. I am fascinated instead by the argument that one finds Shakespearean fingerprints on this play. In the journal Early Modern Literary Studies (Sept. 2003), for example, Michael Eagan writes, “It is impossible to come away from the text without an overwhelming sense of Shakespeare's presence – one way or another. Either he wrote it or knew it extraordinarily well, stealing scenes, characters and lines with ruthless abandon.” It turns out Mr. Eagan is fairly convinced Shakespeare actually wrote the play. He has recently published a four-volume, 2100-page argument supporting his claim. One reviewer, Ramon Jimenez, finds the argument convincing.

I haven’t read Eagan. But I have to say, I put down Thomas of Woodstock and my first thought was “no way Shakespeare wrote this.” And the only argument I have on my side is Malcolm Gladwell. Not too long ago New Yorker writer Gladwell wrote a book called Blink in which he argues that “decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately” (11-12), like in a 2100-page essay. This process, if one can call a two-second impression a “process,” is called the “adaptive unconscious,” and with it Gladwell raises one’s intuitive decisions to the same level as our conscious ones, then supports his conclusion with a pile of entertaining anecdotes.

Now I’m a Shakespeare amateur, so my decision that Shakespeare had nothing to do with this play is surely suspect. I strongly encourage anyone with brains, evidence, and more than two seconds to spend on this to write and point out my varying levels of idiocy here. Please.

That said, the William Shakespeare Experience has just spent that last two and a half years reading all of Shakespeare’s early work, and the would-be Richard II, Part 1 is unlike anything we’ve read in a number of significant ways.

For one, I’m suspicious about the poetry. The text I read, and lord knows where the Hampshire Shakespeare people got their version, made it difficult to distinguish iambic pentameter from prose because even though different characters clearly speak in one or the other, all the lines are broken as if they are poetry. So I did a lot syllable counting, out of curiosity. And I found, in passages that tend toward iambic pentameter, consistent over-syllablizing of lines. Yes, a lot of them were 11 syllables, and Eagan argues that this is typical of Shakespeare’s early use of feminine verse endings. Thinking back to Titus Andronicus and Love’s Labor’s Lost and the Henry VI plays, I don’t remember the lines, even if they included a lot of feminine endings, feeling like this. Instead I came away with a clear impression of a playwright struggling to maintain poetic form. (Again, I admit the difference between impression and scientific method here.)

And that’s interesting because one thing I remember clearly about Love’s Labor’s Lost is the show-offiness of the language. (I checked three speeches at random – King, Princess, and Berowne – and found few feminine rhymes.) Perhaps a better comparison is one of the Henry VI plays. But rather than embark on an odyssey myself (what page am I on already?), I’ll throw it out as a question: aside from the evolving tone, temperament, and maturity, have you felt in reading the first 13 plays, that Shakespeare has moved from rough poet to polished? Is there even a way to distinguish between these characteristics?

And when you have blinked and decided, take at look at or scan this Thomas of Woodstock speech of Richard’s, again chosen at random:

“Methinks it is strange, my good and reverent uncle,
You and the rest should thus malign against us,
And every hour with rude and bitter taunts
Abuse King Richard and his harmless friends.
We had a father, that once called ye brother:
A grandsire too, that titled you his son;
But could they see how you have wronged King Richard
Their ghosts would haunt ye; and in dead of night
Fright all your quiet sleeps with horrid fears.
I pray, stand up; we honour reverend years
In meaner subjects. Good uncle, rise and tell us:
What further mischiefs are there now devised
To torture and afflict your sovereign with?” (Woodstock 2.1)

Second, if Shakespeare did write this play as Richard II, Part 1, then I am suspicious about the continuity. The playwright of Thomas of Woodstock records events that make no sense in relation to Shakespeare’s Richard II. For example, Greene dies, slain on the filed of battle in the first play. Then, oddly he’s resurrected in the second play, until Bolingbroke captures him and has him beheaded.

Similarly, I found myself disoriented by the chronology of the two plays taken together. Thomas of Woodstock concludes with a bellicose confrontation between Richard and the Dukes, a battle the Dukes appear to win. Yet at the beginning of Richard II, we seem to have not only reconciled but turned the table of power to Richard’s side, restoring Bagot, Bushy, and Greene to their lofty perch as flattering “favorites.” I looked to Antonia Fraser’s The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England to see if historically they reached some sort of truce between the events of the two plays, but I found myself even more confused. Gloucester (Woodstock) dies in 1397, but there’s no battle afterwards. There is a battle earlier in 1387 when Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick “forced Richard to agree to the trial of five of his friends” (Fraser 113). The friends flee but they are caught by the Dukes’ army, which incidentally now includes Mowbray and Bolingbroke, two characters who do not appear in Thomas of Woodstock. The result of this skirmish is the “Merciless Parliament” of 1388.

Where this particular parliament falls in either play, I’m not sure. But that’s how disorienting the timeline is between the two. I don’t remember the three parts of Henry VI having the same disorientation. But I may be mistaken. Surely Shakespeare is effective at collapsing and rearranging history to suit his narrative purposes. Still, as we moved from 1 Henry VI to Richard III and as we go from Richard II to 1 Henry IV, Shakespeare did not provide and is not providing us with a comparable continuity paradox.

Finally, I am suspicious about a thematic element. One of the dominant motifs in Richard II, indeed an idea that unifies Richard’s character throughout, is the idea of his divine right to rule. Each of Richard’s modes – Machiavel, Greedy Opportunist, Coward, and Poet – I described in the “Faces of Richard” section of the Shakespeare and Company review can be connected by Richard’s sense that he is god’s “deputy.” Reading the play, I felt it is Shakespeare’s least secular play, so fundamental is Richard’s connection to God. When Northumberland and Bolingbroke show up at Castle Flint, for example, to ask Richard to submit, the king responds:

“We are amazed, and thus long have we stood
To watch the fearful bending of thy knee,
Because we thought ourself thy lawful king:
…
If we be not, show us the hand of God
That hath dismissed us from our stewardship” (3.3.71-73,76-77)

