1 00:00:02,840 --> 00:00:08,900 So today, I'm focussing on Shakespeare's history plays, which is the second house, a play. 2 00:00:08,900 --> 00:00:15,980 Generally dated to fifteen ninety five. First published in 15 97. 3 00:00:15,980 --> 00:00:18,800 So it has near chronological neighbours. 4 00:00:18,800 --> 00:00:26,120 Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night's Dream and shares quite a lot of linguistic features with both those plays. 5 00:00:26,120 --> 00:00:30,110 But obviously, it also introduces a new sequence of English history plays, 6 00:00:30,110 --> 00:00:35,930 which is going to continue with the two parts of Henry the Fourth and then Henry the Fifth. 7 00:00:35,930 --> 00:00:45,650 And it shares an interest in regicide and regime change with later plays, which might include Julius Caesar and Macbeth. 8 00:00:45,650 --> 00:00:50,780 So what I want to try and talk about in today's lecture is the politics and the dramaturgy of Richard. 9 00:00:50,780 --> 00:00:56,240 The second under the heading. Was it right for Bowling Brook to take the throne from Richard? 10 00:00:56,240 --> 00:01:00,890 Was it right for Bolingbrook to take the throne from Richard? 11 00:01:00,890 --> 00:01:10,050 So, as usual, let's back up and contextualise that critical question within the plot of the play. 12 00:01:10,050 --> 00:01:16,940 Richard, the second begins with a confusing scene, a near duel between two noblemen, 13 00:01:16,940 --> 00:01:21,660 Bowling Brook, the Duke of Hereford and Thomas Mowbray, the Duke of Norfolk. 14 00:01:21,660 --> 00:01:31,850 They're each accusing the other of killing the Duke of Gloucester. Richard intervenes to postpone the combat between the two noblemen. 15 00:01:31,850 --> 00:01:38,360 But it's clearly something odd going on and is until later in the play that we get to know that Richard himself, the king, 16 00:01:38,360 --> 00:01:48,710 is implicated in the death of the Duke of Gloucester, Bolingbrook Mowbray returned to take up that quarrel again. 17 00:01:48,710 --> 00:02:02,950 And Richard again defers the combat, banishing them instead for 10 years for pulling Brooke, which he later reduces to six and life for Mowbray. 18 00:02:02,950 --> 00:02:05,530 Bullying Brooke's father, John Gaunt, 19 00:02:05,530 --> 00:02:14,530 expresses while he's dying his eloquent disappointment in the king's lavish behaviour and prophesies the decline of England. 20 00:02:14,530 --> 00:02:20,170 But Richard is unrepentant and he takes away Gordon's estate on guns death in 21 00:02:20,170 --> 00:02:25,480 order to pay for a military expedition to Ireland on the death of his father, 22 00:02:25,480 --> 00:02:33,060 Bolingbrook returns to England with an army attempting to recover his inheritance. 23 00:02:33,060 --> 00:02:44,320 And when Richard returns from Ireland, troops, including some of his former supporters, are defecting to Bolingbrook. 24 00:02:44,320 --> 00:02:50,020 Bolingbrook, though, agrees to surrender if he is reinstated to his property. 25 00:02:50,020 --> 00:02:52,180 But Bolin Brooks power grows. 26 00:02:52,180 --> 00:03:01,970 He has Richard's former advisers executed, and he arrests other noblemen on the charge of murdering the Duke of Gloucester. 27 00:03:01,970 --> 00:03:09,010 Richard's queen. Here's to gardeners talking about the inevitability that Richard will be overthrown. 28 00:03:09,010 --> 00:03:16,030 Richard agrees to abdicate in favour of Bolingbrook. And he publicly hands over the crown to him in parliament. 29 00:03:16,030 --> 00:03:24,820 Bolingbrook announces his own coronation. Much to the disgust of the bishop of Carlisle, who speaks passionately about the divine rights of kings. 30 00:03:24,820 --> 00:03:28,070 Richard says goodbye to his queen. He's taken into captivity. 31 00:03:28,070 --> 00:03:34,100 There's a small counter conspiracy against Bolingbrook, but this is discovered in Bolingbrook. 32 00:03:34,100 --> 00:03:44,980 This actually decides to forgive the conspirators. Richard is in prison where Piers X10 comes to visit him. 33 00:03:44,980 --> 00:03:49,840 Axton believes he has Bollon Brooks mandate for doing this and kills Richard. 34 00:03:49,840 --> 00:03:55,030 Although Richard defends himself bravely, Axton bears Richard's body to Bolingbrook. 35 00:03:55,030 --> 00:03:59,070 Now, Henry, the fourth, who denies that he ever wanted Richard to be killed. 36 00:03:59,070 --> 00:04:04,560 It banishes Axton and vows a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to wash away his guilt. 37 00:04:04,560 --> 00:04:12,100 It's essentially a play about the way in which Bolingbrook takes over, takes the throne from Richard. 38 00:04:12,100 --> 00:04:18,700 The play gives us the depiction of the transfer of power between Richard the Second and Henry Bolingbrook, who then becomes handed the fourth. 39 00:04:18,700 --> 00:04:26,230 Henry takes up the throne before Richard is dead, but his predecessor's death confirms his succession. 40 00:04:26,230 --> 00:04:31,360 So where should our sympathies? Emotional, rational, dramatic, political. 41 00:04:31,360 --> 00:04:35,380 Why should they lie in this story? 42 00:04:35,380 --> 00:04:41,970 I want to start quite closely within the play, and then I'm going to move out to some of the contacts we might want to put round it. 43 00:04:41,970 --> 00:04:46,810 I going to start with two metaphors. The play itself uses for the transfer of power. 