William Shakespeare Richard II.

William SHAKESPEARE: RICHARD II.

Main characters:
 King Richard II. – he is the king of England
 Henry Bolingbroke – is duke of Herford and king’s cousin
 John of Gaunt – the Duke of Lancaster, father of Henry Bolingbroke
 Edmund of Langley – duke of York, he is king’s uncle.
 Queen Isabel – the wife of king Richard II.

Plot:
This play takes part in England and Wales. Richard II. ascended the throne as a young man. He stand for a stately king, but there is a problem. He likes wasting money for his own purposes. He is unwise in the choice of his counsellors, and that is the reason why he is more and more detached from his country and from the life of common people. He spends a lot of money on the latest Italian fashion, he spends the money on his friends and finally for his pet wars in Ireland. That is the reason why he is rising taxes. But people like him never have enough money for their expenses. And because he needs more money he starts to rent out some parcels of the English land to certain wealthy noblemen. But it is not enough for him so he starts to seizing the lands, money and the whole property of his recently deceased uncle to raise funds for one of his wars. But `now he has gone too far. So think all the commoners and the king’s noblemen. In the early beginning of the play Richard expels his cousin Henry Bolingbroke from England for six years due to an unsolved dispute over an earlier political murder. Henry is very popular among the English commoners and noblemen. The dead uncle whose property Richard seizes was the father of Henry Boling- broke. When Henry founds out that Richard is seizing the property of his dead father – that property should be his – he is furious. When Richard carelessly departs to proceed a war in Ireland, Bolingbroke assembles an army and invades the north coast of England in the absence of the king. The commoners who are angry at Richard and his mismanagement and his govern policy are fond of Henry and join his army. One by one Richard’s allies in the nobility desert him and defect to Bolingbroke´s side as he marches through England. By the time Richard returns from Ireland but he has already lost his grasp on his country. In the play we can not see a battle because all the Richard’s forces desert to Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke peacefully takes Richard as a prisoner in Wales and takes him to London. There is Bolingbroke crowned for king as Henry IV.

Richard is imprisoned in a castle, where he had to think about his crimes. Henry send there a murderer to assassinate Richard, but he is not decided. The murderer kills Richard and Henry hypocritically repudiates the murder and vows to journey to Jerusalem to cleanse himself of his part in Richard’s death.