"Let us sit upon the ground / And tell sad stories about kings."
Actually, one of the things I found interesting about Richard II relates to an earlier post I made, about how weird I always find it when the overthrow of a monarch is treated as such an unprecedented event, when frankly it is one of the most precedented things in English history.
Watching the play, seeing Richard’s reaction to being deposed by his cousin, I did genuinely sympathise with his outraged disbelief that this could happen, in the indignity of it; the shame, almost. How could it happen? How could it be allowed to happen?
And yet, it’s funny, because the play references at various points Richard’s and his cousins’ and uncles’ descent from the great Edward III with no recognition that Edward himself became king when his own father was deposed. It’s a very weird selective blindness.
Watching the play, seeing Richard’s reaction to being deposed by his cousin, I did genuinely sympathise with his outraged disbelief that this could happen, in the indignity of it; the shame, almost. How could it happen? How could it be allowed to happen?
And yet, it’s funny, because the play references at various points Richard’s and his cousins’ and uncles’ descent from the great Edward III with no recognition that Edward himself became king when his own father was deposed. It’s a very weird selective blindness.