num_pages: 3
description: The times have forced changes in the way we look at Richard II more than any other of Shakespeare’s plays. What to his contemporaries was a balanced dramatisation of the central political and constitutional issue of the time, how to cope with an unjust ruler, has in the last century or so been translated into the poetic fall of a tragic hero. The introduction to this new edition of the play provides a full context for both the Shakespearean and the modern views of King Richard’s fall. It relates the play’s construction, imagery and staging to contemporary concerns and describes the changing views about Richard’s deposition by means of a stage history. The accompanying illustrations suggest Elizabethan ideas of kingship and the staging of the play. The commentary is more detailed than for any previous edition of the play, and assimilates the most recent scholarship. The appendixes discuss the basis for Shakespeare’s selection of material for his sources in this most carefully researched and composed of his history plays.
title: King Richard II
titlecomplete: King Richard II
characters: Sir Henry Greene, Isabella of Valois, 1st Herald, William de Ros, 6th Baron Ros, John Montagu, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, Thomas de Berkeley, 5th Baron Berkeley, William de Colchester, Abbott of Westminster, Eleanor de Bohun, Duchess of Gloucester, Walter FitzWalter, 4th (or 5th) Baron FitzWalter, Richard II of England, William le Scrope, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, King of Mann, Lord Marshal, Sir Stephen Scroop, Henry Percy "Hotspur", Groom, 1st Gardener's Man, Henry IV of England, Edward of Langley, 2nd Duke of York, Sir Edward Bagot, Keeper of Pomfret Prison, Sir Piers Exton, 2nd Herald, Gardener, 1st Lady, John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, William Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, Thomas Merke, Bishop of Carlisle, 2nd Lady, Thomas Holland, 1st Duke of Surrey, Joan Holland, Edward, 2nd Duke of York, Duke of Aumerle, Welsh Captain, Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, Henry V of England, 2nd Gardener's Man, Sir William Bushy
genres: Fiction, Plays, Theatre, Historical, Poetry, Drama, School, Literature, Classics, Historical Fiction
ratings_count: 24179
series: Wars of the Roses
publisher: Penguin Audiobooks