And he returns to this conviction throughout. (With his dying breath, he tells Exton: “That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire/ That staggers thus my person.”) And it is a conviction completely absent from Thomas of Woodstock. “God” is mentioned 14 times in Act I of Woodstock, but 12 of them are by Woodstock, the most devout character in the play. This ratio continues in the subsequent acts. In fact, Richard, in the entire play only mentions God once. When he does, though, it is fascinating, because the speech is so unlike anything he has said previously:

“Although we could have easily surprised,
dispersed and overthrown your rebel troops
that draw your swords against our sacred person,
the highest god's anointed deputy,
breaking your holy oaths to heaven and us:
yet of our mild and princely clemency
we have forborne; that by this parliament
we might be made partaker of the cause
that moved ye rise in this rebellious sort.” (5.3)

In this we find Eagan’s Shakespearean hint, for Richard’s words echo those Gaunt will speak in Richard II:

“God’s is the quarrel; for God’s substitute,
His deputy anointed in His sight,
Hath caused his death, the which if wrongfully,
Let heaven revenge, for I may never lift
An angry arm against His minister.” (1.2.37-41)

I wouldn’t be surprised if Shakespeare used Thomas of Woodstock as a source. So many of his plays make use of antecedent texts. But I remain unconvinced that Shakespeare collaborated on or wrote much of this play. Maybe next summer, with a few more hours to spare, I’ll dig into Eagan’s argument and learn just how wrong I am.

Wow, all that and not a single joke about rock and roll or Max Yasgur’s dairy farm!

Randall

RE: Richard II - Performance Log (July 2008)

Randall,

Actually, believe it or not, Colorado Shakespeare Festival is doing Henry VIII this year. I guess I should go see it considering it only comes around every 30 years or so.

I saw their Love's Labour's Lost last week. Not so great, and yet, not sure why I didn't enjoy it like I have in the past. Still thinking on that one.

Apparently CSF's really strong show is a musical tribute to Woody Guthrie. Ooh! Now, that's a must see for me. :-)

A former student told me of a production of a play that he is rehearsing:

"Have you ever heard of Chimes at Midnight? Apparently it's a film Orson Welles made that condensed Henry IV parts 1 and 2 into a single show. The play for which I am rehearsing is Chimes at Midnight and I have to admit, I'm impressed with it. At first I was skeptical … but the director really seems to know what he's doing and I think he has developed a fantastic show. I'm playing the role of Prince John (Hal's younger brother) though I am the understudy to Prince Hal. I'm having a blast! I directed Part 1 at the seminary last year (not a bad production) so I'm quite familiar with the text and the characters of this show. And I'm delighted to be a part of this tiny little theatre company that performs Shakespeare outdoors!"

Have you ever heard of this one? Sounds interesting.
Cindy

Richard II - Performance Log (July 2008)

Sometimes the stars align; I was able to see a performance of Richard II just as we begin reading 1 Henry IV. For me, Richard II is a lifer, meaning it’s a play I’ve never seen on stage before. (I have about 10 to go, including most of the usual suspects – Timon, Coriolanus, Cymbelline, Troilus, Henry VIII. Does anyone ever do Henry VIII?)



Richard II
Shakespeare & Company
Directed by George M. Roesler
Century College Outdoor Theatre Complex
White Bear Lake, MN
July 5, 2008

1. The Faces of Richard: When we read Richard II last year, I came away with the impression that Richard is all of a piece – a poet king, lyrical but milquetoasty. Perhaps my reading was colored by remembrance of Derek Jacobi’s solid performance for the televised BBC series (1978), which gave the character some consistency that, as I reviewed the text prior to seeing Shakespeare & Company's production, is not so obvious in the text. Or perhaps I just didn't read the play very well.

Upon rereading, I believe we find a more chameleonic Richard in Shakespeare's account. Certainly, a historical figure is more difficult to reconcile in a narrative than a fictional one, human nature being erratic. To the fictional, authors can apply coherence where necessary, and we are about to discuss some history plays in which I think Shakespeare succeeds in doing the same with the historical Henry IV and Hal. In Richard II, however, Shakespeare seems disinterested in establishing a connection between or glossing over the king’s different facets.

We get a Machiavellian Richard, the plotter of the assassination of Gloucester. Richard never admits this in the play, but Gaunt fingers him, rebuffing his wife’s desire for vengeance against the assassin by saying:

“God’s is the quarrel; for God’s substitute,
His deputy anointed in His sight,
Hath caused his death, the which if wrongfully,
Let heaven revenge, for I may never lift
An angry arm against His minister.” (1.2.37-41)

Why Richard has had Gloucester rubbed out isn’t discussed, but the opening scene of Richard II, in which Bolingbroke accuses Mowbray (“he did plot the Duke of Gloucester’s death”) becomes politically intriguing when a scene later we learn that Richard, who was adjudicating in scene 1, must have known who was lying and who was truthful, and banished both men anyway. Certainly, he has chosen a politically expedient path, and the “appeals” of both men against the other are something of a sham. Do we see this shrewd political animal again in the play? Not really.

Rather, we get a more obtuse, avaricious Richard. In Act 1, scene 4, upon hearing of Gaunt’s illness, Richard responds:

“Now put it, God, in the physician’s mind
To help him to his grave immediately!
The lining of his coffers shall make coats
To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars.
Come, gentlemen, let’s all go visit him:
Pray God we may make haste, and come too late!” (1.4.59-64)

Okay. It at least appears pragmatic, even if it’s a tad crass to desire the immediate death of one’s uncle in order to pay for war in a time of growing deficit. But it doesn’t take the Duke of York long to point out the illogic of the plan, when Gaunt subsequently dies. After Richard seizes Gaunt’s property, York prophetically warns him “You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,/ You lose a thousand well-disposèd hearts” (2.1.206-207). So, what happened to the king who neatly eliminated risks to his power by trapping them into exile? Well, he foolishly just gave one of them reason to come back and challenge him.

