Richard II

Richard II, written entirely in verse, shows an eloquent but irresponsible king losing his crown to his banished cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who becomes Henry IV. It opens the sequence of plays known as the Henriad.

Main characters

• King Richard II
• Henry Bolingbroke, later King Henry IV
• John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, Bolingbroke's father
• The Duke of York, Richard's uncle
• Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk
• The Earl of Northumberland
• Queen Isabel

Plot summary

This summary gives away the ending.

Bolingbroke accuses Mowbray of treason and the two prepare to fight a trial by combat, but at the last moment Richard stops the fight and banishes both men. When John of Gaunt dies, delivering a famous lament for an England 'leased out' by a careless king, Richard seizes Gaunt's lands to fund a war in Ireland, disinheriting Bolingbroke.

While Richard is away, Bolingbroke returns with an army, claiming he wants only his inheritance. Nobles flock to him. Richard, back from Ireland, swings between defiance and despair and surrenders at Flint Castle. In Westminster Hall he hands over the crown in a scene of extraordinary self-dramatising poetry. Imprisoned at Pomfret Castle, he meditates on time and kingship before being murdered by Sir Piers Exton, who thinks he is doing the new king's will. Henry IV disowns the deed and vows a crusade to wash away his guilt.

Themes

• Divine right and the deposition of a king
• Language and self-image
• England and its decline
• Legitimacy and guilt

Famous lines

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle... This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

John of Gaunt, Act 2 Scene 1

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings.

Richard, Act 3 Scene 2

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

Richard, Act 5 Scene 5

More in our collection of famous Shakespeare quotes.

Sources

Holinshed's Chronicles, Samuel Daniel's poem The Civil Wars (1595) and possibly the anonymous play Woodstock.

On stage and screen

The scene in which Richard gives up his crown was left out of the printed editions during Elizabeth I's lifetime. On 7 February 1601, the day before the Earl of Essex's failed rebellion, his supporters paid Shakespeare's company to perform a play about Richard II's deposition, apparently to stir up support. The actors were questioned but not punished.

See where Richard II sits in Shakespeare's career on the timeline, or read about the playhouses it was written for.