44 00:04:46,810 --> 00:04:57,720 It depicts the first comes from Richard. Richard uses a wide range of emotive language to describe the events of the play from his own perspective, 45 00:04:57,720 --> 00:05:02,640 particularly a kind of Christological symbolism where he is the betrayed Christ, 46 00:05:02,640 --> 00:05:12,900 Bollon Brooking's a Judas, and the noblemen who do nothing to stop him are the the disciples who stand by. 47 00:05:12,900 --> 00:05:18,030 So in such moments, the figurative language Richard uses to describe what's happening makes it quite 48 00:05:18,030 --> 00:05:22,920 clear that Richard himself believes in Brooks' actions to be a sinful betrayal. 49 00:05:22,920 --> 00:05:31,110 But as Mandy Rice Davies families famously said, in only a slightly different context, he would, wouldn't he? 50 00:05:31,110 --> 00:05:38,760 The image I want to discuss, however, sees Richard in more material and less metaphysical mode. 51 00:05:38,760 --> 00:05:45,920 He and bowling both hold the crown at the moment of the transfer of that prop inact foreseen one. 52 00:05:45,920 --> 00:05:56,520 And Richard's image is of a well. Now, is this golden crown like a deep well that those two buckets filling one another, 53 00:05:56,520 --> 00:06:05,360 the emptier ever dancing in the air, the other down unseen and full of water, that bucket down unseen and full of tears. 54 00:06:05,360 --> 00:06:10,630 My drinking, my griefs whilst you mantar up on high. 55 00:06:10,630 --> 00:06:14,610 So now is this golden crown. Like a deep well that owes to buckets filling one another. 56 00:06:14,610 --> 00:06:18,990 The MTA ever dancing in the air, the other down unseen and full of water. 57 00:06:18,990 --> 00:06:26,790 That bucket down unseen and full of tears are my drinking my griefs whilst you mount up on high. 58 00:06:26,790 --> 00:06:31,710 So two things seem me potentially interesting about Richard Simile here. 59 00:06:31,710 --> 00:06:37,140 One is the way in which its spatial dynamic, the rise and fall of the buckets in the well, 60 00:06:37,140 --> 00:06:42,250 recalls a mediaeval theory of tragedy sometimes known as the day kazee. 61 00:06:42,250 --> 00:06:50,110 Both tragedy they casias tragedy. You might be familiar to this, familiar with this as a Chaucerian kind of idea. 62 00:06:50,110 --> 00:06:58,130 Their customers, so their cars obvious tragedy depicts the downfall of noble or highborn individuals. 63 00:06:58,130 --> 00:07:03,380 Describing tragedy in his art of English posi in fifteen eighty nine. 64 00:07:03,380 --> 00:07:11,810 George Putnam has it as the doleful falls of unfortunate and afflicted princes. 65 00:07:11,810 --> 00:07:16,400 The doleful falls of unfortunate and afflicted princes. 66 00:07:16,400 --> 00:07:26,060 So that's from Putnam writing in fifteen eighty nine. And that's a description of decades of US tragedy, the downfall of noble individuals. 67 00:07:26,060 --> 00:07:31,010 Richard visualises his tragedy then in terms which are analogous to the idea of the Wheel of Fortune. 68 00:07:31,010 --> 00:07:35,880 One figure rises while the other falls. 69 00:07:35,880 --> 00:07:43,650 Now, when it was first published in 15 '97 and in fact, in all its Quarto editions before the Folio of Sixteen Twenty three, 70 00:07:43,650 --> 00:07:49,790 the play was titled The Tragedy of King Richard the Second. 71 00:07:49,790 --> 00:07:58,730 How might our reading it as a tragedy that Casias or otherwise affect the question of how we read Pauline Brooks' actions? 72 00:07:58,730 --> 00:08:06,170 So the question of John, I think is an interesting one. In some ways we can read the structure of Richard the second as endorsing Richard's own 73 00:08:06,170 --> 00:08:13,120 claims to the central dramatic interest afforded to the titular character in tragedy. 74 00:08:13,120 --> 00:08:17,090 So that's central. Dramatic interest. Not really moral poll position. 75 00:08:17,090 --> 00:08:23,090 This is someone at the centre of the play rather than someone who has a particular moral character. 76 00:08:23,090 --> 00:08:30,500 Richard, the third, for example, was also called a tragedy in its first publications. 77 00:08:30,500 --> 00:08:39,560 So as in King Lear or Coriolanus or Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet, it is the name of the title character that brings the play to a close. 78 00:08:39,560 --> 00:08:46,210 Richard's life and the span of the play are equivalent terms. 79 00:08:46,210 --> 00:08:54,070 Shakespeare's shaping of the historical material here is all the more striking, given that obviously there's lots more of the story still to come. 80 00:08:54,070 --> 00:09:03,010 History does not come to an end. Unlike tragedy at the end of a tragedy, we don't really feel any interest in what comes next. 81 00:09:03,010 --> 00:09:03,880 And in fact, 82 00:09:03,880 --> 00:09:13,150 it could almost be said that the idea of the future is one of the most significant casualties amongst the body count at the end of a tragedy. 83 00:09:13,150 --> 00:09:20,030 114 brass comes in at the end of Hamlet or Winnetka or Albany, tried to say something trite at the end of King Lear. 84 00:09:20,030 --> 00:09:24,690 We know that they're just temporising. The focus has gone from the tragic world. 85 00:09:24,690 --> 00:09:30,470 We are not interested or convinced that there is any future beyond the end of the play. 86 00:09:30,470 --> 00:09:37,160 Tragedy is therefore apocalyptic or eschatological tells it tells us something about the end of the world. 87 00:09:37,160 --> 00:09:41,580 The promised end as the final lines of King Lear puts it. 88 00:09:41,580 --> 00:09:45,120 Now, to some extent, Richard, the second shares this structure. 89 00:09:45,120 --> 00:09:50,750 And it's interesting to think structurally about the figure of Bolingbrook compared with, say, 90 00:09:50,750 --> 00:09:59,240 the figure of 14 brass is Bolingbrook, like Fortum Brass, merely the kind of external nemesis of the tragic character. 