And when Bolingbroke does return, we get the ineffectual, coward Richard. One of the most shocking moments in the play, for me, is in Act 3, scene 3. Bolingbroke sends Northumberland to Richard, holed up in Flint Castle, to tell him:

“Henry Bolingbroke
On both his knees doth kiss King Richard’s hand,
And sends allegiance and true faith of heart
To his most royal person; hither come
Even at his feet to lay my arms and power,
Provided that my banishment repealed,
And lands restored again be freely granted.” (3.3.34-40)

Richard’s response is abdication, essentially: “Stop kissing the ground; here take my crown.” Weird. Yes, it’s historical. Bolingbroke does usurp the throne. But Shakespeare shows us little of his ambition in the earlier scenes; he sounds sincere about supporting Richard as long as his rights are restored. Gil made a very eloquent argument when we covered the play that Northumberland’s request (“May it please you to come down”) amounts to what Gil calls “a huge movement” and can be metaphorically seen as the deposition. Sure. And Ernst pointed out the play’s ability “to lay open the disconnect between politicians’ words and their actions.” But in both cases we get words first, then radical (historical, but narratively unexpected) actions follow. And the disconnect isn’t explored.

So, I think it’s easy to chalk all this up to some gutlessness on Richard’s part, a characteristic we see earlier when he quails upon hearing of Bolingbroke’s growing strength and the deaths of Bushy, Bagot, and the Earl of Wiltshire. Bolingbroke arrives, and Richard coughs up the crown at the sight of him, ostensibly unasked.

Finally, we get the poetic Richard, the speaker of:

“Then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king.
Then I am kinged again and, by and by,
Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing. But whate’er I be,
Nor I, nor any man that but man is,
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing.” (5.5.34-41)

Existential, philosophical, introspective, articulate – all qualities he lacks in his avaricious mode and which he buries in petulance in his coward mode. In the end I have a new appreciation for this character, Richard, but I yearn for a director and an actor who can pull these disparate qualities together and make sense of them, one who can find a line to connect their far-flung dots.

2. Portrait of the King as a Young Man: How does an actor handle a difficult and complex role of this nature? In George Roesler's production for Shakespeare & Company, Lucas Gerstner as Richard hops from one to the other without much transition. But there’s an element of the callow to him throughout the production. He can sit on the steps with his flatterers and diss Gaunt with a smile, a sort of brash disrespect for one’s elders. He can crumble in the face of ill news and Bolingbroke’s approaching power, a dissipation of courage originally based not on prowess but rash overconfidence. He can wax poetic about the loss of his crown, dashing a looking glass to the floor and trading melancholy bon mots (“Say that again. ‘The shadow of my sorrow’?”) with Henry IV, a newly minted wisdom born of recent loss.

So Gerstner’s Richard is a youthful one, belying a bit the historical scope of the play, kind of a Plantagenet That Was the Week That Was. I wished for a bit more maturity in the role and depth to the character; but for an audience unfamiliar with British monarchical history and probably Shakespeare’s Richard II as well, the adolescent vibe is engaging.

3. Death Speaks. A nice touch in this production is Roesler’s adding both a prologue and an epilogue to the play as a way of helping the audience a bit with its sense of history. The prologue seemed to be cadged together from the prologue for Henry V (“O, for a muse of fire”) and 2 Henry VI (“Edward the Black Prince died before his father,/ And left behind him Richard, his only son”). I’ve seen this technique used before, and I think it works especially well with the sequential history plays and an American audience’s understandable ignorance.

Jordan Klitzke delivers the prologue, but independent of any particular role in the play. He doesn’t get up there as, say, Gaunt. The epilogue, on the other hand, is delivered by Death. Death, a tall figure swathed in a black robe, appears throughout the play as a physical portrayal of the doom that hangs over Richard’s reign. And Roesler avoids easy metaphor, putting him into an unexpected scene here and there, which encourages the audience to connect the moment with the larger course of history. Why, for example, would Death be strolling through the Queen Isabel and the gardeners scene? Either he’s calling attention to the Gardener’s not so veiled allegory (“I will go root away/ The noisome weeds which without profit suck/ The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers”) or the topiary’s time is up.

So, Death arrives, after Richard’s murder and Bolingbroke’s speech lamenting his death, and taking lines largely (I may have missed a source) from 1 Henry IV, brings an ironic closure to the play:

“No more the thirsty entrance of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own children’s blood.
No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
Nor bruise her flow’rets with the armed hoofs
Of hostile paces.”

This is ironic for two reasons. First, the lines are Henry’s and they turn out to be overly optimistic, not only within the action of 1 Henry IV but with the War of the Roses on the horizon far beyond as well. Second, the epilogue is spoken by Death! It’s a bit weird to have the prophecy of lasting peace spoken by a character who benefits from, and throughout the play has been a specter of, the fruits of war and civil unrest.

4. Who Killed Richard? Death’s appearance as epilogue is not the only time in the play Roesler makes an interesting casting choice. With a small cast, it’s difficult to fill every character’s role in the play. Hence we have Bushy and Green but not Bagot, and the poor Gardener has only one apprentice, and there’s no Exton. This last may seem inconsequential, but it is Exton (“I am the King’s friend, and will rid his foe”) who does in Richard. In his place, Roesler taps … Hotspur (Jordan Klitzke). He even changes Henry’s lines in Act 5, scene 6 (from “Exton, I thank thee not” to “Harry, I thank thee not”) to call attention to the change.

Let’s consider for a moment what this change implies. In the next play Hotspur will be Hal’s foil, all honor, chivalry, and, as Gil has said, “romantic self-delusion.” Can such a character speak these lines?

“As full of valor as of royal blood!
Both have I now spilled. O, would the deed were good!
For now the devil that told me I did well
Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.” (5.5.113-116)

These lack a sense of honor and temperament that will be consistent in Hotspur in the next play. And there’s a certain toadiness to Exton’s initial interpretation of Henry’s words that Hotspur also lacks. Now on their own Richard II and the switch of characters withstand such criticism. If you’re headed home to American Idol after Death speaks the epilogue and unlikely to take in 1 Henry IV any time soon, who cares if Hotspur plays social-climbing assassin here? And Henry’s rebuke of him could certainly play into Hotspur’s realigning himself in the next play. But for those who consider this play as part of Shakespeare’s second history tetrology, it brings up an interesting continuity question.

