SOURCE: Forker, Charles R. “Unstable Identity in Shakespeare's Richard II.” Renascence 54, no. 1 (fall 2001): 3-22.

In the following essay, Forker attributes Richard II's “unstable and mutable personality” to the tension between his position as king by divine right and his mortal fallibility.

That which is now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct As water is in water. .....Here I am Antony, Yet cannot hold this visible shape. … 

(Antony and Cleopatra 4.14.9-14)¹

Antony's sudden, shaky sense of his own identity raises an issue that besets several of Shakespeare's tragic protagonists. In this essay I want to consider the character of Richard II as a case in point,² to suggest that Richard's struggle to come to terms with the several aspects of his unique self not only lies at the heart of his personal tragedy but also symbolizes a shift from the relative stability...