So today I'm focusing on Shakespeare's history play Richard the Second.

That's a play generally dated to 1595, first published in 1597.

So it has as near chronological neighbours, Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night's Dream, and shares quite a lot of

linguistic features with both those plays. But obviously it also introduces a new sequence of

English history plays, which is going to continue with the two parts of Henry IV and then Henry

the 5th. And it shares an interest in regicide and regime change with later plays,

which might include Julius Caesar and Macbeth. So what I want to try and talk about in today's

lecture is the politics and the dramaturgy of Richard II under the heading, was it right for

Bollingbrook to take the throne from Richard? Was it right for Bollingbrook to take the throne from Richard?

Was it right for Bollingbrook to take the throne from Richard?

So, as usual, let's back up and contextualize that critical question within the plot of the play.

Richard the second begins with a confusing scene, a near duel between two noblemen, Bollingbrook,

the Duke of Hereford, and Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk.

They're each accusing the other of killing the Duke of Gloucester.

Richard intervenes to postpone the combat between the two noblemen,

but it's clearly something odd going on, and it's only later in the play that we get to know that Richard himself,

the king, is implicated in the death of the Duke of Gloucester.

Bollingbroke and Mowbray returned to take up their quarrel again,

and Richard again defers the combat, banishing them instead for 10 years for Bollingbrook,

which he later reduces to six, and life for Mowbray.

Bollingbrook's father, John of Gaunt, expresses while he's dying his eloquent disappointment in the king's lavish behaviour

and prophesies the decline of England.

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