91 00:09:59,240 --> 00:10:11,340 Not really a particular agent, but almost a scapegoat for internal or societal fissures which make the tragic, hearer's demise inevitable. 92 00:10:11,340 --> 00:10:15,960 So what is that the way in which the play engages with the genre of history? 93 00:10:15,960 --> 00:10:22,740 There's another aspect to the play. Obviously, it's engagement with the ongoing processes of of history. 94 00:10:22,740 --> 00:10:27,540 So it's thinking about a tragic form and the historical form. 95 00:10:27,540 --> 00:10:37,570 At the same time. The thing about history is it continues, the death of one king inevitably means the combination of another. 96 00:10:37,570 --> 00:10:44,080 The king is dead. Long live the king part of the myth of monarchic sanctity. 97 00:10:44,080 --> 00:10:48,700 What Ernst Cantarell of memorably dubbed the king's two bodies. 98 00:10:48,700 --> 00:10:55,630 The idea that the king has both a physical body which is susceptible to agent decline like every other person, 99 00:10:55,630 --> 00:11:00,730 but also a kind of political body which never changes. 100 00:11:00,730 --> 00:11:10,710 So the king's body continues across time, even where individual physical occupants of that will decline and fade away. 101 00:11:10,710 --> 00:11:18,250 What? So what Kantaro Vitz calls the king's two bodies means that the death of a king is never the end. 102 00:11:18,250 --> 00:11:22,360 The death of the great man is not a tragedy in this schema. 103 00:11:22,360 --> 00:11:28,150 It's just the necessary and inevitable renewal of the of the role of monarch. 104 00:11:28,150 --> 00:11:38,050 So a monarchy like history itself is opposed to tragedy by opposing the finite end stopped idea of tragedy. 105 00:11:38,050 --> 00:11:42,760 Those buckets to go back to Richard's image. Keep moving. 106 00:11:42,760 --> 00:11:49,780 Richards is implicitly an image of historical process, not of tragic finality. 107 00:11:49,780 --> 00:11:55,390 The bucket that's down goes up again and vice versa. 108 00:11:55,390 --> 00:12:04,030 Now, when Richard the second comes to be published in the Folio text, that edition of Collected Shakespeare plays invents the genre of history. 109 00:12:04,030 --> 00:12:12,850 It includes it as one of three genres, it showcasing from Shakespeare's works, comedies, histories and tragedies. 110 00:12:12,850 --> 00:12:17,500 And it invents history as a genre entirely to do with England. 111 00:12:17,500 --> 00:12:22,930 So the history play genre in the First Folio catalogue includes only English history plays. 112 00:12:22,930 --> 00:12:30,040 And it also puts the plays in order of chronological history rather than, say, in order of their composition. 113 00:12:30,040 --> 00:12:34,510 So we know, for example, that Shakespeare writes the Henry the Sixth plays before he writes to Henry. 114 00:12:34,510 --> 00:12:44,180 The fourth plays. Its title in that order in the First Folio catalogue is quite different. 115 00:12:44,180 --> 00:12:50,750 The Life and Death of Richard the second, the life and death of Richard, the second that's part of the tragedy of King Richard. 116 00:12:50,750 --> 00:12:57,650 The second historical sequence, that's to say it does not have room for individual tragedy. 117 00:12:57,650 --> 00:13:02,690 And therefore, one way of answering the question about Bolin Brooks' actions is generic. 118 00:13:02,690 --> 00:13:07,280 We might answer it differently if we read the play is a tragedy from the way we would 119 00:13:07,280 --> 00:13:14,520 answer it if we were reading it in the sequence of historical plays in the First Folio. 120 00:13:14,520 --> 00:13:18,090 Now, what's striking about Richard's metaphor is that the buckets can't really take 121 00:13:18,090 --> 00:13:26,690 any responsibility for their respective positions or for their movement. Are inanimate objects dependent on some external impetus to move? 122 00:13:26,690 --> 00:13:34,000 It would be unreasonable not to say surreal for one bucket to blame the other for the change in their positions. 123 00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:41,980 Related to this is that the simile of the world buckets makes no moral distinction between the two figures, between the two kings. 124 00:13:41,980 --> 00:13:46,720 Neither is better at the job. Neither is more suited to be a bucket. 125 00:13:46,720 --> 00:13:50,470 There's an arbitrariness about which one is up and which one is down. 126 00:13:50,470 --> 00:13:55,750 Perhaps related to a feeling that Richard could have used this simile in the opposite way that he is dancing in the air, 127 00:13:55,750 --> 00:14:01,960 relieved of his duties while Bolingbrook is down. Wade with the cares of office. 128 00:14:01,960 --> 00:14:12,010 In this respect, there's a radical arbitrariness about the play's answer to the question of bowling books conduct in taking the throne. 129 00:14:12,010 --> 00:14:20,740 When the director, John Barton, produced the play for the RNC in 1974, he had two actors, 130 00:14:20,740 --> 00:14:28,720 Ian Richardson and Richard Pasko, alternating the two roles of Richard and Bowling Brook, alternating those two roles. 131 00:14:28,720 --> 00:14:37,210 Bartons Barton had wanted each night's casting to be random and determined by the roll of a die on stage at the beginning of the performance. 132 00:14:37,210 --> 00:14:45,730 But box office logistics meant this wasn't possible, that they had to say in advance who was going to be playing which row. 133 00:14:45,730 --> 00:14:51,400 But he kept the idea of the die at the beginning of the performance, ALEC, as if it allocated. 134 00:14:51,400 --> 00:14:55,770 Which actor will play which role that night? 135 00:14:55,770 --> 00:15:02,940 As you know, more recent incidents of this Swopped casting Danny Boyle stage version of Frankenstein in 2010, 136 00:15:02,940 --> 00:15:10,140 where Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller alternate the roles of monster and creator Bartons direction of Richard the second. 137 00:15:10,140 --> 00:15:22,970 In this way suggested the similarities between Richard and his antagonist rather than seeing them as has had been traditional as complete opposites. 138 00:15:22,970 --> 00:15:28,460 So the view of Richard and Bolingbrook as opposites had been used to suggest that the transfer 139 00:15:28,460 --> 00:15:35,450 of sovereignty could be read as a transfer of huge historical atlast seems like the change 140 00:15:35,450 --> 00:15:42,770 from feudalism to capitalism or from divine right to pragmatism or political or personal versions 141 00:15:42,770 --> 00:15:49,820 of Hegel's influential view of tragedy as conflict conflict between two opposing forces. 142 00:15:49,820 --> 00:15:55,640 By contrast, Bartons Productions suggested that far from representing two opposing worldviews, 143 00:15:55,640 --> 00:16:01,430 the two men at the heart of this play are cousins placed in arbitrary but different 144 00:16:01,430 --> 00:16:07,820 positions and therefore subject to historical process in different ways. 145 00:16:07,820 --> 00:16:13,700 That example from the theatre related to the image of the two buckets can help us move to another simile. 146 00:16:13,700 --> 00:16:18,320 The play uses to describe the transfer of power. 147 00:16:18,320 --> 00:16:24,560 The Duke of York, who's shifting sympathies in this play act as a kind of weather vane for the audience, 148 00:16:24,560 --> 00:16:32,380 is describing to his wife the entrance into London of the victorious Bolingbrook and the defeated Richard Bolling. 149 00:16:32,380 --> 00:16:37,070 Brook says York was greeted with God save the bawling brook. 150 00:16:37,070 --> 00:16:47,690 You would have thought the very windows spake so many greedy looks of young and old through Casement's started that desiring eyes upon his visage. 151 00:16:47,690 --> 00:16:52,900 The duchess asks her husband about poor Richard, where, writes he the whilst. 152 00:16:52,900 --> 00:16:58,370 And Yorke's metaphor is striking, as in a theatre. 153 00:16:58,370 --> 00:17:03,740 The eyes of men after a world graced actor leads the stage are idly bent on him. 154 00:17:03,740 --> 00:17:15,530 That enters next, thinking his prattled to be tedious. Even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes did scowl on Richard, as in a theatre. 155 00:17:15,530 --> 00:17:19,190 The eyes of men after a well-dressed actor leaves the stage idly bent on him. 156 00:17:19,190 --> 00:17:28,410 That follows next, thinking his prattled to be tedious. Even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes did scowl on Richard. 157 00:17:28,410 --> 00:17:34,880 Now that image of the king as an actor is a trope that recurs throughout Shakespeare's history plays and throughout the culture, 158 00:17:34,880 --> 00:17:39,980 which prompted them Elizabeth's own much quoted phrase. 159 00:17:39,980 --> 00:17:47,210 We princes, I tell you, are set on stages in the sight and view of all the world duly observed. 160 00:17:47,210 --> 00:17:53,230 We princes, I tell you, are set on stages in the sight and view of all the world. 161 00:17:53,230 --> 00:18:00,650 Duly observed, acknowledges the theatricality intrinsic to a spectacular early modern monarchy. 162 00:18:00,650 --> 00:18:11,680 In an age in which progress's coronation processions and accession tilts drew on some of the emerging vocabulary of the public stage. 163 00:18:11,680 --> 00:18:19,840 But here in York speech, the image again is an interesting one. The difference between the old and the new kings or more pointedly, 164 00:18:19,840 --> 00:18:26,320 between the legitimate king and the usurping one is not the difference between the true and the copy. 165 00:18:26,320 --> 00:18:36,100 The difference between the real monarch and the counterfeit player, rather, the contrast is between a good, well, great actor and a tedious one. 166 00:18:36,100 --> 00:18:43,030 Both are actors. Both are pretending neither can claim authenticity, according to the simile. 167 00:18:43,030 --> 00:18:50,140 So what we haven't got here is a is a comparison of the real and the copy or the real and the counterfeit. 168 00:18:50,140 --> 00:18:55,030 We've got two counterfeits, but one. That's good. Good to take. And one that's less good. 169 00:18:55,030 --> 00:19:01,100 Bolingbrook is just better at pretending to be king. He's a better actor. 170 00:19:01,100 --> 00:19:09,590 This logic of the theatre that the audience prefers, the better actor and his restless and contemptuous when a lesser performer comes on, 171 00:19:09,590 --> 00:19:19,010 is extremely subversive when attached to the issue of monarchy because it replaces the notion of authenticity with facility. 172 00:19:19,010 --> 00:19:25,100 Doesn't matter whether you're supposed to be king, what matters is if you're good at it or good at seeming to be it. 173 00:19:25,100 --> 00:19:30,950 It overlays the question of who is the rightful king with the one of who is the better king. 174 00:19:30,950 --> 00:19:37,760 And the question of who is a better care, of course, is a completely unanswerable one in a hereditary monarchy. 175 00:19:37,760 --> 00:19:42,320 Even to ask then whether Bollon Brooks actions in taking the throne might be justified. 176 00:19:42,320 --> 00:19:50,710 Is therefore a potentially politically challenging question. Having analysed to the similes used within the play for that transfer of power. 177 00:19:50,710 --> 00:19:57,700 Now I want to try and think about it in the broader context of early modern politics. 178 00:19:57,700 --> 00:19:58,840 So, as you probably know, 179 00:19:58,840 --> 00:20:09,340 behind the history play boom of the 50 nineties is almost certainly contemporary concerns and cultural anxieties around the Elizabethan succession. 180 00:20:09,340 --> 00:20:17,320 That's to say these are plays about late 16th century politics, not late 14th century ones, 181 00:20:17,320 --> 00:20:23,260 play after play by Shakespeare and others obsesses on moments of transfer, 182 00:20:23,260 --> 00:20:30,760 obsesses on the theme of the king challenged by rivals, obsesses on scuffles over the crown. 183 00:20:30,760 --> 00:20:37,900 No history play ever depicts the long or settled reign of an established monarch. 184 00:20:37,900 --> 00:20:41,590 While Elizabeth had made discussion of the succession a felony, 185 00:20:41,590 --> 00:20:48,040 so a crime punishable by death plays and other texts using historical subjects 186 00:20:48,040 --> 00:20:54,860 probed the otherwise and articulable question of what might happen after her death. 187 00:20:54,860 --> 00:20:58,460 Unsurprisingly, we see that once we know what's going to happen after her death. 188 00:20:58,460 --> 00:21:06,210 Once James the first comes to the throne, the interest in history plays evaporates almost immediately. 189 00:21:06,210 --> 00:21:16,500 In 15 99, the so-called bishop's barn attacked two literary genres and made them subject to increase censorship and regulation. 190 00:21:16,500 --> 00:21:21,930 Those two genres were satire and history. Each of those. 191 00:21:21,930 --> 00:21:32,040 Both satire and history had become a means for commentary, often unflatteringly on contemporary events. 192 00:21:32,040 --> 00:21:40,590 Now, for some critics, the relation of the history plays to their own moments in the 15 nineties is an essentially conservative one. 193 00:21:40,590 --> 00:21:48,340 And in this, they tend to follow a really influential critic. He w Tilyard. 194 00:21:48,340 --> 00:21:58,820 Tilyard influential vision of the history plays was as a as as a version of what he called the Tudor myth. 195 00:21:58,820 --> 00:22:04,440 And this idea was that Shakespeare wrote his history plays to please Elizabeth as a long, 196 00:22:04,440 --> 00:22:10,780 implicit hymn of praise to the settled civil peace ushered in by The Tudors. 197 00:22:10,780 --> 00:22:13,420 Fertility at the deposition and murder of Richard, 198 00:22:13,420 --> 00:22:21,610 the second that we're talking about today was the act of terrible sin for which the whole of the rest of the historical sequence up to Richard, 199 00:22:21,610 --> 00:22:27,550 the third defeat at Bosworth Field by Henry Tudor was a long and bloody expiation. 200 00:22:27,550 --> 00:22:33,640 So here his view of it was that in the play we're talking about today, we see the crime in the next seven plays. 201 00:22:33,640 --> 00:22:40,270 We see the consequences of that crime. And it's only when we get Henry Tudor at the end of Richard the third that this has been put. 202 00:22:40,270 --> 00:22:47,250 Right. In fact, Tilyard, more of us is actually in Richard the second. 203 00:22:47,250 --> 00:22:55,710 His view of events is pretty clearly spoken by the bishop of Carlisle, who gives the play's most extensive defence of the divine right of kings. 204 00:22:55,710 --> 00:23:01,920 As the other nobles stand by waiting for Richard to be brought to parliament to abdicate, 205 00:23:01,920 --> 00:23:05,710 what subject can give sentence on his king and who sits here? 206 00:23:05,710 --> 00:23:15,510 That is not Richard Subject thunders Carlisle and he voices a view view of the king, an unforeseen one as the figure of God's majesty. 207 00:23:15,510 --> 00:23:25,150 His Captain Stewart, deputy elect, anointed and crowned the idea that the King is God's representative and deputy on Earth. 208 00:23:25,150 --> 00:23:32,900 The bishop goes on to predict that if Richard is deposed, the blood of English shall manure the ground in this seat of peace, 209 00:23:32,900 --> 00:23:38,080 tumultuous walls shall kinn with Ken and kind with kind confound. 210 00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:44,500 So he predicts civil war. And of course, he's right. As audiences would have already probably recognised. 211 00:23:44,500 --> 00:23:47,680 Shakespeare has written those plays on the reign of Henry the Sixth, 212 00:23:47,680 --> 00:23:55,830 which dramatise the wars of the roses, which in some sense lead lead on from this action here. 213 00:23:55,830 --> 00:23:59,760 But within the play itself, however, there are no such consequences. 214 00:23:59,760 --> 00:24:05,920 Attending the murdering of Richard, partly because of the way the murder of Richard is placed in the structure of the play. 215 00:24:05,920 --> 00:24:13,620 So we're back to the idea of tragedy. If we compare it to the second with Julius Caesar for a moment, another play about a deposed ruler. 216 00:24:13,620 --> 00:24:19,290 We can see a different structural Hunde handling of the same theme in Julius Caesar. 217 00:24:19,290 --> 00:24:25,770 The death of Caesar comes right in the middle of the play. So the beginning of the plays, the lead up to the murder of Caesar, 218 00:24:25,770 --> 00:24:34,020 the assassination and the second half of the play are the consequences by having the death of Caesar in the middle of that play. 219 00:24:34,020 --> 00:24:41,820 Shakespeare can show us the consequences as Caesar's supporters tipped into action by the persuasive rhetoric of Anthony, 220 00:24:41,820 --> 00:24:44,310 take back power from the conspirators. 221 00:24:44,310 --> 00:24:53,430 So the arc of the play Julius Caesar shows us the decision to take power, the taking of power and the losing of power in return. 222 00:24:53,430 --> 00:24:58,890 So it's a we might see a similar kind of complete movement in Macbeth day. 223 00:24:58,890 --> 00:25:04,950 Macbeth decides to take the throne. He takes the throne. He has the throne taken from him in return. 224 00:25:04,950 --> 00:25:10,540 Both those plays dramatise an act and its consequences. 225 00:25:10,540 --> 00:25:14,660 In Richard, the second, we get only the first of those, but not the last. 226 00:25:14,660 --> 00:25:22,550 That movement of retribution is not completed. There just isn't time within the play in the way Shakespeare has written it. 227 00:25:22,550 --> 00:25:26,450 Henry ends the play. Confirmed in his throne by Richard's murder. 228 00:25:26,450 --> 00:25:31,880 Even as he professes that he did not wish his predecessor killed. 229 00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:40,220 Although I do not think Shakespeare writes his plays to convey messages. The reminder of film mogul Sam Goldwyn in the early days of Hollywood. 230 00:25:40,220 --> 00:25:45,560 If you want to send a message, use Western Union. It's actually quite a good one for the early modern theatre. 231 00:25:45,560 --> 00:25:50,690 But even so, we might think that one outcome of Richard the second as a standalone play perhaps at 232 00:25:50,690 --> 00:25:56,210 the Curtain Theatre is you can depose and murder the rightful king and nothing happens. 233 00:25:56,210 --> 00:26:09,390 No punishment falls on your head. Tilyard idea of a broadly conservative cast to the history plays in which Borling Brooks Act is a terrible crime. 234 00:26:09,390 --> 00:26:19,140 Aline's Richard the Second, with Orthodox contemporary views about disobedience to the sovereign and the sovereign in this case would be Elizabeth. 235 00:26:19,140 --> 00:26:23,910 The official homily on disobedience and wilful rebellion. 236 00:26:23,910 --> 00:26:29,580 The homily on disobedience, a wilful rebellion which was appointed to be read in Elizabethan churches, 237 00:26:29,580 --> 00:26:34,140 described in graphic terms just how bad rebellion and disobedience were. 238 00:26:34,140 --> 00:26:41,130 The first rebellion was that of Lucifer in heaven, the second that of Adam and Eve in paradise. 239 00:26:41,130 --> 00:26:45,330 The consequences clearly are terrible ones, according to the homily, 240 00:26:45,330 --> 00:26:52,040 which is at pains to hammer home the message that however bad the sovereign, the subject has no right to rebel. 241 00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:59,890 The punishment for any such rebellion will be much, much worse than the original suffering under the bad sovereign. 242 00:26:59,890 --> 00:27:09,700 In this framework, we can see that Bollon Brooks acts up, act as a rebellion against the sovereign, have criminal far reaching consequences. 243 00:27:09,700 --> 00:27:15,790 But of course, we need to bear in mind that the homilies on subjects including drunkenness, idolatry, 244 00:27:15,790 --> 00:27:24,040 adultery and excessive apparel tell us as much about what people did do by telling us what they were exhorted not to do, 245 00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:33,260 just as some people probably drank too much. So some people may not have been entirely convinced that rebellion was always such a bad thing. 246 00:27:33,260 --> 00:27:37,390 But that homily against disobedience and wilful rebellion gives us a context in 247 00:27:37,390 --> 00:27:45,310 which Bollon Brook's actions are clearly wrong to rebel against a sovereign. It's clearly the wrong thing to do, and we might see this reading. 248 00:27:45,310 --> 00:27:49,330 The idea that Waldenbooks behaviour is unjustifiable, 249 00:27:49,330 --> 00:27:58,600 we might see that reading supported by some of the choices Shakespeare has made in selecting from the historical sources for the play. 250 00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:06,460 He seems, for example, to diminished the negative role of Richard Parasitic Advisors, Bushi Budget and Green. 251 00:28:06,460 --> 00:28:10,930 We never really see them in this play. Behaving very badly. 252 00:28:10,930 --> 00:28:20,590 He stresses that Richard takes gaunt money not for his own lavish expenditure, but for the national coffers to prosecute a war in Ireland. 253 00:28:20,590 --> 00:28:26,470 Quite a quite a contemporary and topical view for the 50 nineties. 254 00:28:26,470 --> 00:28:32,890 Shakespeare gives Richard a soliloquy in prison in the play's final scene that creates sympathy for him. 255 00:28:32,890 --> 00:28:41,230 He develops an extended non historical role for Richard's wife, which also seems to serve to humanise the king. 256 00:28:41,230 --> 00:28:48,160 And he chooses not to give any active voice to the common people and their complaints against the social elite. 257 00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:58,780 Even the gardener in this play, who might be thought to be a representative of ordinary people, speaks blank verse and sophisticated political theory. 258 00:28:58,780 --> 00:29:05,050 The common people in this play who we never see are always called subjects a word which 259 00:29:05,050 --> 00:29:10,310 indicates they're hierarchical subservience to the monarch rather than in Hollywood. 260 00:29:10,310 --> 00:29:17,220 Hollinshead chronicles Shakespeare's major source citizens, a word which Shakespeare uses elsewhere in his history plays. 