richard ii · shakespeare

Shakespeare's history of around 1595 opens the sequence that ends with Henry V, showing the lyrical, self-dramatising Richard deposed by his cousin Bolingbroke. It is a play about the divine right of kings and its collapse, about the difference between holding authority and being able to use it, and about a man who finds himself only in losing a crown.

William Shakespeare, Richard II, edited by Frances E. Dolan (Penguin Books, 2017). Read in full, Junior Fall at Torrey Honors.