A question, I might add, we could ask a guy who told me other day that he’s considering directing 1 Henry IV for Shakespeare & Company next year: Stu Naber. If you scroll back up to the top of this entry and look at the attached picture, Stu is the guy on the right playing Thomas Mowbray. He’s also a fellow Carleton grad. And he’s also the newest member of the William Shakespeare Experience. I welcome Stu now and hope, as we head into 1 Henry IV soon, that he can help us with those interesting questions that arise in the territory between play and production, and whatever else piques his fancy.

Logged by Randall

RE: Rhetorical Richard II and History Plays

I am humbled and inspired by Gil's eloquence. I am indebted to him for his vision of this as a play containing a romantic element. I had not seen it before his post.

I have to now confess to an odd response I am having to these plays. Romeo and Juliet set me reflecting on the Old Norse story of the wooing of Gerd. The gods are in mortal battle with the giants, yet Njorthr, the sea god,falls in love with and woos Gerd, a mountain giant. (One happy outcome of their marriage is the invention of the sport of skiing, as a means of rapid transit between their two abodes.)

This story, according to many scholars (including that Anglo-Saxonist famous for his popular story telling, Tolkien), is reflected in the story of Ingeld and Freawaru, referred to in the Beowulf. Desires across irreconcilable boundaries are a deep part of the spirit and lore of the North (and of my life). I know there are many sources identified for this tale, most of them from the Romance languages, but I think an old Northern theme reverberates here as well.

As I am preparing now to teach something of the Arthurian tradition this fall, I am keenly aware of the tradition of the threat to kingship when the king is away fighting foreign wars. (What an advantage to our current "king"George that the tradition no longer holds that the king must accompany his soldiers in foreign wars.)

In the two versions I am working with (the metrical and alliterative Middle English "Morte D'Arthur"s), the king is away on foreign expeditions (to fight Lancelot or the Roman Emperor Lucius, respectively) when the regent at home (Mordred) decides to usurp the queen's bed and the throne (equivalent?).This story seems to supply the essential plot line of our play. Are there other overt or covert references to that most English (yet most un-Anglo-Saxon) of stories – Arthur and his knights – in Shakespeare? If not,why not?

Forgive me for again seeing a striking connection between ancient story and early modern dramatic representation. I think Will is drawing on some pretty deep wells in both cases. The yet deeper issue of the legitimacy of kings (or of any authority) is, of course, implied in both stories. What makes rule legitimate? What makes it illegitimate? These are deep and lasting questions for any society…why do we docilely accept the legitimacy of a 'ruler' who did not win the majority, nor even the peculiar electoral college in his first "election" while he drags us into a futile and fruitless, illegal war?

Enough mythopeia and realpolitik for one e-mail.

John

Rhetorical Richard II and History Plays

Shakespeare as a master organizer of materials—in speeches, in scenes, in arrangement of scenes. Then he makes it harder and harder to hold it all together inside a structure of which he is the master ironist (e.g., making such things as Richard II’s deposition evanescent; giving Falstaff a role that potentially unbalances the politics of Hal and his father; making the villain Shylock “sympathetic”). Eventually, it all blows up, starting in Hamlet, where the master ironist leaves and the hero is set loose to decide his and his play’s motions and outcomes.

Ernst has said Shakespeare is writing a [second] series of history plays, and I agree, though I don’t think he sat down in some ur-Starbucks in Scotland and outlined the plots of the four Lancastrian plays on a napkin, as the myth of JK Rowling and Harry Potter asserts. Certainly there is “intertextuality” and projection; for instance, an almost gratuitous appearance of someone named Henry Percy in Richard II, and the insistence on the stain against order that must be punished even generations afterward, which is created by the usurpation of Richard II’s throne. This latter is even a motif in the earlier tetralogy, as we follow the anti-Henry V, his son Henry VI, to decadence and doom, then the apocalyptic scourge, Richard III, followed ironically with Justice for England’s wound with the rise of Tudor Henry VII (ironically, in that Richmond as Henry VII has less legitimate claim to succession than did Henry Herford called Bolingbroke to become Henry IV).

When I prepared for my swan song Shakespeare course, I spent a summer in the Northwest trying to think anew the plays before 1603, Hamlet. I read and read around and talked at length with my friend Roger Sale, and so I started my thirty-third University course with Richard III, Richard II, Merchant of Venice, 1 Henry IV, Henry V, and Julius Caesar. This summer, as I sit here back in Washington, I cannot seem to remember whatever wonderful bridge I had in mind, other than a memory that the students did not carry me triumphantly through the halls of academe. I do remember intending to follow the Lancastrian histories with Julius Caesar, lined up “as if” history was of the linear Lancastrian sort, then rattling the cage by suggesting Shakespeare could write Hamlet-like tragedies with Brutus and Cassius as central figures. Richard III would be the last of the “circular” histories, rise and inevitable fall.

My memory of discussions with Sale recalls the pattern of the Henry VI plays as simple inexorableness. Remember the rise and fall of powerful figures: Lord Talbot (part 1); Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and the commoner Jack Cade (part 2); Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York (part 3); and finally, gloriously, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, crook-backed Dick himself. They rise, they flourish, they are killed, and the pattern of history does not stop. Sale says that what is important here is not so much that one enjoy the pattern, or that Shakespeare has developed an interesting idea of history, but that we feel the pattern and so feel that the characters are placed and caught in it, controlled by history.

A real chronological confusion that I mentioned in my last posting is that the historical reigns in these earlier plays follow the age of Richard II, but the composition of the Lancastrian plays and my reading of them comes after. And the new point is that Richard himself is an enigma, God’s anointed King, but vacillating (zig-zag), petulant, petty, vindictive. Think only for a moment to Richard III’s calculations, his master manipulation, his control of all in his path, his joy in the game. And I remember Sale saying that after Richard II returns from Ireland, Shakespeare turns away from the drama of factions of the Yorkist plays and for the first time he allows a character to shape his destiny and the play’s action. And to commit to this character as improviser rather than committing to an inexorable pageant is to leave that character exposed, vulnerable. Can you see Hamlet leaving the green room, getting ready to make an entrance?

