SOURCE: Barkin, Leonard. “The Theatrical Consistency of Richard II.” Shakespeare Quarterly 29, no. 1 (winter 1978): 5-19.

In the following essay, Barkin studies the emotional impact of Richard II, and claims that the play possesses inherent theatrical and logical unity in terms of the emotional responses displayed by the characters on stage and the emotional interaction between the characters and audience members.

For some years, critics analyzing Shakespeare's plays and teachers teaching them have labored under a self-induced pressure to approach the plays as theatre. Such an injunction is properly justified by appeals both to the historical circumstances under which the plays were composed and to the theatrical liveliness of the texts themselves. And some of the finest Shakespearean criticism of the post-war period has been inspired by this theatrical awareness.

Though theatrical criticism embraces a great range of approaches, it often involves a tendency to equate theatre with theatrical effects...