Here is a sample annotated bibliography for Richard II
Richard II
Altick, Richard D. “Symphonic Imagery in Richard II.” Publications of the Modern Language Association 62 (1947): 339-365. also found in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Richard II. Ed. By Paul M. Cubeta. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971. 66-81.
There is a unity of tone, like a musical composition, in Richard II. This comes from Shakespeare’s control of words, language, and imagery. But this only happens because Shakespeare is aware of the emotional overtones of words (beyond just wit). Shakespeare uses certain words like leitmotifs throughout the play (like word “world” in Antony and Cleopatra). In Richard II such words are “earth,” “land,” “ground”—related ideas of garden/soil. Blood is another term (referring to kingship relationship more than to murder or death), also “sun,” “tongue” (mouth, speech, word) and eventually the word “bankrupt” [and “nothing”]. Altick claims Richard II is a turning point between verbal wit of early plays and more mature image-themes of latter plays. In Richard II the use of language is still conventional, showing Shakespeare’s affection for words for their own sake, not yet achieving the expressionism of meaning through a single bold metaphor as will be achieved later. But Shakespeare has begun well here. **
Topics covered: language, imagery
Barkan, Leonard. “The Theatrical Consistency of Richard II.” Shakespeare Quarterly 29 (1978): 5-19.
This book discusses the texture and effects of the play.
*Cavanagh, Dermot. “The Language of Treason in Richard II.” Shakespeare Studies 134 (Annual 1999): find pages 33 pages.
*Cubeta, Paul M. “Introduction.” Twentieth Richard II. 1-12.
Is Richard II a history or a tragedy play? Cubeta says Shakespeare seems to have learned from the first tetralogy, ending in Richard III that the plays are more successful if they focus on a single strong central character. The theme is the nature of kingship. Richard II (written after Richard III) is hardly a Machiavellian king, but still probably believed (as espoused in Mirror for Magistrates) that history could teach lessons. Cubeta reminds us that when Richard II was written, Elizabeth I was within six years of her death in 1603, and she had been queen for thirty-four years, and she had not married nor produced or designated an heir, creating fear over her succession. He also recounted the origin of the “Tudor Myth.” Shakespeare’s play Richard II was performed by request two days before the ill-fated Essex rebellion against Elizabeth on Feb 7, 1601. Cubeta is arguing that Richard II was interpreted allegorically by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, but he contends it was not written as allegory. Gaunt’s speech has been misunderstood as idealistically patriotic Richard’s disorder is set against Bolingbroke’s rebellion [two wrongs that do not make a right]. Departure, banishment, loss are pervasive motifs. Gaunt’s demi-paradise seems unrevivable. The rise and fall imagery does not result in political success, and the opening and closing scenes have too many parallels to signal a happy ending. The language of Richard II is heavy with depression words (dissolute, despair, depressed, dishonor, depose. Shakespeare shows self knowledge is paramount. Cubeta admires Richard at the end of the play **
Topics covered: Tudor myth, allegory, kingship, language
Dean, Leonard F. “From Richard II to Henry V: A Closer View.” Modern Essays. 188-205. also found in Twentieth Richard II. 58-65.
Traditional belief was that Shakespeare based his second tetralogy on the Tudor myth as professed in Hall’s chronicles. Dean claims Shakespeare goes beyond naiveté of popular history to more profound insights. Richard begins in spectacle; private scenes contrast, show weaknesses of Richard as king. Irony exists when a ruler is also murderer, but in such a world wise counsel like Gaunt’s falls on deaf ears. Richard is a bit of an actor, always wanting to an audience. Richard plays with his role of king as Gaunt played with his name in Act II. Those around him go from tolerance to impatience and resentment. Richard’s emotional language is contrasted to York’s accommodations and Bolingbroke’s Machiavellian speech—literal, carefully public and politic. Dean likens Richard to Shakespeare’s tragic heroes in the violence and hyperbole of their speeches. Richard’s neurosis is like Hamlet’s madness. Shakespeare’s play is neither Richard’s view of rebellion and treason nor Bolingbroke’s of restoration of legal rights, but much more complex and ambiguous morally. Dean claims neither Bolingbroke nor Richard free of confining ironies. **
Topics covered: Tudor myth, language, characters
*Forker, R. “Unstable Identity in Shakespeare’s Richard II.” Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 54.1 (Fall 2001): 3-21.
Healy, Margaret. William Shakespeare’s Richard II. Plymouth, England: Northcote House, 1998.
