Do you know about - Richard Ii - A Cautionary Tale of Improper Forms of Kingship
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A estimate of commentaries on Shakespeare's Richard Ii are devoted to the dialectical nature of the play, stressing the opposition of many of the elements in the drama. Studies have been written which demonstrate that the play is involved with the opposition of the medieval order, represented by Richard, and the emerging contemporary order, represented by Bolingbroke. Similarly, other critics see the play as a conflict in the middle of a man of performance and a man of words. Others see the play as a statement on the power of the king versus the powers of the aristocracy. Some see the play as the opposition in the middle of a king verging on madness, and a cold, calculating member of the peerage represented by Bolingbroke. More new annotation has focused on the play as an allegory for the tyrannical rule of Elizabeth, or as a suppression of the freedoms of speech and press during Elizabeth's reign.
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The diverse theories which describe the dialectical nature of the work are both informative and well-reasoned. Rather than viewing the play as a series of dichotomies, I will argue that the play views both Richard and Bolingbroke as essentially failed rulers for having limited the liberty of their subjects and exposed the state to unnecessary questions relating to the legitimate uses of power and of monarchical succession. Finally, I will argue that the play, presented in this light, would serve as a warning to Elizabeth about the use of her power and her inability to supply a successor to the throne.
The view that the play represents a conflict in the middle of the medieval values of Richard and the more contemporary views of Bolingbroke is summed up by Henry Jacobs in his paper "Prophecy and Ideology in Shakespeare's Richard Ii" as follows:
It is a commonplace to search for that Shakespeare's Richard Ii traces out a fundamental shift in the nature of kingship and the justification of rule. This movement, which reflects both Tudor perspectives on history and Elizabethan political theory, signifies the transition from a medieval to a Renaissance view of kingship and power. In this theoretical matrix, Richard Ii plays the role of the unsuccessful medieval monarch while Bolingbroke acts the part of a successful Renaissance prince. (Jacobs) (3)
In a similar vein, R. Morgan Griffin in his paper "The vital History of Richard Ii," writes that former readings of Richard as a proponent of medieval values, and Bolingbroke as a proponent of Renaissance values, persisted straight through the mid twentieth-century to the exclusion of the exploration of other themes in the work, and notes that:
Tillyard in particular loads the dichotomy of Richard and Bolingbroke with contrasts and goes so far as to recommend that each king represents a sure historical era, Richard the end of the Middle Ages and Bolingbroke the arrival of the Renaissance. (24)
Critics have viewed Bolingbroke as a man of action, while Richard is seen as an ineffective man of words, or a poet. William Stubbs, bishop of Oxford in the nineteenth century, wrote what was considered to be a definitive biography of Richard Ii. Stubbs is responsible for the characterization of Richard as a man of contemplation and ineffective leadership, as George Osborne Sayles notes in his paper "King Richard of England: A Fresh Look." Sayles notes that: "To Stubbs, Richard was 'habitually idle' and 'loved satisfaction and ease,' and this is now the accepted story in all our history books" (29). Discussing Richard's attributes as a leader, Sayles remarks that "The same contention that the King was incompetent in the governance of his realm is attached to him throughout the years" (29-30). Sayles later goes on to invent a thesis that Richard was, in fact, a much more sufficient leader than is generally acknowledged. Noting that accepted readings of the play emphasize the differences in the personalities of Richard and Bolingbroke, R. Morgan Griffin notes that: "According to the accepted scheme, Richard is the weak, effeminate poet-king, a medieval relic who relies on language and ceremony to rule; Bolingbroke is the taciturn, violent, and politic representative of a new Machiavellian style of leadership" (25).
