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RICHARD II SUMMARY At the royal pad (that would be Windsor Castle), King Richard II tries to settle a fight between two seriously ticked-off noblemen, Henry Bolingbroke (the Duke of Hereford) and Thomas Mowbray (the Duke of Norfolk). Bolingbroke's got a beef with Mowbray and he's come before the king to officially accuse Mowbray of the following crimes: 1) plotting against England, 2) stealing money from the crown, and 3) murdering the king's uncle, Thomas of Woodstock (a.k.a. the Duke of Gloucester). Mowbray, of course, does NOT appreciate being accused of treason. Before Richard can make an official decision about who's telling the truth and who's a big fat liar, Bolingbroke calls for a medieval smackdown by throwing down his "gage" (a hat or a glove). This is an official challenge to a "trial by combat," where two "gentlemen" go into an arena with swords until just one man is left standing. Mowbray reaches down and picks up Henry Bolingbroke's gage. Game on. After witnessing a lot of trash talk and even more gage throwing, King Richard tries to make peace between the two noblemen. But they're way too fired up and demand to be allowed to hack into each other with their swords. Eventually Richard gives in and says fine – they can have their fight. It'll go down at the big tournament arena in Coventry, which apparently was like the Las Vegas of medieval England when it came to combat fighting. In the meantime, over at John of Gaunt's house, Shakespeare lets the audience in on a little secret: Mowbray did kill the king's Uncle Gloucester, but King Richard is the one who told him to do it. (Gasp!) Apparently everybody at court already knows this, but nobody's really doing anything about it. (Unless you count Bolingbroke, whose recent charge against Mowbray is obviously his passive-aggressive way of accusing the king of murder.) But when Gloucester's widow begs Gaunt to avenge her husband's death, Gaunt is all, "Gee, I can't do anything about it because Richard's the king of England, which means he doesn't have to answer to anybody but God." In Coventry, a big crowd gathers at the tournament arena to watch Mowbray and Bolingbroke go toe to toe. (Psst. Here's what a medieval tournament arena looks like.) Just as Henry Bolingbroke and Mowbray are getting pumped up for the big showdown, Richard steps in at the last minute and... cancels the fight. (Cue the loud boos and hissing.) Richard says he's changed his mind about the trial by combat and he's decided that he doesn't want anyone spilling blood all over England's soil. (That stuff totally stains.) Instead of letting the guys fight, he's banishing Bolingbroke for ten years and Mowbray forever. (Of course, everyone knows that Richard doesn't care about spilling blood – he's just trying to cover up the fact that he's the one who ordered Mowbray to kill Gloucester.) When Richard sees that Henry Bolingbroke's dad (John of Gaunt) is really bummed out about all this banishment business, Richard changes his mind again and says, something like, "Okay, fine, Bolingbroke can come back in six years instead of ten – will that make you happy, Uncle Gaunt?" Gaunt says this is a nice idea but it doesn't really matter because he's so old and heartbroken that he'll be dead by the time his son gets to come home.

