Richard II

King Richard banishes his cousin Henry when Henry accuses some other guy of treason.  This proves to be a bad idea, as Henry comes back with an army and marches on London.  He slowly chips away at Richard's power until Richard is forced to abdicate to him.  In the end, Richard is killed by a guy who thought Henry wanted the old king dead, and Henry vows to repent for the accidental murder by making a crusade.

Funny, I thought you had to repent for making a crusade, not by making a crusade.  Anyway, this is a fascinating book in that there is no real bad guy, although nobody really comes out smelling like roses either.  I felt sorry for both of the kings.  Yeah, I know, Henry was evil by usurping the real king's place-but not really.  For a better and longer examination of the characters of Henry and Richard than I could come up with, buy the Folger Library edition of this play and read the wonderful essay by Harry Berger Jr. at the back.  For the record, I pretty much agree with most of what he says.  As for York, he seems basically loyal to whoever he needs to be-not an opportunist, just pragmatic.  It seems to me from act 1 scene 4 that Richard and his buddies were afraid of Henry, that he already had the love of the masses.  Food for thought.  Just to clear things up-Henry's last name is Bolingbroke and he is the duke of Hereford.  Therefore he is usually referred to as either Bolingbroke or Hereford, but he is the same guy who is eventually King Henry IV.  In general in the histories noblemen are referred to by the names of the territory they control.  In his first few scenes, Henry seems pretty young (he was 31), and yet later on his son-the future Henry V-is apparently old enough to already be a dissapointment to his father.  Just how old was Henry IV when he started having kids?  Or did he just take a long time to mature?  Or was Prince Hal hanging around bars and whorehouses at a younger age than I had thought?  In any case, this is the earliest of the histories, so it's good to read it first, to have the background for the later ones, and then come back to it with some perspective of what ended up happening to Henry IV later on.  Oh, I won't tell you now.  Go find out for yourself.

back to Richard II

main / shakespeare / people / movies / books / random / jokes / star trek
x-files / writing / quotes / poetry