Shakespeare seeks order and finds disorder and violence tragic. True in the histories, but we have seen it true in the comedies too. And Derek Traversi classes histories (and tragedies) as exploring the implications, personal and public alike, of political behavior, whereas comedies focus on the validity and the limitations of love in brittle and scintillating society, yet disorder must be addressed in both.

Richard II’s role is more central to his play than the protagonists of the Henry IVs or the Henry VIs. So the comparison is Richard III. But Richard III’s development is historically/ politically driven. He reaches for the throne, then he, alas, achieves it, while Richard II’s is improvisation of his self-images, of his roles. Richard II is a self-centered man and an inept ruler, so his fall seems both deserved and inevitable. For whom did you have the most sympathy, Shylock or Richard II? I have referred to Richard as zig-zag (both the “down-down”scene, III.ii, in which I count 7 diametrical shifts from arrogance to abject resignation and back, and the deposition scene, IV.i), and Charles Brice calls him “narcissistic and arrogant,; he does not rule; he enjoys himself in the role of ruler.”

The play’s most renowned passage is Gaunt’s famous peon to:

“This royal throne of kings, this scept’red isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
…
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings…. (II.i.40-68),

a passage which I have known since I was an English schoolboy. I had it, on my bedroom wall, superimposed on an outline of England on a tea towel (which was, ironically, made in Ireland). This passage, however, does not quite belong in this play, as Portia’s “quality of mercy” speech does not bear careful analysis for honesty in Merchant of Venice. Gaunt’s speech is elegiac, expressing the traditional spirit of a feudal England associated with Edward III, a nostalgic image which Richard II betrays and Henry IV sweeps away. It is more than symbolic that on the instant of Gaunt’s death, when Richard seizes Gaunt’s estate, he “usurps” the ancient law of succession, the “customary rights” of England’s landed gentry.

Richard, rather than declamatory, is eloquent and expansive, even verbose, and for me this texture, this poetic heightened rhetoric is striking contrast to the play’s content, a military coup. I choose three indelible passages, two of which I previously cited. Aumerle addresses Richard’s pessimism with “Comfort, my liege, remember who you are,” and Richard begins to seize the play from the pattern of history:

“I had forgot myself; am I not King?
Awake, thou coward majesty! Thou sleepest.
Is not the King’s name twenty thousand names?
Arm, arm my name! (III.ii.82-86)

But Scroop reports Bolingbroke’s rising power and many defections from Richard’s followers. Down goes Richard’s self-assertion, and he humbly makes his ‘I’m but a man’ appeal:

“For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings….
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends—subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?” (III.ii.155…177)

Soon, Bolingbroke arrives at Flint Castle, and Richard asks:

“What must the King do now? Must he submit?…
nd my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little, little grave, an obscure grave…
Down, down I come, like glist’ring Phaethon.” (III.iii.142-174, 177-182)

Notice how often Richard improvises, with rhetorical flourishes on the question of who he is, fascinated with the expression itself: “and my large kingdom for a little grave [melancholy contrast], a little, little grave [pathos], an obscure grave [bathos].”

Thirdly, Richard’s soliloquy in Pomfret Castle:

“I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world….
But whate’er I be,
Nor I, nor any man that but man is,
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing” (V.I.1-41),

in which Richard’s energy is mostly devoted to finding the right metaphor.

All these illustrate Richard’s unique self-shaping with language, not so much “character” as rhetorical constructs. The laconic Bolingbroke is only about opportunity and power. After the formal, chivalric exchanges with Mowbray, does Bolingroke have any extended utterance apart from the irrelevant—to this play—foreshadow, “Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?” (V.iii.1)? But Richard seems to be fascinated with what he hears from himself about himself. It may be a bit of a stretch, but I’m reminded of the hyperromantic Cyrano, improvising a ballade during a duel or exploring all the variations of an insult to his nose: “when it bleeds, the Red Sea.” Cyrano, as Richard II, is a personage from history. Both, I think, rise by the power of rhetoric up into the clouds.

Gil

Richard II - Toothy Rick

Patient Will Readers,

When John asked about the specific political situation when Richard II was composed, I shied away in that I have little New Historicist impulse, yet I have been thinking a little about complex chronologies. Indeed, Richard II was written in 1595 late in Elizabeth I’s reign (1558-1603), for an audience that had some awareness of history (which always arrives at the present subject to editing and cultural interpretation) including the reign of Richard II (1377-1399).

But we also have the chronological anomaly that Shakespeare composed, and we read, the Henry VI plays, covering 1461-1483, before the historically preceding Ricardian History Plays or the Henriad we are just starting to address. So I’m reading Richard II in 2007, and I’m seeing a play called The Tragedy of…, with a beginning and middle and end (Aristotle would be pleased), often lyrical in poetry and introducing a complex character whose vacillations lead me to think of two or three major ideas (God’s anointed king and the fragile man; order and the precedent of rebellion; elegiac chivalry and practical politics) yet I know Richard, in history, is the first step toward that hollow figure, Henry, Earl of Richmond, afterwards King Henry VII, who triumphantly usurps Richard III’s throne on Bosworth Field and commissions “The Tudor Myth” of history that justifies the line that begets Shakespeare’s boss, Elizabeth I. Long live [some] king!

As Ernst said, it is Shakespeare “once more setting out on a group of history plays,” but he cites the well-known story of the Earl of Essex’s followers staging Richard II on the eve of their rebellion in 1601 (as a result of which rebellion Essex, Elizabeth’s former favorite, was beheaded). Randall earlier noted that none of the five Quarto editions, and it is presumed performances contemporary with Elizabeth’s reign, contain IV.i.154-318 (the actual deposition, from about “Alack, why am I sent for to a king/ Before I have shook off the regal thoughts/ Wherewith I reign’d?” to “O, good! Convey! Conveyers are you all,/ That rise thus nimbly by a true king’s fall”—no matter the politics, the play itself is diminished by this loss, for me especially the thematic crux in those last lines that those who rise by rebellion set the precedent for their own fall). These lines do not appear in print until the First Folio,1623. This censorship is attributed to concern for the perceived vulnerability of the aging Queen.