Gaunt's not kidding: soon after Henry Bolingbroke is booted out of the country, he croaks. But first he gets in a famous speech about how awesome England used to be until Richard came along and trashed it by spending all of its money and leasing out the royal lands. (Actually, these are probably the most famous lines in the play: "This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, / This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, / This other Eden, demi-paradise." You really should read Gaunt's speech. After all, he used up his last breath to deliver it.) This is when we find out that Richard has not only blown through England's savings account, but he's also come up with some rather creative fundraising ideas – he's even leased out some royal land, which is a big no-no. It gets worse when Richard finds out Gaunt is dead. Instead of being sad or feeling guilty about speeding up his death by banishing his son, Richard thinks he's hit the jackpot. Since Richard is broke and needs some quick cash to pay for his war in Ireland, he decides to snatch up all of Gaunt's property to fund his army. The Duke of York (another one of Richard's uncles / trusted advisors) thinks this is a terrible idea. He chimes in that taking Gaunt's property is sort of illegal. As Gaunt's oldest son, Henry Bolingbroke is the legal heir to all of Gaunt's property, titles, and wealth, so technically, Richard would be stealing. But Richard couldn't care less. He figures, "Hey, God's chosen me to be the king of England, so I can do whatever the heck I want." So far, the members of the nobility have been willing to let Richard get away with murder, and they've also pretty much kept quiet about Richard's bad financial decisions. But apparently, stealing property from a nobleman is the final straw. (The nobility get all their power from the land they control, so they're never happy when someone comes along and tries to take it from them.) Meanwhile, Henry Bolingbroke is still banished. But instead of moping around on the couch, watching Family Guy reruns, and ordering take-out, he's started building an army across the English Channel in Brittany (northern France). He's also got a bunch of English noblemen on his side, and the commoners all seem to love him. While Richard's away in Ireland (fighting that war we mentioned earlier), Henry makes his move. He shows up in England with a bunch of troops to claim his rightful inheritance. Richard hightails it back home to confront Henry, but when he gets there, he finds out that he's got little to no protection. (Apparently, an army was supposed to meet him there, but when they heard a rumor that Richard was dead, they decided to leave and go out for pizza instead.) Now Henry, who's been marching across England to confront the king, can take back his land. When Henry Bolingbroke finally corners Richard at Flint Castle, he orders Richard to... hand over his crown. Huh?! When did Henry decide he wants to be king? We thought he just wanted his land back. Has he been planning this all along, or did he just now decide that, what the heck, why not take Richard's crown, since he can't defend himself? Seriously – let us know when you work that one out, because it's had audiences and literary critics scratching their heads for centuries. Richard has no choice but to give up his crown peacefully, but that doesn't stop him from kicking up a fuss and being a total drama queen (drama king, that is). In a theatrical "deposition scene" (where the king is "deposed," or stripped of his title and power), Richard makes a big show of removing his crown and handing it over to Henry Bolingbroke (along with his matching gold wand). Then Richard says a tearful

goodbye to his wife and is imprisoned at Pomfret Castle, where he spends all of his time moping about his misfortune and trying to figure out who he is now that he's not king anymore. While Richard's busy soul searching and making a lot of big, dramatic speeches about his feelings, King Henry gets down to the business of ruling England. Henry's got a ton of stuff to worry about, like figuring out what to do with the ex-king and his loyal followers. Also, Henry's been trying to track down his good-for-nothing son, Prince Hal, whom he hasn't seen in three months. (Not a good sign, since this kid is now heir to the English throne.) We learn that Hal is probably off partying at one of his favorite bars in London. If he's not there, then he's likely to be out getting rowdy with his posse of loser friends. (This is Shakespeare's way of gearing us up for Henry IV Part 1, which is all about Prince Hal's wild ways.) Meanwhile, a guy named Exton thinks that King Henry wants him to make Richard disappear... permanently. We wonder where Exton got that idea. Oh, we know. Henry looked right at him and said something like, "Dang, I'm so stressed out. I sure wish I had a friend who loved me enough to help me get rid of the thing that's causing me so much anxiety." Hint, hint. Naturally, Exton kills Richard at Pomfret Castle. But when he proudly drags Richard's body over to Windsor Castle, Henry is all, "OMG! What the heck have you done? Who told you to kill Richard?!" When Exton replies, "From your mouth, my lord, I did this deed," Henry backpedals. He admits that he wanted Richard dead but he never fesses up that he actually asked Exton to kill him. (Yep – Henry is being a hypocrite, all right.) Henry feels really guilty about the "mix-up," so he does a couple things to make himself feel better. First he banishes Exton so he doesn't have to see the guy's face and be reminded of what he's done to the former king. (Hmm – remind you of anybody else? Like, say, Richard himself, when he exiled Henry?) Second, Henry orders everyone to be officially sad about Richard's death. Third, he announces that he's going to go on a pilgrimage (read: take a road trip to Jerusalem and start a Holy War) to make up for his sins. He says, "I'll make a voyage to the Holy Land, / To wash this blood off from my guilty hand." Okay, we really like the way our new king rhymes, but maybe someone should tell Henry to go talk to Lady Macbeth. She can probably explain to him how hard it is to wash a dead king's blood off your hands (Macbeth, 5.1.1).

