The King of Language

The glory and the great failing of King Richard II in Shakespeare’s play is that he lives entirely in his language. Richard uses language to make a world, to create and re-create his own story; until his death, he translates everything that happens – even his deposition – into the “Poem of Richard.” The result is a play at odds with competing realities. The play opens with the promise of an exciting physical contest – a jousting match to the death between Mowbray and Bullingbrook. That is the story that wants to be told, and the story that an audience expects to see, but it is not Richard’s story, so – though the death of either of the contestants would be to his benefit – Richard co-opts the moment and banishes the two men, stealing the big scene from them and from the audience. Shakespeare’s genius makes us glad Richard steals the scene.

This penchant for stealing the scene may explain one of the oddest things about this play and its central event, the usurpation of the English throne by Henry Bullingbrook. In Shakespeare’s play Bullingbrook never actually takes the crown; Richard’s poetry gives it to him. Richard is the one who makes the usurpation inevitable by assuming the worst – “Your own is yours, and I am yours, and all” – and stage-manages his own deposition (the event that prompted Queen Elizabeth I to say “I am Richard II”). Historically, the political reality of Bullingbrook’s victory certainly meant that Richard would lose the crown, but Shakespeare’s play mutes that reality and shows us Richard giving the crown rather than Henry’s taking it. The scene, the act, the language, and the play are Richard’s. Even when he is a self-pitying drama queen, his language is rich and clear.

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