A Study of King Richard II : Richard's Pathos Overshadows the Play

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This paper is an attempt to analyse the structure of Shakespeare's History Richard II and to consider Richard's process of losing the English crown and his feeling of sorrow and pathos. There are many thematic and historical connections between the Henry IV and this play. This play raises the problem of the meaning of the legitimacy of a king in England. The problem of the usurpation cannot be avoided in seeing the play, but Shakespeare deliberately and carefully diverts our attention from it. He does not fully define the status of Bolingbroke in the play. This is because in the Elizabethan Age, as Northrop Frye says, there might be an official nervousness about showing or printing of a scene of deposition. Shakespeare's design is shaped to set out the passion of the deposed monarch, rather than the struggle between Richard and Bolingbroke. He emphasises Richard's poetry more than Bolingbroke's terse comments in the play.
2006-02-28