Richard Pasco now models Ian Richardson's cape. I hear the two actors tossed a coin each night to see who would play Bolingbroke and who would play Richard.
Imagine turning up to the wrong one.
Here is the first act of Richard the Second THE SECOND... From the defeated republic of Julius Caesar, via the elected dictatorship
of Titus Andronicus,
to the now seemingly unchecked power of God's Anointed, it's interesting how the further back in history Shakespeare goes, the
more recognisably democratic become the
systems he writes about. Take that,
progress! This isn't Rome then. Kings are a proper thing now,
second only to God, and this one has definitely had his uncle
Gloucester murdered. Mowbray is definitely the one who did it, and the
only hope of avenging that murder is the King's cousin Bolingbroke. Them's the stakes. And the prouder I play Richard, the humbler I can play Bolingbroke, even though the
humble man is still going to have to kill the proud man. So maybe the play's
about that. Of course by going full Gloriana - or, okay, full Ian
Richardson - there is a risk if not a complete inevitability of turning
Richard into a full-on, Disney-style queer-coded villain. But...
Well firstly, those guys are great. But secondly, it might still be a better starting point for understanding this play than what I had before, because if you simply play the King as a wag you make it too easy for the audience to side with him against his huffing and puffing subjects, and that lets him off the hook. There is a system in place where he's the Sun and his subjects have to function within that, which is not their fault. This isn't Rome, as I said. And it isn't Marlowe's Edward the Second. Richard isn't martyred for love. This is the play the Earl of Essex staged as a prelude to revolution. This is taboo. Here's Richard the Second again then, but more alien, with eggshells, stiller shoulders and less busy mouths. Let's see.
I'm starting to think that my no-spoilers approach to watching your videos is far from ideal, as I find I'm enjoying this play a lot more now that, 1. I know what the hell is going on, plot-wise (and sort of historically, too, no matter how heavily edited in Shakespeare's writing), 2. I'm not missing half the lines as I desperately rack my (admittedly slow) brain in the vain attempt to remember that Bolingbroke is in fact Henry Hereford, his father John of Gaunt is also the Duke of Lancaster, and so on and so forth.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, your Richard-as-Gloriana is absolutely great, and I'm really looking forward to the rest of this run. Glad we've also settled on who's guilty of what - again, it might be common knowledge, but I'm nowhere near enough familiar with either Shakespeare's work or British history, so I just happened to find it all quite confusing.
I'm also assuming that Wikipedia can be trusted when it claims that The king's decision [with regards to the tournament scene] can be seen as the first mistake in a series leading eventually to his overthrow and death, since it is an error which highlights many of his character flaws, displaying as it does indecisiveness (in terms of whether to allow the duel to go ahead), abruptness (Richard waits until the last possible moment to cancel the duel), and arbitrariness (there is no apparent reason why Bolingbroke should be allowed to return and Mowbray not).
(That was the only bit that was still bothering me, as the text itself doesn't seem to offer any explanation as to the reasons for Richard's sudden change of heart. Or maybe I'm just being slow, again.)
I think very little about Richard the Second is anywhere near common knowledge in this country. He's probably most famous historically for his dealings with Wat Tyler, the leader of the Peasant's Revolt, whom Richard met on the field at something stupid like the age of ten. As much as Wikipedia can be trusted I think the best scholarship is still just reading the play. Everyone has their theories, but the "inciting incident" if you like, does seem to be Gloucester's murder, followed by the ransacking of Bolingbroke's home. As Act Two makes clear, York also does a terrible job while left behind, severely overestimating how powerful a threat declaring someone a traitor might be, and losing allies left, right and centre.
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