Lastly, I have several times seen the anecdote that, when in 1601 the historian William Lambarde was showing Elizabeth the fruits of his researches in the royal archives and arrived at the time of Richard II, she broke in: “I am Richard II. Know ye not that?” (e.g., cited in C.W.R.D. Moseley – and cwerd is the word – Shakespeare’s History Plays, 77).

So, I’ll tiptoe onto New Historicist ground for just a moment. Moseley says that Elizabeth acceded to the most insecure throne in Europe in 1558. The throne was claimed by Philip of Spain; the Catholic Northern Earls revolted in 1569; in 1570 Pope Pius V formally issued a papal bull deposing Elizabeth and advocating her assassination; Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, with strong connections to France, had a good claim to the throne and was imprisoned in 1568, beheaded in 1587; Philip attempted to take England by force in 1588, hoping that when the Armada landed, he would be supported by a revolt of the Catholic gentry (hummm—sounds like Bolingbroke or even Henry of Richmond). In 1594, Jesuit Robert Parsons published A Conference about the Next Succession in which he adduced historical and legal arguments to prove the right of the people to alter the line of succession for just causes. I don’t accept for a moment that Shakespeare is writing a political tract, a piece a clef so to speak, in which Bolingbroke is Essex, etc. But it seems reasonable to consider the difference between the Henry VI trilogy and this play, apart from a deft advance is skill as a dramatist and poet, is found in the questions the play permits about succession, governance, loyalty, and followers.

Another question John posed, discussing Richard’s psychology in reference to Act II, scene 2 when, after York’s brother, John of Gaunt, has died and Richard has immediately seized his estates to pay for his foreign wars (ignoring those great spondees: “Watch my lips; no new taxes”), York is appalled and really argues against the precedent Richard thus sets:

“Seek you to seize and grip into your hands
The royalties and rights of banish’d Herford [Bollingbroke]?…
Take Herford’s rights away, and take from Time
His charters and his customary rights;
Let not to-morrow then ensue to-day;
Be not thyself; for how art thou a king
But by fair sequence and succession?…
If you do wrongfully seize Herford’s rights…
You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,
You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts,
And prick my tender patience to those thoughts
Which honor and allegiance cannot think.” (II.i.189…208)

John says York is thinking of rebellion, and York asserts a finer argument that Richard, in seizing Bolingbroke’s inheritance, violates the ancient law of succession which is the identical law that justifies Richard’s succession from his father Edward the Black Prince, eldest son of Edward III. York is right. It is as fundamental as tomorrow follows today, and to break this law justifies breaking any parallel law of succession. Executive privilege is no excuse. Bolingbroke’s subsequent claim (‘I just returned to claim what is rightfully and legally mine’) is just. Richard breaks the chain of order and succession. But Richard brushes off York’s argument with “think what you will, we seize into our hands/ His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.” I am the Decider. Exit York, and Richard says “We will for Ireland” yet he tells Bushy, Bagot, and Green that he appoints York governor of England while he is absent.

I looked at David Gilles BBC production (1979), and there is no significant directorial touch here. The camera swings briefly to the lavishly clad courtiers, who do look at one another, but nothing, to me, that suggests they have suddenly fallen from Richard’s protection, though this moment will lead much later to their executions.

Richard seizes Gaunt’s huge estates because he is profligate and deep into deficit spending (York has noted that Richard’s noble father “did win what he did spend, and spent not that which his triumphant father’s hand had won”). His court is lavish. Do I remember a reference to 10,000 knights? Anyway, Richard is a character whom it is particularly easy to identify with homosexuality, says Stanley Wells, influenced as he is by “the caterpillars of the commonwealth" (II.iii.166).

Michael Redgrave is described as playing him in 1951 as “an out-and-out pussy queer, with mincing gestures to match” (Malcolm Page, Richard II: Text and Performance, 49). I’m indifferent to this, more so than the Antonio-Bassiano relationship we discussed in Merchant of Venice, but to return to the subject of the political situation of 1595, Richard’s followers do draw attention to the nature of political power and the influence of counselors, Elizabeth’s Privy Chamber, and the political world thus divided into factions. Power grew out of personal access to the monarch, says Moseley. And though not really a New Historicist, I have done some research into arcane documents and come up with historical first names: they are Dick Bagot, Karl Green, and Scooter Bushy.

Enough for now.

Best, Gilbert

Richard II - Elizabethan Propaganda?

The only thing I know about Elizabethan politics is the well-known story of the Earl of Essex's followers staging Richard II around 1601 as a propoganda piece suggesting that, like Richard, Elizabeth was a weak ruler.

Weak? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I doubt it had much political significance when it was written, although I may be wrong. Mostly, I think it was Shakespeare once more setting out on a group of history plays.

Ernst

RE: Richard II - Fathers and Sons

I agree with Gil that the pageantry in Richard II goes a long way toward making up for what could otherwise seem talky inaction (but it ain’t; the poetry is so wonderful). I do find myself wondering, in I.iii, how Richard moves from what must surely be the upper stage (where he is set to watch and, possibly, judge the duel) to the lower stage, where he (one would assume) holds out his sword for the two contestants to swear upon (I.iii.179)—but that is a small thing.

Actually, I think this play has a terrific beginning. There is none of the lengthy exposition that opens A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example. (Midsummer Night's Dream also starts with people with complaints coming before a ruler to get things straightened out.) In Richard II, wham! and you are in the middle of a fight.

Shakespeare did an impressive job in developing Shylock, but the care he spends on thinking through Richard’s character (and, to some extent, Northumberland’s and Bolingbroke’s) is impressive. They are much more richly developed than any earlier characters I can think of.

The other thing Richard II does brilliantly is to lay open the disconnect between politicians’ words and their actions. Anyone in the contemporary audience would know that Mowbray worked for Richard and helped further the latter’s desires to free himself of his uncles’ control—especially the control of “Woodstock,” the nickname given the Duke of Gloucester (not the well-known little town northwest of Kingston).

Bolingbroke seems calculating from the start. He has pointed out the elephant in the room (or should I use the emperor-has-no clothes metaphor?). The big question is: does Bolingbroke place his challenge because he wants something (Richard’s embarrassment? The Crown?), or is it simply his nature to be prickly-“honest”? (Sometimes it’s good to be a “plain, blunt” fellow (like Kent’s “Gaius” in King Lear.) But more often it’s not—as in some malcontent characters I’ve studied. Betty has a sister who prides herself in her own frankness, worshipping the impractical god of ”practicality,” and hurting/judging people left and right.

