SOURCE: Law, Robert Adger. “Deviations from Holinshed in Richard II.” University of Texas Studies in English 29 (1950): 91-101.

In the following essay, Law contends that Shakespeare deviated from Holinshed's account of Richard II in the Chronicles to create a more sympathetic dramatic portrayal of the monarch.

In a number of studies concerning the play of Richard II recently made by competent Shakespeare scholars, no one has questioned the statement that its basic source is Holinshed's 1587 Chronicle, although Dover Wilson suggests a lost play based on Holinshed.¹ Yet just how closely the drama follows the Chronicle, and how far it deviates, has not been to my knowledge made entirely clear. For many readers know Holinshed only through the parallel passages cited by W. G. Boswell-Stone (Shakespeare's Holinshed, New York, 1896). Moreover, critics have shown more interest in the actual number of sources used by Shakespeare than in his treatment of material...