The antipathy in the middle of the king and the aristocracy is oftentimes cited in annotation of the play. Historical fact lends supplementary credence to this line of criticism, since Richard and the "Appellants" as well as other members of Parliament, were oftentimes at odds during the king's reign. George B. Stow, in his paper "Stubbs, Steel, and Richard Ii as Insane: The Origin and Evolution of an English Historiographical Myth," once again citing Bishop Stubbs, makes the following point about Richard's relation with the aristocracy:
(According to Stubbs) 'There can be limited doubt that the proceedings of 1397 and 1398 were the real causes of Richard's ruin...He had resolutely and without subterfuge or palliation, challenged the constitution.' This 'grand stroke of policy,' continues Stubbs, 'has grand significance. It was a resolute effort not to evade but destroy the limitations which for nearly two centuries the nation, first straight through the baronage alone and latterly straight through the united parliament, had been laboring to levy upon the king.' (608-9) (1)
In the view of several critics, Bishop Stubbs was also responsible for the first characterization of Richard as being insane. John M. Theilmann, addresses this issue in his paper entitled "Stubbs, Shakespeare, and new Historians of Richard Ii," when he notes that "Richard Ii, one of the most puzzling kings of late medieval England, has been the branch of controversy ever since his abdication in 1399. He has often been portrayed as a tyrant or, at times, a madman by historians" (107) (italics mine). In his paper, Stow stresses that Stubbs' views of Richard Ii were colored by his Whig leanings. He supplementary notes Stubbs' affect in the amelioration of the system of Richard as insane when he states that:
Stubbs' contemporary, J.R. Green, took much the same approach, stating that 'the fantastic abilities which Richard shared with the rest of the Plantagenets were marred by a fitful inconstancy, and insane pride, and a craving for absolute power.' (109) (italics mine) (Theilmann)
In distinction to Richard's "insanity" is the view of Bolingbroke's cold, logical personality which is pointed out in R. Morgan Griffin's paper: "Hence, in one essay, Bolingbroke is the embodiment of the 'new, effective,' and Machiavellian way of governing..." (26). (2)
Considerations that the play may, in fact, be a annotation on the reign of Elizabeth I are supported by the acknowledgement, made by the queen herself, that aspects of her reign were similar to those of Richard. Samuel Schoenbaum, in his paper "Richard Ii and the Realities of Power," notes that the queen descry to one of her courtiers, Thomas Lamberde:
Such considerations (that they play may have served as a annotation on Elizabeth's reign) serve only to whet pursuit and the trail, in truth, is not an utter blank. 'I am Richard Ii, know ye not that?' the Queen declared in Lamberde's presence, and she was not the first to make the comparison. (49)(Schoenbaum)
Theories that the play may have been a annotation of Elizabeth's reign find maintain in the fact that Richard's deposition scene was missing from the published copies of the play during the queen's lifetime. Similarly, critics point to the performance of the play by members of the Duke of Essex' party on the day before the aborted revolution staged in 1601, and the prohibition against publishing speculation on the succession, as indications that the play was seen as a annotation on Elizabeth's reign. Phyllis Rackin, in her paper "The Role of the Audience in Shakespeare's Richard Ii," notes that English audiences would have drawn parallels in the middle of the performance in Richard Ii and current events during the reign of Elizabeth:
But history is also presented in Richard Ii as a current action, a living process that directly involves and implicates the audience in the theatre. Queen Elizabeth's often-quoted comment, 'I am Richard Ii, know ye not that?'; the suppression of the deposition scene during her lifetime; the fact that Essex's followers saw fit to sponsor a performance of Richard Ii on the afternoon before their rebellion - all these things indicate that for Shakespeare's contemporaries this play was not plainly an exercise in historical recreation or nostalgia. (262)(Rackin)
While the describe of vital literature which posits that the play is engaged in a dialogic process in the middle of opposing factions is not exhaustive, I believe that sufficient of the literature has been presented to invent that this line of scholarship has met with success. Rather than (Rackin)arguing against this scholarship, I respond that several beneficial insights can be gained in viewing the play in this manner. As R. Morgan Griffin argues, however, viewing the play as a dialectic in the middle of Richard and Bolingbroke (or as a series of dialectics) can lead readers to(overlook other aspects of the play "...in accentuating the differences in the middle of the two kings, critics sometimes sell out Richard and Bolingbroke to mere diametric opposites and hence unwittingly describe the grand theories of Elizabethan culture..." (24).
I will argue that while viewing the play as a series of dichotomies yields several vital insights, the former theme of the play is that neither Richard nor Bolingbroke represent sufficient rulers. I will supplementary argue that the play is involved with the limitation of baronial possession on the part of Richard, which constitutes a loss of liberty, and the unlawful succession on the part of Bolingbroke, which constitutes a breakdown in the state and loss of freedom for the populace. Finally, I will argue that while evidence of the play as a annotation of Elizabeth's realm is not conclusive, the play nevertheless presents an unfavorable annotation on aspects of her reign and that the play suggests parallels with her rule.
