SOURCE: Palmer, John. “Richard of Bordeaux.” In Political Characters of Shakespeare, pp. 118-79. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1961.

In the following essay, Palmer challenges critics who view Richard II as the tragedy of one man, and explores the fall of Richard as a king and political figure.

Shakespeare's Richard II is too often read as the tragedy of a private individual. Attention is focused upon Richard's personality and upon elements in his character which would have been just as interesting if he had never been called upon to play the part of a king. We are fascinated by the unfolding of his brilliant, wayward and unstable disposition, his pathetic lapses from bright insolence to grey despair, the facility with which he dramatises his sorrows and takes a wilfully aesthetic pleasure in his own disgrace. The political implications of the play are correspondingly neglected. And this is only natural. In...