Kastan, David Scott. “Proud Majesty Made a Subject: Shakespeare and the Spectable of Rule.” Shakespeare Quarterly 37 (1986): 459-75.
Kernan, Alvin B. “The Henriad: Shakespeare’s Major History Plays.” Twentieth Richard II. 107-115.
The four plays in the Henriad are all epic in nature, showing England’s change from the time of Richard II to Henry V, the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, feudalism and the Great Chain of Being to national state and individualism, a garden world to a fallen world, ceremony and ritual to history. Richard II is an innocent. Richard uncrowning himself in Act IV destroys the values and rituals of his reign. Civil War within the York family is a comic counterpoint to the growing rebellion of Bolingbroke’s early supporters. Richard is not the only one whose name and role change; Bolingbroke’s also does often: from Hereford, to Lancaster, to Henry IV. *
Topics covered: contrasts in world views, characters
Kott, Jan. “The Kings.” Twentieth Richard II. 98-106.
Kott claims in Richard II can be seen the raw material of later tragedies. Readers or viewers of Shakespeare’s plays interpret them through their own experiences. Modern audiences are closer in appreciation to Shakespeare’s own audiences than those of the 19th Century. Kott says for Shakespeare, time stands still and all his histories end where they began with recurring circles for each king’s reign. Each begins with struggle for the throne or its consolidation, ends with death of the king or a new coronation. Each king is flawed. Steps to power are marked by violence, murder. Each contender believes he is defending a violated law but ends up turning against former allies. Kott comments on similarities of names (Richard, Henry, Edward) and titles (York, Clarence). The crown is the symbol of power. Act IV of Richard II –the abdication scene was omitted in all editions of the play in Queen Elizabeth I’s time. Richard plays look forward to Hamlet. *
Topics covered: kingship, parallels
Ribner, Irving. “The Historical Richard.” Twentieth Richard II. 13-14.
Ribner points out the differences in world views between Richard II’s medieval day and Shakespeare’s Renaissance. In Richard’s day the king was responsible to the lords of the realm (hence King John could be forced to sign the Magna Carta) but responsible to God alone by the Tudor time. The real Richard came to the throne at age 11 after Edward III dies since Edward the Black Prince (Richard’s father) had already died. Gaunt was the effectual ruler until he left to fight Spain, when Richard’s Uncle Gloucester took over, but Gloucester was scheming rather than the sympathetic martyr Shakespeare portrays him as. Gloucester intrigues against Richard and is caught and killed, probably by one Lapoole [not Mowbray]. *
Topics covered: allegory, history
Ribner, Irving. “The Political Problem in Shakespeare’s Lancastrian Tetralogy.” Twentieth Richard II. 29-40.
Shakespeare was a dramatist but in the history plays also functioned as an historian. Shakespeare’s genius was that he could see all sides of an issue, but Shakespeare did take a stand on political questions raised by the conflict between Richard and Bolingbroke. He summarizes Tillyard and Campbell’s view that Shakespeare was examining the Tudor myth that preached that the deposition of Richard was a great crime resulting in the War of the Roses, but that the ascension of the Tudors created order. In this view rebellion is the worst possible crime against the state. Ribner claims Shakespeare’s Richard II was not a completely orthodox presentation of the Tudor myth. He sees good resulting from the deposition of Richard—in plays from Richard II to Henry V (written together and after the Henry VI to Richard III plays). In a footnote Ribner cites Evelyn May Albright’s PMLA article in which she states Shakespeare may have favored Essex’s rebellion plot against Elizabeth as his patron Earl of Southampton did. The 2nd tetralogy culminates in the glorious victories of Henry V. Richard II explores Shakespeare’s view of the ideal king. When Shakespeare wrote Richard II what the country feared most was the possible ascension of a weak king (like Richard). Richard is a failure as a king because he lacks public virtues. Ribner cited Hiram Haydn’s view that in Richard II Shakespeare contrasts two world views: Christian idealism and new skeptical materialism (Counter-Renaissance)—like the Machiavellian view. Parallel actions in the play show Bolingbroke a master in action [shows how Beggar and the King scene is essential for parallels]. Ribner says in Richard II, Shakespeare “discovered tragedy of character. For he makes Richard the author of his own downfall” (35). Contrast in Richard is between hereditary right to rule and proven ability to govern. In Henry IV there is a similar situation, a rebellion against the king but Shakespeare sides with Henry. Ribner cited Hal’s speech to his father on Henry IV’s death bed that he maintains kingship is rightfully his. It was Bolingbroke’s ability, not his lineage, that gave him the right to the throne. Hal proves himself equal in Henry V when he effectively deals with the rebellion of Cambridge. Shakespeare then modified the Tudor myth—ability is more important than heredity. ***
Topics covered: Richard, kingship, parallels
Saccio, Peter. Shakespeare’s English Kings. New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd Ed. 2000.