I will also note here the uneven nature of parts of the play—most especially the old-style rhymed couplets that appear from time to time,and the miserably corny scene (V.iii) regarding Aumerle’s possible punishment. Some suggest that these show an earlier version of the play,one which Shakespeare wrote or from which he borrowed.

Finally, a brief note on diction: (A) The stately, dark-vowel-rich language that opens the play (Midsummer Night's Dream uses the same device); (B) the magnificent way Gaunt’s “This royal throne of Kings” (II.i.40-67) speech builds to “IS ALL LEASED OUT.” George Bush should have read this long ago.

Some central, if unanswerable questions:

1. With whom are we meant to sympathize—Richard or Bolingbroke.
2. Does Bolingbroke have long-range plans?
3. Is George Bush more the usurper or more the self-dramatist? In short, is this play a reflection of our own political times? Who is today’s Duke of York?
4. Does Richard have any choice but to banish Mowbray (a duke, after all) for life? Is Bolingbroke really (and perhaps ignorantly) in control from the get-go?
5. To what extent can this play be seen as a commentary on the Renaissance’s freeing of humans from the constraints of medieval codes?

Who’s to blame, or are such ripping-aparts of older structures inevitable (or built into 2000-year cycles, as with Yeats)? [Or, in the last century (1937) as von Rauffenstein muses in The Grand Illusion, “UnMaréchal? Un Rosenthal?”]

Ernst

Richard II - Fathers and Sons

I want to follow up on what Gilbert was saying about the Bolingbroke banishment. I was struck by the structural parallelism of the father-son interactions involving the sons' alleged treason – Gaunt/Bolingbroke at the beginning and York/Aumerle toward the end. Both involve conflicts between allegiance to family and loyalty to king. Actually, there is no real conflict for York – he's a loyalist all the way (at this point). A bit ironic since he just turned his back on King Richard.

But Gaunt is more openly conflicted. He tells Richard, "You urged me as a judge; but I had rather /You would have bid me argue like a father." He loyally carries out his duty as judge for the king, even though it is against his own son, but it tears him apart emotionally as is clear even from Richard's description of him: "I see thy grieved heart, thy sad aspect…" This is deeper and more interesting psychologically, though not quite to the level of the turmoil of a Hamlet. The overarching formality and decorum that Gilbert mentioned seems to govern the tone even of this emotional conflict.

These both presage the conflict we see just beginning between Bolingbroke, now King Henry IV, and the young Prince Hal, but we'll have plenty of time to dissect that peculiar relationship (though perhaps all father-son relationships are peculiar) in the next play in the sequence.

There are also notable and quotable passages about love of and devotion to land and country, especially Gaunt's "This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England." But what is best for England is not always what is best for its king. Is Shakespeare suggesting a hierarchy of allegiance here? If so, how exactly is it structured? England, then family, then king? That doesn't sound very comforting to his royal sponsors. Does anyone know about the specific political situation at the time of this play's composition?

The psychology of Richard is another thing altogether. In Act II scene 1, York tells him quite clearly that he is thinking of rebellion: "You…prick my tender patience to those thoughts/ Which honor and allegiance cannot think."

But Richard immediately turns to Bushy (what a name!) and declares: "…we create in absence of ourself /Our Uncle York lord governor of England; /For he is just, and always loved us well."

Does anyone remember how this comes off on stage (or film)? It just seems so totally daft of Richard. Does Bushy just stare at him, dumbfounded at his sheer stupidity? I found it hard to imagine that bit being acted in any believable way.

I want to come back later to a deeper consideration of the rich and often self-referential language of the play, but this is enough for now.

John

Richard II - Dick the Tooth

For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.

The last, of two, production of Richard II I saw was at Ashland, Oregon, on the Elizabethan Stage which is outdoors, on the site of a quondam Chatauqua Circle. It was a quality production, no gimmicks, an eloquent and poetic Richard, but the most memorable aspects were two. First, the Ashland director was committed to color-blind casting, but the acting was good enough that it only took me five minutes to forget that first cousins Richard and Bolingbroke were played by actors of different races. (The next season Ashland cast a couple of their gifted leading actresses in minor male parts, Peter Quince in Midsummer Night's Dream and Crabtree in School for Scandal and they were awful, so bad they warped the texture of both plays).

Second, it rained throughout the evening so it was played in rehearsal clothes so as not to spoil the costumes, and they cut out some planned acrobatics or dancing, something to do with the luxury of Richard’s court. But most memorable, despite the rain, they still laid Richard’s corpse out on a bier (there’s a word I’ve never had to spell before) in Act 5.vi, and the actor lay stone still while his eye sockets filled with rainwater. There must be some sort of award for that.

Though Randall has noted how little action we find in The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, only the trial by combat in Act 1 and the fight then murder of Richard in prison in Act 5, he misses one significant action. In Act 3.iii,. “s.d. The trumpets sound. Richard appeareth on the walls” of Flint Castle in Wales, and Bolingbroke exclaims:

"See, see, King Richard doth himself appear,
As doth the blushing discontented sun
From out the fiery portal of the east,
When he perceives the envious clouds are bent
To dim his glory and to stain the track
Of his bright passage to the occident"(3.iii.62-67),

a passage so richly imaged that his uncle York has to translate, “Yet looks he like a king!” Northumberland ascends to the balcony (“on the walls”) as representative of Bolingbroke, returns to the courtyard with the king’s offer to rescind banishment and restore the Lancastrian lands, then again meets Richard on the walls: “My lord, in the base court he [Bolingbroke] doth attend/ To speak with you, may it please you to come down” (3.iii.276-77), which sets off Richard, who has zig-zagged wildly between exultation and despair throughout the scene:

Down, down I come, like glist’ring Phaeton,
Wanting the manage of unruly jades.
In the base court? Base court, where kings grow base,
To come at traitor’s calls and do them grace.
In the base court, come down? Down court! Down king!
For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing. [s.d. exeunt above] (3.iii.78-83)

Followed by [s.d. Enter King Richard and his Attendants below].

