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Shakespeare: The Man Inside History

Shakespeare is best known for his tragedies – the timeless stories of human nature. But he was also the author who had a keen sense of history. The great discovery of the Renaissance was that history did not mean just some old tales about Romulus or Caesar – that history was also about ourselves. Shakespeare was literally immersed in history, and there was more to it than as a mere source of good stories.

History plays, or ‘histories’, were introduced into Elizabethan drama shortly before Shakespeare. They differed from tragedies mostly by their subject – they were chosen from Medieval English history. A history play was generally faithful to actual history, and only some minor characters and events could be made up.

Shakespeare wrote a total of 10 histories, and this was the genre he began with, when young. They were written throughout the 1590s. One of the last histories, written before Shakespeare quitted the genre finally and turned to tragedies, was Richard II.

It is not the most popular of Shakespearean histories (Richard III and Henry IV outdo it in popularity). Perhaps the reason is that its characters are much less colourful than Richard III or Falstaff and Prince Harry. But Shakespeare must have had some special reason to pick this episode from English history.

King Richard II (reigned 1377–1399) was not exactly a great person. Infamous for his enormous expenses and luxury, he cared little for either England or its people. He was enthroned as young as ten years old, and at first had to rely on the regency of his uncle, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

Gaunt was a clever ruler, but there were other powers at the court. Many of Richard’s councillors would support the king’s greed for money and encourage him to raise taxes. It was quite natural, because the more money Richard had, the more his councillors might expect to get from him. Richard himself was too young to consider the consequences.

The consequences broke out when he was only fourteen. It was what the later historians would call the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Enraged by a new tax increase, thousands of armed farmers made their way to London. Their head was a certain Wat Tyler, inspired by the ideology of Lollards who believed that God had created people equal and no one had any right to exploit another.

English peasants were good bowmen and helped Richard’s grandfather, Edward III, to win some significant battles against France (for instance, at Poitiers in 1356). Now it was time for Richard himself to see how dangerous they were. The rebels went in London and killed the Archbishop of Canterbury. They were on the way to the royal palace.

It was perhaps the first time Richard had to act on his own. He resolved to ride out to the rebels and then spoke to them personally. “Will you really shoot me? – thus he began. – I am your king!” This sounded pathetic, and Richard looked young, frail and nice. The rebels were disconcerted, and the king’s guards took the chance to kill Tyler. When Tyler was dead, Richard declared that if the rebels gave up their plans and went home, he would spare their lives. He also promised to abolish serfdom and to lower taxes.

This was one of the most beautiful scenes of English history. However, the reality soon undermined its beauty. The only promise that Richard kept was abolishing serfdom. Far from being cut, taxes increased more and more. And he did not let the rebels go, after all: many of them were executed.

King Richard II sets out for Ireland. Jean Froissart.
Chronicles. c 1470. BL MS Harley 4380 f. 166 v

In his teens, Richard showed a mixture of tyranny and dependence. He would only accept his councillors’ advice when he liked it. His courtiers competed for influence upon him. John of Gaunt was trying to bring his underage nephew to reason, but with little success. Richard got increasingly irritated by his uncle. In 1388, when the king was 21 and the need for regency ended, he was happy to have Gaunt imprisoned.

The old duke had poor health and died in prison. Richard’s treacherous action put many English people against him. His cousin Henry Bolingbroke, a son of Gaunt’s, was seeking a chance for revenge.

Meanwhile, England went into desolation. Richard neglected everything he inherited from his glorious grandfather, Edward III. The Hundred Years War was still going on, with less and less success, yet consuming more and more resources. Richard could think of nothing better than raising taxes again and again. These measures were of little use, since Richard was extremely unwise when it came to spending money. He loved fine clothes and jewellery, he gave expensive feasts and court entertainments. He gave a lot of lands to his favourites. The English people were beginning to think that their king saw England as his private property.

This was intolerable. Since the pre-Norman era, the English had believed that kingship was a contract between a king and his people. A king was the person who had obligations, not the one who could do whatever he liked. Richard was the king who did not fulfil his obligations; therefore, it was only sane to break the contract. In 1399 Henry Bolingbroke, supported by many influential nobles, conducted a military coup. As a result, the 32-year-old Richard was deposed and imprisoned. Shortly after, he died, and some historians think (an idea shared by Shakespeare) that he was murdered on Bolingbroke’s order.

The Abdication of King Richard II of England. Jean Froissart.
Chronicles, late 15th c. Ateller of Antoine de Bourgogne. BnF Ms Francais, fol. 328 v.

