Each generation fashions its own image of Richard II. To his contemporaries, Richard's fate was an admonitory instance of changing fortune: the King fell in the midst of his glory and was delivered into the hands of his enemies. To historians of the Tudor age, Richard's deposition by one of his subjects was a terrible warning of the dangers of rebellion, bequeathing to succeeding generations a legacy of bloodshed and civil strife. Others read in the King's fate a more personal message. 'I am Richard II. Know ye not that?' the ageing Queen Elizabeth demanded, mindful of her fallen favourite, the Earl of Essex, and his forlorn attempt to rally support for his claim to the throne by staging the tragedy of Richard's fall 'forty times in open streets and houses'. The play Essex performed was, in all probability, Shakespeare's version of Richard's final years, an account which turned the chronicle narratives of revenge and betrayal into a true tragedy by showing the King encompassed by the defects of his own character.

LRB 4 September 1997 | PDF Download