Couple of things...Richard II was happily married to Anne of Bohemia for many years. In fact, when she died of plague, he went wild with grief and ordered Sheen Palace, where she'd died, razed to the ground. Too many years ago to mention, I was doing my BA in Eng Lit and we all went on a field trip to Stratford. Everyone had tickets for Richard II at the famous theatre. Before the play started, the two leads came on stage and tossed a coin; whoever played Richard in the matinee played Bolingbroke in the evening performance. Ian Richardson and Richard or Alan Pascoe, if I recall. Richardson won the toss and played Richard. It was incredible- what a privilege to witness and experience such performances. At play's end, there was not a dry in the house and how we all wished we could stay for the evening's performance. I have only seen Ben Wishaw's Richard on TV but that is also an incredible performance.
An interesting connection here is that Shakespeare's patron (and possible Fair Youth of the sonnets), the Earl of Southampton, was a major figure in Essex's rebellion and even sentenced to death for his part in it (though the sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment and he was later freed by James I). It wouldn't surprise me at all if he was the one who had suggested to Essex that using Shakespeare's play as propaganda could be useful to the rebellion, and you'd think Shakespeare would have been in even more suspicion on account of that connection. (He'd publicly dedicated two poems to Southampton in the 1590s, so it certainly wasn't a secret. If as some Shakespeare scholars have suggested there was a relationship beyond patronage between them, and that was generally known, it would have made Shakespeare look even worse.) Of course we all want to see Shakespeare as both innocent of treason, and intelligent enough to have seen Essex's rebellion as the disaster-in-the-making it was. But considering he had significant connections (and possibly a personal friendship) with such a major figure in it, I think it's at least worth asking if he in fact did support the rebellion, and knowingly was trying to promote it with the Richard II performance. Possibly he did so out of misguided loyalty to someone who had supported him in the past, who he may have been personally fond of (if the sonnets are in fact about their relationship, it would suggest he had pretty strong feelings for Southampton, but of course that's just conjecture.) It's of course also possible he knew absolutely nothing, and he and the rest of the company were simply happy to get such a lucrative commission from an important nobleman. That's certainly the tack they were successfully able to convince Elizabeth and her government of in order to get away unscathed, and it may well have been the truth. But it's also interesting to consider that his part might not have been so innocent, or even purely financially motivated.
Even if Elizabeth did make such a vulnerable statement to Lambarde (it first appeared in print in 1780), who died only 15 days after it was supposed to have occurred, we have no way of knowing that Elizabeth was speaking of Shakespeare's Richard. The conversation was basically a rant against Essex, who had been a favorite and who had been given everything by Elizabeth, only to stage a coup against her, with Lambarde tactfully agreeing. Shakespeare's play doesn't come up at all in the conversation.
I'm thinking that they thought it's just a play and would not waste their energy on Shakespeare, but use him to their advantage. I think they let Shakespeare be in order not to alert Essex to the fact that they were aware of what he was doing in full and they used it to trap him up in his own ego and Essex played right into their hands.
Richard II was contained in "The Hollow Crown". I didn't know it before, but it's now one of my favorites. I don't know enough to have an opinion about why Elizabeth I chose not to punish Shakespeare or Lord Chamberlain's Men, but it's a lot of fun to think about. Love your channel.
The first thing that came to mind is they were artists, actors; like Court Jesters got away with saying what everyone else was thinking, but didn’t dare say even in jest.
Three things come to mind. First is that it is entirely possible the Lord Chamberlain's Men (i.e. Shakespeare & Company) made a point of letting the authorities know about this particular performance asap. Second, the answer might lie in the nature of the actual performance itself, namely how much sympathy was engendered for Richard in the play (I can say the best productions I have seen began with me hating Richard and ending with me full of pity for the man). But third--and this perhaps deals more with how Shakespeare got away with criticizing royalty in general--is something I think very visible in all his plays that deal with kings. Namely, he portrays throne and crown as burdens, terrible weights only a few are capable of bearing and even then only at great cost. Often usurpers are broken by their deeds (i.e. Macbeth, Richard III, John, even to some degree Henry IV) while others simply never quite measure up, bringing disaster (Richard II, Henry VI, Edward IV, etc.) in their wake. While even good kings feel the burden deeply, feel lonely, and when they make a terrible error (Leontes, Lear, Duncan, Prospero, Cymbeline) the whole nation suffers.