As for Bolingbroke, he took the crown and became King Henry IV, the character of two more Shakespearean plays.

Why did Shakespeare take any interest in such a man as Richard II? He was a feeble king of notorious reputation; he does not seem to have been a bright personality. He does not even have the charm of monstrosity, unlike his namesake Richard III. Yet about 200 years after his inglorious end, Shakespeare had some reason to remember him.

The key lies in Shakespeare’s own time. By 1595, when the play was written, the unusually long Elizabethan reign was itself becoming history. People’s enthusiasm for Queen Elizabeth gradually declined. She was getting older and fussier, and less and less beautiful; she more openly abused the ideals that she had declared herself, and took pleasure in flattery from her courtiers. Besides, she was so repelled by the idea of sharing her power with anyone else that even the perspective of not having an heir did not frighten her into marriage.

From our 21st century, we could say that it was just the process familiar to any historian – the birth of absolutism. However, it was not so clear for Shakespeare and his contemporaries. They needed more understanding. The Renaissance way of thinking was that, if you wanted to understand the present, you turned to history. You learned things from history. Shakespeare tried to see if there had been another English monarch who had behaved like that. That would be some basis for classification.

Richard was male, young and worthless, Elizabeth the female, old and brilliant, yet the parallels were striking. Both of them abused their power and treasury, being sure that they had the ight to do whatever they wanted and that the nation was loyal to them. Both were surrounded by conflicting councillors who struggled for influence and resources. Both loved luxury and entertainment and were quite careless about money – when in need, they would do occasional fundraising by introducing new taxes. Even the Hundred Years War paralleled Elizabeth’s unfinished war against Spain.

The hint was too obvious. It is hardly a coincidence that the scenes of Richard’s overthrow are omitted from several earliest editions. Only in 1608, when Elizabeth had been long dead, these scenes were included in the printed text.

These are the most interesting parts of the play. It is not the political implications which make them so special. Shakespeare’s Richard, when deprived of his crown, suddenly becomes a philosopher. He begins to question his identity. (If no more king, then who is he?) It is time for him to realize that his nature is not his crown or even his title – it is ‘all within’, as he puts it. He is at the moment of discovering his inner self. In the final scene, though Richard is in prison, he is happy. He has just discovered that he has an inner essence, unaffected by outer matters such as the loss of the crown. Nor does he feels lonely, because he has a whole world inside him, populated by his thoughts.

No more a king, Shakespeare’s Richard becomes human. As a king, he is repulsive; as a man with his unique personality, he evokes sympathy. But it is too late. Just at the point where Richard wins our sympathy, he is killed by the jailors. The triumphant Bolingbroke does not care for Richard’s personality, nor does history.

The story of Richard II echoed into the Elizabethan reality through Shakespeare’s play. A former lover of Elizabeth’s, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was out of her favour by late the 1590s. She was enraged by his quixotic ways and his military failures, especially the one of 1599 when he was sent to suppress an Irish revolt but had to make peace with the Irish instead. Essex hoped that the Queen would forgive him for the sake of their love, but she did not. She decided she was tired of Essex. Besides, Essex faced strong opposition among Elizabeth’s councillors. His most influential enemy was Francis Bacon, embittered by the fact that Essex was unable to promote him to a higher position.

Essex had little understanding of the reality. He believed that the Queen was under the bad influence of her councillors and that things would go right if she only fired these people. He worked out a plan how to make the Queen change her advisors.

Shakespeare’s Richard II was part of this plan. On 7 February 1601, Essex sent his men to the Globe Theatre and ordered through them a performance of the play. The news reached Elizabeth and frightened her. There is a legend that she told a historian called William Lambard: ‘I am Richard II, know you not that?’.

On 12 February, Essex and his followers started an uprising. Their plan was to seize the Queen’s palace and to make the Queen yield to their conditions. But it did not work. The rebels were arrested. On the 25th February Elizabeth had Essex beheaded.

His followers were much luckier. They were put in the Tower of London and were not to stay there for long: in 1603, when Elisabeth died, King James ascended the English throne. He was the son of Mary Stuart executed by Elizabeth, so he hated Elizabethan policy and did everything to the contrary. So his first action was to free all the participants of Essex’s rebellion.

One of them was Henry Wriothsley [riðli], Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare had dedicated his 1593 poem Venus and Adonis. Many critics believe that he was also the ‘Fair Friend’ of the Sonnets.

Illustrations from www.luminarium.org; www.worldatlas.com

By Maria Eliferova ,
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow