Source: "Order and Power in Richard n," in Ball State University Forum, Vol, XXII, No.1, Winter, 1981, pp. 42-51.

[In the following essay, Sublette contends that Richard abuses his power and as a result creates the disorder that occurs in the play. Sublette demonstrates that in the play's opening scenes "ordered, disorder" exists under Richard's command, but after Richard seizes Gaunt's estate, events follaw that cause the apparent order to clearly become disorder, and this disorder dominates the rest of the play.]

Much of the disorder represented in William Shakespeare's Richard II and the subsequent plays in the Henriad- 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V occurs as a direct result of Richard's violation of the natural cycle of tune. Richard II dramatizes a sequence of events in which the natural order of time and succession is violated and in which men then struggle to restore order. Through...