David MacDowell Blue There is a record of the interview between the Chamberlin’s men and those investigating the Essex coup in the archives (Michael Wood found it in his series on Shakespeare). The line from Shakespeare et al is that the Earl wanted Richard II specifically, that they tried to persuade him to accept another play as Richard II wouldn’t get a paying audience but agreed only on the Earl agreeing to pay their usual house take and a £2 premium and that they would never have performed the play without the fee and that the decision to perform was purely commercial. As for how Shakespeare got away with writing it in the first place, we’ll partly it is historical and a history that is the start of the Tudors claim to the throne (Henry VII traces his claim to the throne from Henry IV’s usurpation) so whatever is read into the subtext the text is supportive of Elizabeth making a treason charge difficult to prove. Elizabeth isn’t daft enough to be convinced by that but she also isn’t daft enough to try and persecute Shakespeare against such a defence. Remember everyone knows that the Crucible is about the house un-American activities committee but nobody would want to try and convince a sceptical public that it wasn’t just about witches.
Altogether possible that Cecil was using Shakespeare & Co as a stalking-horse to bring down Essex whom he viewed as a threat, both to Elizabeth and to the succession to follow.
I would like to take the time to thank you for your great channel. I'd like to make the suggestion that now that you have suddenly got so many more subscribers that you make up some playlists to help them navigate your work. A play list focusing on Shakespearean themes, a Stuart playlist and one focusing on the strong women of the 16th and 17th centuries would be great.
There's an excellent novel about these events from the perspective of Penelope Devereaux-Rich and Robert Cecil--"Watch the Lady" by Elizabeth Fremantle.
Richard II is the only Shakespeare play I have ever wanted to alter. The interplay between Bolingbroke and Richard, with the "yous" and "thous", is lost on modern audiences. We are so accustomed to seeing "thou" in the King James that we tend to think of it as a formal mode of address, rather than the familiar that it used to be. I would switch them, so that the newly elevated Henry IV would go from addressing Richard with the seemingly lofty and deferential "thou" to a blunter, more condescending "you". I would also ban all use of "doth". It was an old spelling convention. Everyone said "does", even back then. Other than that, a near perfect play, and my favorite history by far. I'd stage a coup against our Queen Elizabeth if it meant I could get a performance of Richard II out of it.
My personal preference is that every child leaves education fully versed in arcane pronoun usage. I am willing to accept this as a far-flung dream though! What you suggest really gets to the nub of my issues with the clamour for "authenticity" - if an audience is unable to receive and understand these "authentic" moments but rather feels alienated by them, then what purpose do they actually serve? Who is the "authentic" performance actually for?
@@ReadingthePast I was shocked and saddened by some recent research that shows how we even miss important messages, puns and jokes in Shakespeare because the original pronunciation is lost. So I don't know if a person should learn all about the old language to more fully enjoy the works or if it is sufficient to get what we can with modern words.
@@annalisette5897 somewhere in the RUclips world there is a demonstration of Shakespearian pronunciation. As an audience I would be most happy to make the effort and broaden my understanding of the text.
He gets a lot of bad press. But he wasn't the tyrant he's made out to be. On the other hand the pos who usurped the throne from Richard Henry the 4th was. But that's to be expected considering he was from those usurper the Tudors.
Hi Dear Dr. Kat, DIP-tick is a better pronunciation than DIP-titch, for diptych, triptych, etc. The terminal -ch is the Greek sound, similar to that in loch. Because most Americans, at least, have trouble with that sound, the K sound is an accepted approximation.
A general question would be if Queen Elizabeth and her council ever banned any plays or written works? If so, is there a pattern? What was her attitude toward plays and expression? What about her councilors? Was suppression of speech an issue in her reign? Might Richard II have gotten a pass because Richard was rumoured to be homosexual? Might that have made him neither king nor queen but some other creature? IF the idea Richard was homosexual was strongly believed at the time the play was written. (?) (Or is that a modern thing? As I recall, Richard was criticized in his time for having too close and devoted associations with male courtiers. The same has been insinuated against James I and VI. If true, might James have not wanted to suppress the play in order not to have opinion look sharply in his direction? I might be wrong all the way around with these ideas.)
The presumed association of Richard's gayness or effeminacy and Elizabeth as female monarch I think is weak. Elizabeth was regarded as a strong monarch despite her gender. Shakespeare may not have associated effeminacy and femininity; nor do we today.
Didn't Shakespeare write Henry VIII to appease his queen after that performance? And then he wrote Macbeth for James. Talk about playing politics well.
Couple of things...Richard II was happily married to Anne of Bohemia for many years. In fact, when she died of plague, he went wild with grief and ordered Sheen Palace, where she'd died, razed to the ground.
Too many years ago to mention, I was doing my BA in Eng Lit and we all went on a field trip to Stratford. Everyone had tickets for Richard II at the famous theatre. Before the play started, the two leads came on stage and tossed a coin; whoever played Richard in the matinee played Bolingbroke in the evening performance. Ian Richardson and Richard or Alan Pascoe, if I recall. Richardson won the toss and played Richard. It was incredible- what a privilege to witness and experience such performances. At play's end, there was not a dry in the house and how we all wished we could stay for the evening's performance.