261 00:29:17,220 --> 00:29:26,200 So the word citizen has more sense of active participation in the Commonwealth or in the Polis subject as a much more kind of hierarchical role. 262 00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:33,880 And that's the word that Shakespeare chooses to focus on, in which the second, if you want to play to compare it to you, 263 00:29:33,880 --> 00:29:40,720 might have a look at the contemporary anonymous play Woodstock, sometimes titled Thomas of Woodstock. 264 00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:47,400 That's a play about the murder of the Duke of Gloucester, which is the source of contention with which Shakespeare's play begins. 265 00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:53,590 And in this anonymous play, Woodstock, Richard's presentation is much darker. 266 00:29:53,590 --> 00:29:57,280 So it's interesting to think about how Shakespeare uses his source material. 267 00:29:57,280 --> 00:30:03,760 And in this case, an alternative and contemporary view of similar events in the play Woodstock. 268 00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:08,380 These might help us answer the question about Bolin Brook's behaviour in the negative. 269 00:30:08,380 --> 00:30:17,580 Shakespeare has deliberately minimised Richard failings, Richard's failings, perhaps in order to make his deposition less excusable. 270 00:30:17,580 --> 00:30:25,070 Gates has built up the case for Richard rather than for Bolingbrook. 271 00:30:25,070 --> 00:30:30,780 Tell Yards overall argument about the Tudor myth is, however, a slightly curious one. 272 00:30:30,780 --> 00:30:40,320 It's perverse, I think, to see these plays which so insistently dramatise the excitement of regime change as propaganda for settled monarchy. 273 00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:45,430 They're just not about that. And it takes an effort to make them refer to that. 274 00:30:45,430 --> 00:30:53,520 And it's also odd to believe that when the Tudor dynasty is reaching its anxious terminus in the figure of the ageing Virgin Queen, 275 00:30:53,520 --> 00:31:00,790 proclaiming The Tudors as England's sole saviour from civil war is not particularly reassuring. 276 00:31:00,790 --> 00:31:11,110 Tilyard is writing in 1945, which perhaps explains his insistence on order unstability emerging from violent chaos. 277 00:31:11,110 --> 00:31:15,430 But for readers and viewers of the 50 nineties, it's not clear that Richard, 278 00:31:15,430 --> 00:31:22,870 the second was only interpreted, as Tilyard does, as the sinful deposition of a rightful king. 279 00:31:22,870 --> 00:31:28,300 For one thing, it seems from the publication history of the play that it may have been censored. 280 00:31:28,300 --> 00:31:35,650 Those speeches in Act four, including the one about the buckets that have already discussed the scene in which Richard hands over the crown 281 00:31:35,650 --> 00:31:43,330 orb and sceptre to Bolingbrook are not present in any of the texts published during Elizabeth's lifetime. 282 00:31:43,330 --> 00:31:49,720 Many critics feel this is due to censorship, showing a lawful king being deposed on stage, 283 00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:56,820 perhaps particularly through a case I legalistic instrument like parliament might have been thought to subversive. 284 00:31:56,820 --> 00:32:02,230 It's a dangerous play, which then seems to depict the overthrow of a sovereign. 285 00:32:02,230 --> 00:32:08,380 We also know that the historical rivalry between Richard and Bolingbrook comes during the 15 nineties 286 00:32:08,380 --> 00:32:13,180 to have a particular connexion with the fortunes of the most prominent Elizabethan nobleman, 287 00:32:13,180 --> 00:32:16,530 the Earl of Essex. 288 00:32:16,530 --> 00:32:27,360 Essex's role in court as the champion of a more active military engagement in the Protestant cause in Europe means that he's a controversial figure. 289 00:32:27,360 --> 00:32:31,560 And after the failure of his military expedition to Ireland in 50 99, 290 00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:37,800 I talk about this in my lecture on Henry the Fifth because it's part of that paycheque that mentions it in Henry the Fifth. 291 00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:43,590 After the failure of that expedition to Ireland 50 99 Essex Falls from favour. 292 00:32:43,590 --> 00:32:49,320 He and his supporters mount a disastrous attempt to persuade Elizabeth to reinstate him, 293 00:32:49,320 --> 00:32:54,800 which turns into an ill fated rebellion against Elizabethan rule. 294 00:32:54,800 --> 00:33:03,080 ASX is arrested and executed for treason. But Richard, the second is on the sidelines of this story. 295 00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:09,890 The Lord Chamberlain's men, Shakespeare's company, were paid by Essex's supporters to perform their old play, 296 00:33:09,890 --> 00:33:16,910 Richard, the second on the eve of Essex's abortive revolt in February 16, 01. 297 00:33:16,910 --> 00:33:22,580 So the play's commission to be part of the preparation, the ideological preparation, 298 00:33:22,580 --> 00:33:29,180 we might say, for Essex's attempt to challenge Elizabeth's authority. 299 00:33:29,180 --> 00:33:37,520 Presumably, there was some sense that this play about a monarch and his unhelpful advisers might help gather support for Essex's own challenge, 300 00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:46,220 as it kept saying that he was his real target was not the queen herself, but the terrible advisers around her. 301 00:33:46,220 --> 00:33:52,160 After the failure of the rebellion, the Chamberlains men are called before the Privy Council to account for their part in the affair. 