THEMES THEME OF POWER Shakespeare is interested in royal power throughout his history plays. In Richard II, he dramatizes two very different attitudes about kingship. According to Richard II and his followers, kings should inherit the crown from their fathers, and they have a right to rule because they are God's chosen representatives on earth. According to Henry Bolingbroke and his followers, a king's right to rule is a privilege granted to him by his subjects, which means the right to rule depends on whether or not a guy is actually a good leader. Literary

critics and historians point out that when Shakespeare was writing Richard II, European ideas about power and monarchy were beginning shift from a religious attitude, like Richard's, to a more secular (non-religious) point of view, like Henry's. The play is a reflection of this change.

THEME OF FAMILY Families are complicated, even when the people involved aren't kings and dukes. Mix in a monarchy and you have a perfect recipe for some good old-fashioned family drama. In this play, several characters are trying to figure out how to act when cousins, sons, and fathers end up politically opposed. It doesn't help that the two guys fighting over the crown, Henry Bolingbroke and Richard, are cousins, both descended from Edward III, who everyone seems to think was a great king. Even though Richard is politically the legal heir to the throne (mostly because he inherited the crown from his father), Henry Bolingbroke seems to have more in common with his grandfather – and more of the qualities that make for a good ruler. The play also asks us to think about whether family ties should be stronger or more important than political alliances. The women in the play choose family loyalty every time, while most of the men don't. Family is obviously a powerful category with major political consequences.

THEME OF LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION How much power do words really have? In this play, Shakespeare pits the power of language against the power of action. On the one hand, Richard more or less believes that his speech is power. In one sense, he's right: Richard can end a man's life just by banishing him or ordering a murder. So language is powerful, in the political sense. Later, once Richard is no longer king and his words don't have any political power, he manages to make his language forceful in a different sense: his words are often quite moving and poetic. Henry Bolingbroke, on the other hand, makes it clear that he doesn't think much of language. Unlike Richard (who describes his fall from grace so poetically that we almost forget he was a bad king), Henry isn't a good storyteller. He thinks action is far more important than language, which is why he's so great at seizing opportunities and creating situations that will give him power. How much power do words really have? In this play, Shakespeare pits the power of language against the power of action. On the one hand, Richard more or less believes that his speech is power. In one sense, he's right: Richard can end a man's life just by banishing him or ordering a murder. So language is powerful, in the political sense. Later, once Richard is no longer king and his words don't have any political power, he manages to make his language forceful in a different sense: his words are often quite moving and poetic.

Henry Bolingbroke, on the other hand, makes it clear that he doesn't think much of language. Unlike Richard (who describes his fall from grace so poetically that we almost forget he was a bad king), Henry isn't a good storyteller. He thinks action is far more important than language, which is why he's so great at seizing opportunities and creating situations that will give him power.

THEME OF IDENTITY Many of the characters in this play get their identities from their titles, which is why they obsess so much about their names. (This makes some sense given that members of the nobility are named after the land they inherit – like John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.) The same is true of Richard II, who has inherited the title of King of England from his father. When Richard loses his title, he experiences a major identity crisis. Much like Shakespeare's character King Lear, Richard puts so much of his selfhood into his title that when he loses the crown, he finds it hard to define who he is. This is when Richard becomes the most interesting (and maybe even most sympathetic) figure in the play.

THEME OF LOYALTY One of the basic issues the play investigates is how you go about determining who or what deserves your loyalty. Are you loyal to a king? To a country? To your relatives? To the law? To justice? To God? When different systems (like government, religion, and family) compete with each other for your allegiance, how do you choose sides? When Richard starts thinking of himself as above the law, he puts these systems in conflict with each other. Different characters offer different answers to this question. Aumerle is loyal to Richard. York is loyal to the office of the king, no matter who occupies it. Gaunt is loyal to the kingdom. The Duchess of York is loyal to her son. And the queen is loyal to her husband. So who's right? Shakespeare leaves this for us to decide.