I have only seen Ben Wishaw's Richard on TV but that is also an incredible performance.
An interesting connection here is that Shakespeare's patron (and possible Fair Youth of the sonnets), the Earl of Southampton, was a major figure in Essex's rebellion and even sentenced to death for his part in it (though the sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment and he was later freed by James I). It wouldn't surprise me at all if he was the one who had suggested to Essex that using Shakespeare's play as propaganda could be useful to the rebellion, and you'd think Shakespeare would have been in even more suspicion on account of that connection. (He'd publicly dedicated two poems to Southampton in the 1590s, so it certainly wasn't a secret. If as some Shakespeare scholars have suggested there was a relationship beyond patronage between them, and that was generally known, it would have made Shakespeare look even worse.)
Of course we all want to see Shakespeare as both innocent of treason, and intelligent enough to have seen Essex's rebellion as the disaster-in-the-making it was. But considering he had significant connections (and possibly a personal friendship) with such a major figure in it, I think it's at least worth asking if he in fact did support the rebellion, and knowingly was trying to promote it with the Richard II performance. Possibly he did so out of misguided loyalty to someone who had supported him in the past, who he may have been personally fond of (if the sonnets are in fact about their relationship, it would suggest he had pretty strong feelings for Southampton, but of course that's just conjecture.)
It's of course also possible he knew absolutely nothing, and he and the rest of the company were simply happy to get such a lucrative commission from an important nobleman. That's certainly the tack they were successfully able to convince Elizabeth and her government of in order to get away unscathed, and it may well have been the truth. But it's also interesting to consider that his part might not have been so innocent, or even purely financially motivated.
Even if Elizabeth did make such a vulnerable statement to Lambarde (it first appeared in print in 1780), who died only 15 days after it was supposed to have occurred, we have no way of knowing that Elizabeth was speaking of Shakespeare's Richard. The conversation was basically a rant against Essex, who had been a favorite and who had been given everything by Elizabeth, only to stage a coup against her, with Lambarde tactfully agreeing. Shakespeare's play doesn't come up at all in the conversation.
I'm thinking that they thought it's just a play and would not waste their energy on Shakespeare, but use him to their advantage. I think they let Shakespeare be in order not to alert Essex to the fact that they were aware of what he was doing in full and they used it to trap him up in his own ego and Essex played right into their hands.
Richard II was contained in "The Hollow Crown". I didn't know it before, but it's now one of my favorites. I don't know enough to have an opinion about why Elizabeth I chose not to punish Shakespeare or Lord Chamberlain's Men, but it's a lot of fun to think about. Love your channel.
The first thing that came to mind is they were artists, actors; like Court Jesters got away with saying what everyone else was thinking, but didn’t dare say even in jest.
Three things come to mind.
First is that it is entirely possible the Lord Chamberlain's Men (i.e. Shakespeare & Company) made a point of letting the authorities know about this particular performance asap.
Second, the answer might lie in the nature of the actual performance itself, namely how much sympathy was engendered for Richard in the play (I can say the best productions I have seen began with me hating Richard and ending with me full of pity for the man).
But third--and this perhaps deals more with how Shakespeare got away with criticizing royalty in general--is something I think very visible in all his plays that deal with kings. Namely, he portrays throne and crown as burdens, terrible weights only a few are capable of bearing and even then only at great cost. Often usurpers are broken by their deeds (i.e. Macbeth, Richard III, John, even to some degree Henry IV) while others simply never quite measure up, bringing disaster (Richard II, Henry VI, Edward IV, etc.) in their wake. While even good kings feel the burden deeply, feel lonely, and when they make a terrible error (Leontes, Lear, Duncan, Prospero, Cymbeline) the whole nation suffers.
David MacDowell Blue There is a record of the interview between the Chamberlin’s men and those investigating the Essex coup in the archives (Michael Wood found it in his series on Shakespeare). The line from Shakespeare et al is that the Earl wanted Richard II specifically, that they tried to persuade him to accept another play as Richard II wouldn’t get a paying audience but agreed only on the Earl agreeing to pay their usual house take and a £2 premium and that they would never have performed the play without the fee and that the decision to perform was purely commercial. As for how Shakespeare got away with writing it in the first place, we’ll partly it is historical and a history that is the start of the Tudors claim to the throne (Henry VII traces his claim to the throne from Henry IV’s usurpation) so whatever is read into the subtext the text is supportive of Elizabeth making a treason charge difficult to prove. Elizabeth isn’t daft enough to be convinced by that but she also isn’t daft enough to try and persecute Shakespeare against such a defence. Remember everyone knows that the Crucible is about the house un-American activities committee but nobody would want to try and convince a sceptical public that it wasn’t just about witches.
@@davidwright7193 Interesting comments. Thank you. I learned a lot!
Mind blown again. Wow.
Excellent and well paced commentary.
Altogether possible that Cecil was using Shakespeare & Co as a stalking-horse to bring down Essex whom he viewed as a threat, both to Elizabeth and to the succession to follow.
I would like to take the time to thank you for your great channel. I'd like to make the suggestion that now that you have suddenly got so many more subscribers that you make up some playlists to help them navigate your work. A play list focusing on Shakespearean themes, a Stuart playlist and one focusing on the strong women of the 16th and 17th centuries would be great.
This is mu favorite shakespeare play and you have just made it more interesting to me
There's an excellent novel about these events from the perspective of Penelope Devereaux-Rich and Robert Cecil--"Watch the Lady" by Elizabeth Fremantle.
I saw it performed in Stratford Ontario Canada by an amazing female actress Seana McKenna a bunch of years back. Was brilliant.
So interesting to continue to add to the layers of history.
The Tudor rubber ducks are epic!
What was the next play presented in the theatre or before Elizabeth? It would help a bit to know that.
I think the scholars put 'Romeo & Juliet' after Richard II being preformed✌🏻
Essex also illegally bestowed knighthoods on some soldiers in his Irish campaign, do you know if those were revoked or confirmed?
Richard II is the only Shakespeare play I have ever wanted to alter. The interplay between Bolingbroke and Richard, with the "yous" and "thous", is lost on modern audiences. We are so accustomed to seeing "thou" in the King James that we tend to think of it as a formal mode of address, rather than the familiar that it used to be. I would switch them, so that the newly elevated Henry IV would go from addressing Richard with the seemingly lofty and deferential "thou" to a blunter, more condescending "you".
I would also ban all use of "doth". It was an old spelling convention. Everyone said "does", even back then.
Other than that, a near perfect play, and my favorite history by far. I'd stage a coup against our Queen Elizabeth if it meant I could get a performance of Richard II out of it.
My personal preference is that every child leaves education fully versed in arcane pronoun usage. I am willing to accept this as a far-flung dream though!
What you suggest really gets to the nub of my issues with the clamour for "authenticity" - if an audience is unable to receive and understand these "authentic" moments but rather feels alienated by them, then what purpose do they actually serve? Who is the "authentic" performance actually for?
@@ReadingthePast I was shocked and saddened by some recent research that shows how we even miss important messages, puns and jokes in Shakespeare because the original pronunciation is lost. So I don't know if a person should learn all about the old language to more fully enjoy the works or if it is sufficient to get what we can with modern words.
@@annalisette5897 somewhere in the RUclips world there is a demonstration of Shakespearian pronunciation. As an audience I would be most happy to make the effort and broaden my understanding of the text.
@@annalisette5897 Maybe if we are lucky, Dr Kat will talk about the vowel shift!! And changes in pronunciation.
@@lynneperry7454 I saw that and it was extremely interesting.
Dr Kat: Have you done a full piece on Richard II? There seem to be quite diverse views of him and his reign.
He gets a lot of bad press. But he wasn't the tyrant he's made out to be. On the other hand the pos who usurped the throne from Richard Henry the 4th was. But that's to be expected considering he was from those usurper the Tudors.
Hi Dear Dr. Kat, DIP-tick is a better pronunciation than DIP-titch, for diptych, triptych, etc. The terminal -ch is the Greek sound, similar to that in loch. Because most Americans, at least, have trouble with that sound, the K sound is an accepted approximation.
Interesting. I did a different Shakespeare play and have seen a few others since, but not Richard II!
A general question would be if Queen Elizabeth and her council ever banned any plays or written works? If so, is there a pattern? What was her attitude toward plays and expression? What about her councilors? Was suppression of speech an issue in her reign? Might Richard II have gotten a pass because Richard was rumoured to be homosexual? Might that have made him neither king nor queen but some other creature? IF the idea Richard was homosexual was strongly believed at the time the play was written. (?) (Or is that a modern thing? As I recall, Richard was criticized in his time for having too close and devoted associations with male courtiers. The same has been insinuated against James I and VI. If true, might James have not wanted to suppress the play in order not to have opinion look sharply in his direction? I might be wrong all the way around with these ideas.)
The presumed association of Richard's gayness or effeminacy and Elizabeth as female monarch I think is weak. Elizabeth was regarded as a strong monarch despite her gender. Shakespeare may not have associated effeminacy and femininity; nor do we today.
Didn't Shakespeare write Henry VIII to appease his queen after that performance? And then he wrote Macbeth for James. Talk about playing politics well.
well if Richard didn't fall then history changes and Elizabeth just isn't there
Let’s talk about this with an oxfordian bent
"Bent". An excellent word to describe Oxfordianism.
Spies.
Shakespeare never tells the truth in any of his plays about royalty. He was just a sick up to ever happened to be on the throne at the time.