It will be vital to define the term "liberty" before determining whether or not Richard abrogated the possession of the baronial parties in the play (and in historical fact). The task is not as easy as it would seem at first glance; in her paper entitled "Are liberty and freedom Twins," Hanna Fenichel Pitkin points out that the terms "liberty" and "freedom" are often used interchangeably, and that the definitions for the two terms involve nuances of etymology which are often confusing. Despite the difficulties associated with defining the terms, Pitkin notes that a tasteless usage of the word liberty industrialized after the Norman conquest of England. She states that:
In any case, it seems that in the first centuries following the conquest, freedom was for the conquered natives a relatively blunt, tangible, and total condition that one whether had or lacked, approximately an aspect of what one was, whether an external corporeal condition of unobstructed space or movement, or a legal status of not being branch to another, or a psychic state manifested in spontaneity. For the conquering elite, by contrast, liberty was more formal and legal, a matter of degree and detail, a collection of exact possession and privileges granted or withheld even if truly suitable only to those of high birth and correspondingly noble character. Both the legalistic and the pluralistic connotations as well as the moralized status meaning were already found in Latin liber- as Raaflaub shows, but in English they became isolated in a sure word family, no longer semantically bound, for instance, to the unimpeded movement of objects, o to actions naturally and gladly done. (538-9) (italics mine)
The view of possession or privileges is central to the main theme of the play. It is after all, Richard's seizure of Bolingbroke's lands after the death of John of Gaunt, which precipitates Bolingbroke's return to England and finally military Richard's deposition. The granting and legacy of asset possession was one of the cornerstones of the Magna Carta, and had been honored by all monarchs for several hundred years until the time of Richard. As York admonishes Richard:
Take Hereford's possession away, and take from time
His charters and former rights;
Let not tomorrow then ensue today;
Be not thyself; for how art thou a king
But by fair sequence and succession? (Ii.i.195-99) (Shakespeare)
A gloss of these lines reveals the magnitude of Richard's unlawful act. If Bolingbroke is not entitled to his lawful possession of land straight through the legacy of his father, then how is Richard entitled to the possession of the throne straight through legacy from his father? Indeed, the act is so unnatural that "tomorrow will not ensue today," i.e., the natural order of events will be violated.
Gaunt's predominant lines to Richard "Landlord of England art thou now, not king/Thy state of law is bondslave to the law," (Ii.i.119-120) are often taken as being a repetition of the same theme, but as Donna B. Hamilton explains in "The State of Law in Richard Ii,"
To arrive at a better reading of Gaunt's speech, it is vital to identify at the outset that the relationship of the lines to each other is not that of apposition. Rather, they express a paradox: a king who acts like a landlord instead of a king becomes in some sense a slave. (6)
This reading is better understood when viewed within the view of liberty that acts as a guarantor of possession from a king to his subjects. When those possession are taken away, the king himself loses his "right" to govern. The view of the king's right to govern was established by divine authority; it was this foundation that gave legitimacy to the king's rule. By acting above the law, the king abrogates the law itself, and nullifies his authority to rule. Turning again to Donna Hamilton, she notes that:
...These notions include the recognition that a king who ruled by divine right was also, in system and in practice, branch to the law; he was to rule agreeing to the law, and his power derived from the law. ...Significantly, the issue for Gaunt is not the matter of the king's royal prerogative, but the well-being of those the king rules. ...For Richard to act like a landlord is not to diminish the royal prerogative, then, but to act as though the royal prerogative allows a king to do anyone he wishes. (6 - 7) (4)
Richard then, violated the possession of his subjects in seizing Bolingbroke's property. But his failings were greater than this: he was also complicit in the murder of Gloucester, a point which is emphasized in the opening of the play, and is the motive behind the banishment of Mowbray and Hereford. Finally, Richard left no legitimate heir in the form of a son or daughter, which allowed Bolingbroke to sweep aside the weak claim of the Earl of March as Richard's successor.
Yet, despite Richard's infirmity and greatest failure, Bolingbroke is not an sufficient ruler, either. To begin, Bolingbroke's succession presents several problems. In the first place, Bolingbroke swept aside the claim of the Earl of March as rightful successor to Richard. While it is true that the Earl was a minor at the time of Richard's abdication, at best, Bolingbroke should have acted as regent during the boy's minority. Secondly, by forcing the abdication of Richard, Bolingbroke gained the crown illegitimately and put his line of succession in peril. As Donna Hamilton makes clear, succession under the law is an important element in the play:
This view (i.e. That the king derives a quantum of his power from the law) is important to bear in mind when one considers whether Richard Ii or Bolingbroke-Henry Iv, because both are kings whose right to rule comes under question. ...The central issue for Bolingbroke's rule, and one to which every play in the rest of the second tetralogy will return, is the threat to the realm when the king is not legally titled. ...Nevertheless, because the deposition is an interruption of the tradition of legal succession, Bolingbroke's power exists without the clear sanction of whether the law or God, a point the Bishop of Carlisle addresses when he declares:
'And shall the figure of God's majesty
His captain, steward, deputy elect,
Anointed, crowned, planted many years,
Be judg'd by branch and inferior breath. ...
My Lord of Herford here, whom you call king,
Is a foul traitor to proud Herford's king.' (Iv.i. 125-28; 134-5) (10; 15) (italics mine)
It is important to note that not only did Carlisle condemn Bolingbroke's action, but he also thinkable, the sequence of events that would precipitate the hundred Years' War in the same speech quoted by Hamilton:
And if you crown him, let me prophecy
The blood of English shall manure the ground
And future ages groan for this foul act,
Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels,
And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars
Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound.
Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny
Shall here inhabit, and this land be called
The field of Golgotha... (Iv.1. 142-150)
In this speech, the usurpation of the throne by Bolingbroke is seen as the proximate cause of the War; but more than that, it is seen as a violation of the natural order of things. The king, as the chosen representative of God on earth, held his office straight through succession and by upholding God's laws. Bolingbroke was neither the rightful successor of Richard, nor did he uphold the laws: in point of fact, he broke with law in seizing the throne. The speech by Carlisle, which presages the arrival war, is the branch of remarks by Phyllis Rackin, who notes that "As the prophecies indicate, Bolingbroke's accession, far from bringing civic order to England, of course increases the disorder" (272). Later in her paper, Rackin notes that "In Act V, which takes place after the deposition, we are shown varied manifestations of the disorder that Bolingbroke's rebellion has unleashed on England" (272).
While Richard threatened the liberty of his barons, Bolingbroke's performance goes a step further: it threatens the freedom of his subjects. Turning again to Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, we are presented with a definition of the abuse of freedom when she claims that "freedom abused suggests something like anarchy or chaos, the loss of all boundaries" (542-3). This definition of the loss of freedom, a loss that results in the chaos of the Hundred Years' War, corresponds with Carlisle's dire prediction. Here we see that Bolingbroke's performance threatens not just the aristocracy, but the normal populace, as well. Far from being the "new leader" described by some writers, Bolingbroke's performance plunges the country into civil war, endangering the liberties of the nobles and the freedoms enjoyed by the normal populace.
That the play dealt with the loss of liberty and freedom has hopefully been demonstrated. The applicability to Elizabeth's reign can be seen in the following ways: at the time of the writing of the plays, Elizabeth had not produced a lawful heir (nor would she at the time of her death). Elizabeth's right to rule straight through lawful succession was affected by her illegitimate birth; a fact which obtruded itself in her consciousness in the person of her half sister, Mary Queen of Scots. The suppression of Catholicism during Elizabeth's reign was other manifestation of the challenge of sure freedoms in the Tudor era. Finally, Elizabeth's censure of publication of any writing about her succession (not to mention potential censorship of other writings which, as has been previously noted, cannot be conclusively proven) points to a curtailment of freedom which was acknowledged by Elizabeth's subjects. Elizabeth's annotation "I am Richard Ii, know ye not that?" is more than mere rhetoric. For a monarch who walked a tightrope in the middle of the granting and taking of liberties to her nobles, and the suppression of freedom to the commons, the lessons of Richard and Bolingbroke would seem ominous, indeed.
(1) In his paper, Stow stresses that Stubbs' views of Richard Ii were colored by his Whig leanings. As a Whig, Stubbs favored the views of Parliament over those of the Monarch, and subsequently painted Richard in a less than favorable light.
(2) Griffin points out the dichotomy in the middle of Richard and Bolingbroke in his paper, and posits that the focus on the dichotomy in the middle of the two personalities has limited discussion of other aspects of the play. The paper referred-to in the above quotation is by Katherine Eisaman Maus, "Richard Ii," The Norton Shakespeare, 946-7.
(3) several critics challenge the system that the play is a annotation on censorship during the Elizabethan era, or that censorship was not as prevalent as was once thought. Among these critics is Cyndia Susan Clegg, who argues that the evidence for censorship of the plays is not conclusive.
(4) I am indebted to Hamilton's reading of the play and share her belief that neither Richard nor Bolingbroke are seen as sufficient rulers.
Bibliography
Griffin, R Morgan. "The vital History of Richard Ii." vital Essays on Shakespeare's Richard Ii. Ed. Kirby Farrell. New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1999. 23-40.
Hamilton, Donna B. "The State of Law in Richard Ii." Shakespeare regular 34.1 (1983): 5-17.
Jacobs, Henry E. "Prophecy and Ideology in Shakespeare's Richard Ii." South Atlantic describe 51.1 (1986): 3-17.
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. "Are freedom and liberty Twins?" Political system 16.4 (1988): 523-52.
Rackin, Phyllis. "The Role of the Audience in Shakespeare's Richard Ii." Shakespeare regular 36.3 (1985): 262-81.
Schoenbaum, Samuel. "Richard Ii and the Realities of Power." vital Essays on Shakespeare's Richard Ii. Ed. Kirby Farrell. New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1999. 41-57.
Shakespeare, William. Richard Ii. The Folger Shakespeare Library. Eds. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Washington square Press, 1996.
Stow, George B. "Stubbs, Steel, and Richard Ii as Insane: The Origin and Evolution of an English Historiographical Myth." Proceedings of the American Philosophical community 143.4 (1999): 601-38.
Theilmann, John M. "Stubbs, Shakespeare, and new Historians of Richard Ii." Albion: A regular Journal involved with British Studies 8.2 (1976): 107-24.
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