THEME OF GENDER If you're reading Richard II and you're hoping to bump into a powerful, dominating female figure like Lady Macbeth, you've chosen the wrong play. Talk to any of the three leading women in Richard II and they'll tell you the same thing: regardless of social status or age, female characters have very little power, especially when it comes to politics. (This is a little odd given that Shakespeare wrote the play with Queen Elizabeth I on the throne, don't you think?) In Richard II, the women tend to be associated with family, and they always, always put kinship bonds first. Yet even though the play's women are left out of politics, they serve an important function, because they allow Shakespeare to raise a big question: Is political loyalty more important than family loyalty?

THEME OF APPEARANCES Many of Richard's failures can be chalked up to the fact that he's pretty easily fooled by appearances. If someone flatters him and tells him he's awesome, he believes them; he never stops to think about whether they might have an ulterior motive. It takes a lot of suffering for him to learn how to look through the surface and see the truth that lies underneath. Several other characters in the play are also interested in figuring out how to interpret what they see. For instance, nature shows up again and again as something to be interpreted. Do the withered trees mean that the king is dead? Or that a new king is coming? Or that God is angry? Or nothing at all? Without a strong king, the kingdom is on shaky ground, so everyone is trying really hard to find meaning, a way to square the way things look with the way they are.

THEME OF SUFFERING Once Richard loses the crown, he becomes really good at playing the role of a suffering martyr. He may have murdered his uncle, almost bankrupted the kingdom, and suffer from way too much self-esteem, but it doesn't matter – he's so good at self-pity that it's almost impossible not to feel sorry for him. Unlike many sufferers, Richard's development as a result of his suffering is actually pretty interesting to watch. The journey from all-powerful king who nobody ever criticizes to penniless prisoner is a long one. Challenged for the first time in his life, Richard has to think long and hard about what it all means. His suffering ends up allowing him to see things clearly – even more clearly, in some instances, than Henry Bolingbroke himself. His suffering also gives him an opportunity to do what he does best: make himself into a legend and turn his life into a story. (Translation: Richard's suffering allows him to go into full-on "drama queen" mode.)

THEME OF PASSIVITY If Richard has a "fatal flaw," this might be it. The play is all about Richard's reluctance to actually do anything when he's directly challenged:    

Instead of going out and fighting France and earning money, he stays home and spends it and leases out royal lands. Instead of reacting when Henry Bolingbroke comes back, he takes his own sweet time returning from Ireland. When he finds out just how bad the news really is, he moves from overconfidence straight into despair. Instead of fighting or coming up with a plan, he tells Aumerle and his other allies to sit down and tell sad stories.

Richard is not what you would call a man of action. Henry Bolingbroke, on the other hand, is all about aggressive action. When he sees a chance to get the upper hand

or gain power, he takes it. Shakespeare is asking us to think about whether a willingness to take action is what makes for a good king.

THEME OF PRIDE Richard uses the word "proud" more than any other character in the play. He uses it to describe Henry Bolingbroke, England's soil, and his own majesty. It could be argued that Richard's obsession with pride is what ultimately costs him his kingdom. Even though he ends up humiliated, he never really escapes the sense that he deserves more – that as God's chosen ruler on earth, he doesn't really need to do anything to feel proud. In other words, Richard thinks he's God's gift to the world. Unfortunately, this keeps him from listening to advice that might contradict or criticize him, and leads him to mismanage the kingdom so badly that he eventually loses it.

THEME OF EXILE It seems like every time we turn around, someone is getting booted out of England in this play. What's interesting is how the theme of exile is closely linked with patriotism. For Mowbray – and even more so for Henry Bolingbroke – being expelled from England makes them appreciate it more. Even Richard begins to appreciate England more when he's locked up in the slammer. The thing is, this kind of patriotism wasn't a fully formed political concept in 1400s England, when the play is set. If you lived in England around that time, you probably thought of yourself as loyal either to a king or – perhaps later – to a religion. But Shakespeare wrote the play around 1595, when people were starting to think of themselves as loyal to their country. The play seems to anticipate the patriotism of Elizabethan England....