num_pages: 296
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.
language: English
title: King Richard II
titlecomplete: King Richard II
characters: Edward of Langley, 2nd Duke of York, Sir Edward Bagot, Eleanor de Bohun, Duchess of Gloucester, 2nd Lady, 1st Lady, Henry Percy "Hotspur", Sir Henry Greene, Groom, William de Ros, 6th Baron Ros, Sir Piers Exton, John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, Thomas Holland, 1st Duke of Surrey, 2nd Gardener's Man, William le Scrope, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, King of Mann, 1st Herald, Edward, 2nd Duke of York, Duke of Aumerle, 2nd Herald, Lord Marshal, Thomas de Berkeley, 5th Baron Berkeley, John Montagu, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, Sir William Bushy, Keeper of Pomfret Prison, Isabella of Valois, Thomas Merke, Bishop of Carlisle, William de Colchester, Abbott of Westminster, William Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, Henry V of England, Richard II of England, Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, Walter FitzWalter, 4th (or 5th) Baron FitzWalter, 1st Gardener's Man, Gardener, Sir Stephen Scroop, Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, Joan Holland, Welsh Captain, Henry IV of England
genres: Fiction, Plays, Theatre, Classics, Drama, Historical, Historical Fiction, Literature, Poetry, School
ratings_count: 24180
series: Wars of the Roses
publisher: Arden Shakespeare