I realize that, when I promised action, you hoped I’d point out some version of Hamlet in Ophelia’s grave, or maybe the Queen and the Gardener demonstrating a bed of roses could be more than a metaphor, but I offer instead King Richard coming down from the battlements to the base court below as the crucial action in English history. God’s anointed, the highest earthly link in the Great Chain of Being, submits himself to the current of history, submits to power --“Well you deserve; they well deserve to have/ That know the strong’st and surest way to get…/ What you will have, I’ll give, and willing too,/ For do we must what force will have us do.”

There is nonetheless a huge movement. Here we are again astride my hobbyhorse (that’s from cheval to hors, Randall), opening in a culture which seems to adhere to the code of chivalry (medieval, feudal) and which exits with raw power (real politique we called it in Richard III) or what might be called bourgeois capitalism (how often does Bolingbroke refer or defer to “the commons”?). When I saw that wet production at Ashland, I didn’t know the play well (I only taught it once, and that was in my very last semester), and I was impatient to establish contexts, so we could cut to the deposition and get inside for a very dry martini. Instead there is matched accusation of treason between Bolingbroke and Mowbray, all quite formal, then rescheduled for trial by combat in the lists at Coventry. Extremely formal code for introductions and accusations, then “co-fightus interruptus” indeed, the joust stopped, really curious, with the two combatants both sent into exile. I wondered what this was about, and indeed Mowbray never appears again, but dies somewhere in France.

But reading the play now, what strikes me most forcibly is that very formality of the code. Act 1 illustrates perfectly the chivalric code of medieval England, and Richard, as whimsical as he appears on the surface, is the code keeper. So when he “comes down” at Flint Castle this symbolic sun is darkened forever. We will only see it again, and then in romantic self-delusion, when Harry Percy, called Hotspur, will burn, and burn out, across the battlefields at Shrewsbury.

Gil

Richard II - Opening Remarks

Most noble lieges,

I'm not sure really where to start with this one. When I was 15, I saw BBC's production on TV, part of its "Complete Works of William Shakespeare" series. It starred Derek Jacobi as Richard, Jon Finch as Bolingbroke, and John Gielgud as John of Gaunt. I remember it being very, very talky.

Reading it, I am impressed with the language, so much of it beautifully crafted, elevated, and carefully distinguishable between characters. Richard's flowery language is not like Bolingbroke's proud metaphor is not like Gaunt's aphoristic wisdom. But it is still talky. Gaunt, for example, seems to repeat everything three times. Hamlet is a long play, full of speeches ("words, words, words"), but you've got sword fights, a guy leaping into a grave to make out with a dead girl, creepy ghosts, manslaughter (oops), a morbid play within a morbid play, insanity, faux insanity, pirates (sort of), and unrequited love. Richard II has two moments of action – the first, a joust-to-the-death between Mowbray and Bolingbroke which Richard halts before it begins (co-fightus interruptus!) and the second, when Richard takes out a couple of assassins before Exton delivers the death blow. Other than that the whole thing is like a rather long cocktail party which, as the participants' tongues become loosened with alcohol, devolves to petty jealousies, malevolent posturing, and increasing flights of verbal fancy. So I wonder what Shakespeare thought would be the attraction of nobles standing around for two and a half hours, talking?

To step back a minute from narrative expectation, I could say that maybe this is a play about language. But I don't think it is. It is a play, mostly, about the deposition of a king, something that is not really achieved through mere talk. Perhaps this is the attraction – in a world where people believe in rule by divine right, deposition is a frightening thing. In this light, we might see Richard II as a kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where the horror is all in the threat and implication and very little in actual violence. Graham Holderness points out that Act 4, the deposition scene, was "apparently censored in its Elizabethan performances and in the earliest printed texts. Evidently the spectacle of a monarch voluntarily resigning the crown was thought to be matter too dangerous to be represented on the Elizabethan stage" (Penguin Critical Studies: Richard II, 11). So Richard's and Gaunt's and Bolingbroke's and York's and the Queen's speeches are all a product of people grappling with what deposition means, its horror.

The Elizabethan audience would have been intimately familiar with its implications: one hundred plus years of political unrest (neatly chronicled by Shakespeare in the two tetralogies). Even in this, the first play of the second group, Shakespeare includes plenty of foreshadowing of the result of Richard's deposition, from the specific (setting the scene for 1 Henry IV):

RICHARD
Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal
The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne,
The time shall not be many hours of age
More than it is, ere foul sin, gathering head,
Shall break into corruption. (5.1.55-59)

to the general (setting the scene for everything through Richard III):

SALISBURY
Ah, Richard! With the eyes of heavy mind
I see thy glory like a shooting star
Fall to the base earth from the firmament;
Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west,
Witnessing storms to come, woe and unrest. (2.4.18-22)

So what do we make of this brilliant language, not yet in the service of strong narrative? (I want to head off the 'well, it's a history play' rejoinder by pointing out that the play is entitled The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, and so I think we are within our rights to expect an engaging structure.) And if you want to dig deeper in the language, there are a lot of couplets here, but they come with the suggestion that such versification is a bit, well, effeminate. I love Mowbray's shot at Bolingbroke: "'Tis not the trial of a woman's war, / The bitter clamor of two eager tongues, / Can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain" (1.1.48-50). What is Shakespeare's take on language in this play, which seems at once elevated and criticized?

I've also mentioned "tongues" now twice. They seem a persistent image throughout the play. What's with that?

Finally, in teaching a history play (1 Henry IV) this year, I felt myself drawn to the consideration of the play as a metaphor for modern times. Does Richard II offer us any solace, warning, expiation, insight for our own political theater? Does the disturbing deposition of Richard remind us of the sturm und drang of Clinton's impeachment? Does Ross's comment about Richard, "The commons hath he pilled with grievous taxes / And quite lost their hearts. The nobles hath he fined / For ancient quarrels and quite lost their hearts" (2.1.246-248) have any echo in Bush's abysmal approval ratings?

I suppose, it's time to end our repose, and expose our thoughts on what it means to depose. Who knows?

Randall