SOURCE: Shewring, Margaret. “A Question of Balance: The Problematic Structure of Richard II.” In King Richard II, pp. 2-20. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Shewring maintains that the language of Richard II, patterned and poetic in its nature, complements the play's purposefully and carefully balanced structure.

Of all Shakespeare's history plays, Richard II is arguably the most difficult to accommodate on the twentieth-century stage. Once ‘the most dangerous, the most politically vibrant play in the canon’ (Berry, p. 16), this tightly structured, poetic account of monarchy in the late Middle Ages is deeply rooted in the political and cultural moment of the 1590s. Such Elizabethan topicality, potentially subversive in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, makes the play difficult to stage today.

The Challenge of Richard Ii

Shakespeare's history plays all pose challenges on the contemporary stage. By their very nature they are retelling events...