Stirling, Brents. “’Up, Cousin, Up; Your Heart Is Up, I Know.’” Twentieth Richard II. 91-97.
Richard casts himself into the martyr role by embracing the need for abdication before he is deposed. But thus Richard keeps control of the Flint Castle scene. This also creates ambiguity about Bolingbroke’s motives, but Stirlilng claims the Elizabethan audience might have taken Bolingbroke’s ambition as a given. He also suggests Bolingbroke’s actions speak in place of his words to create the situation in which Richard’s fate is sealed. Stirling claims plot construction, political situation, and characterizations all illustrate parallel ironies in the Flint Castle scene. All culminates in Richard’s line about the necessity to go to London. Later as “London” is short hand for deposition and coronation of Henry IV, Bolingbroke’s line at the end of Act IV to convey Richard to the tower is symbolic of imprisonment and death. **
Topics covered: characters, foils, Act III
Tillyard, E.M.W. “Richard II.” Modern Essays. 167-187. also in Twentieth Richard II. 15-28.
Richard II is the most formal and ceremonial of all Shakespeare’s plays. Even language is often formal couplets. Tillyard analyzes formality of Richard’s last speech. Shakespeare’s audience was more attuned to symbolism (of the Gardener’s speeches) than modern audience. Act II.iv explained an elaborate allegory of the state of England under Richard. Tillyard claims that in the world of Richard II, means matter more than ends, how the game is played is more important than who wins. Richard’s speech about sad stories on the death of kings is reminiscent of Chaucer’s “Monk’s Tale.” Language reflects the contrast of two ways of life—the old order of the Plantagenants to the newer order of Henry IV. But the newer order is more passionate, yet not developed fully in Richard II. Tillyard says Richard II “possesses a dominant theme and contains within itself the elements of those different things that are to be the themes of its successors” (26). **
Topics covered: language, symbolism, ceremony
Traversi, Derek. “Richard II.” Twentieth Richard II. 41-57.
Shakespeare is concerned in this play with distinguishing truth from fiction—showing the limitations of traditional view of kingship. The formality of the opening scenes is contrasted with passions. Gaunt’s “royal throne of kings” speech is likened to formality of language in the early part of the play. Traversi associates Gaunt with the old world of Edward III. Richard’s world has inner hollowness. Gaunt’s point is that an order is passing which Richard’s authority cannot maintain. The interchange between Richard and Gaunt illustrates connectivity of themes of flattery and truth, health and sickness, life and death. Bolingbroke’s return is both rebellion and a necessary act for the restoration of the right use of authority [in support of the Law of Primogenitor]. Richard’s importance is contrasted to Bolingbroke’s purpose. Personally and professionally, Richard is not able to deal with Bolingbroke. Richard is a tragic sentimentalist. The “death of kings” speech illustrates true tragedy but also the sense of insignificance of the pomp of royalty. Richard’s self-pity is conscious artifice. Shakespeare explores the theme of “nothingness” in Richard’s speech at the abdication. Act IV is an example of Shakespeare’s ability to use literary artifice as a means for self-analysis in Richard’s examination of the difference between show (shadow) and substance (grief). ***
Topics covered: two world views, language, characters
Ure, Peter. “Introduction to Richard II.” Twentieth Richard II. 82-90.
This play contrasts Richard as ineffectual ruler with Bolingbroke as efficient one. But Richard as a characters is much better explored (ambiguity is politic for Bolingbroke). And Shakespeare does not expose Bolingbroke’s motivations. York expresses the sense of suffering through faith in his helplessness of divinely ordained right in the face of a more powerful wrong. Richard’s suffering comes from the paradox of a rightful king without power to support his title. But we see Richard as tragic because of his deficiencies as king. Ure claims Richard was neither an actor nor a poet [“not helpful to say he is playing the part of a fallen king when he is a fallen king” (86)]. Richard is in control, sets the scenes up at the beginning of the play; Bolingbroke, at the end. Yet Bolingbroke might have wanted to control deposition as he did executions of favorites, yet Richard does not play his part but instead grabs center state. The mirror in Act IV reflects vanity and truth. **
Topics covered: comparison of characters, language