302 00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:58,550 Why did they agree to perform a play under the auspices of Essex and his supporters? 303 00:33:58,550 --> 00:34:04,480 Their spokesman, Augustine Phillips, claims they merely took a commission to perform an old play. 304 00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:14,230 And since they were back at court performing within a month, their participation in this rebellion count caused too much concern. 305 00:34:14,230 --> 00:34:21,130 But the idea of a play which is co-opted for contemporary political action, however doomed that action might be, 306 00:34:21,130 --> 00:34:27,040 has been extremely attractive to historians of early modern drama who've been dissatisfied by 307 00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:32,860 Tilyard idea that players are conservative and have been keen to find instead in the theatre. 308 00:34:32,860 --> 00:34:38,230 A challenge to Orthodox political ideas. 309 00:34:38,230 --> 00:34:49,350 This line of argument sees the actions of Bowling Brook as dangerous, endorsed by the play and radically subversive of contemporary order. 310 00:34:49,350 --> 00:34:56,070 But perhaps we can begin to see that as an interpretive position, this is as ideologically constructed as that of Tilyard. 311 00:34:56,070 --> 00:35:00,870 Both readings find in the plays politics, confirmation of their own politics. 312 00:35:00,870 --> 00:35:12,110 We make Shakespeare mean what we want him to mean. So does that mean that Shakespeare doesn't take sides in the question of bowling Brooks' actions? 313 00:35:12,110 --> 00:35:17,600 Well, it has certainly been one aspect of Shakespeare's ongoing flexibility to different 314 00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:24,450 theatrical and political agendas that his own politics seem always to be so hidden. 315 00:35:24,450 --> 00:35:29,880 Richard, the second does suggest that Bowling Brook may be a better king with a broader base of support, 316 00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:33,150 but it never suggests that he is the rightful king. 317 00:35:33,150 --> 00:35:41,700 And so it replaces two incompatible frameworks, better and rightful, which structure the whole play. 318 00:35:41,700 --> 00:35:49,820 The system of hereditary monarchy does not have any place for a meritocratic condition, consideration of how different candidates would be as king. 319 00:35:49,820 --> 00:35:52,530 It can't even allow that is a question. 320 00:35:52,530 --> 00:35:58,380 And it may be that it's this interest which is going to leach expert away from English history and towards Roman history, 321 00:35:58,380 --> 00:36:06,290 particularly in Julius Caesar, or the question of what makes a good ruler can be openly debated. 322 00:36:06,290 --> 00:36:10,760 But Shakespeare gives us in Richard the second a presentation of Richard, 323 00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:17,600 which seems much more detailed, maybe even more inward than that of Bolingbrook. 324 00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:25,590 We never know, for example, why Volin Brook Wobble Brooke has in mind when he returns from France to claim his inheritance, 325 00:36:25,590 --> 00:36:28,610 nor when he decides that he is not just going to get his inheritance back. 326 00:36:28,610 --> 00:36:39,590 But the whole throne, he never tells us there are no soliloquies, no private moments, no privileged access to what Bolingbrook is thinking. 327 00:36:39,590 --> 00:36:47,960 It's very hard, therefore, in the way Shakespeare has structured the play to feel close to or sympathetic towards Bolingbrook on stage. 328 00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:53,740 All his speeches are practical, controlled and public. 329 00:36:53,740 --> 00:36:56,890 Imagine scenes which might have made him more sympathetic. 330 00:36:56,890 --> 00:37:04,420 How he takes news of his father's death, for example, or whether he struggles over the rightfulness of taking the throne. 331 00:37:04,420 --> 00:37:12,040 We never get those scenes, so we never see whether there is a kind of inner in a struggle or or torment. 332 00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:18,430 Richard, stage presence is much more emphatic, much more dramatic than that of his rival. 333 00:37:18,430 --> 00:37:24,730 If you got the role of Bolingbrook, your cast in the role of Wallinger, Brooke. And Richard, the second, I think you would feel slightly disappointed. 334 00:37:24,730 --> 00:37:34,540 The scene of the handover of those props of kingly office in unforeseen one, for example, sees Richard speak 150 lines to bowling Brooks 10. 335 00:37:34,540 --> 00:37:35,860 If you look at the scene on the page, 336 00:37:35,860 --> 00:37:43,930 you'll see long speeches of poetic conceit from Richard punctuated by phlegmatic reminders from Bolingbrook of the business in hand. 337 00:37:43,930 --> 00:37:51,550 Even as Richard is handing over control of his kingdom, that's to say he does not hand over control of the stage. 338 00:37:51,550 --> 00:37:59,410 The moments of his application is a dramatic set piece in which he utterly dominates the action. 339 00:37:59,410 --> 00:38:03,730 So Richard's characterisation is handled quite differently from that of Bolingbrook. 340 00:38:03,730 --> 00:38:13,780 And again, we might try and link this with genre. Richard is in a tragedy in which the suffering of the unique individual is a set aside through his 341 00:38:13,780 --> 00:38:20,740 speech when he ought to be at his most history play like rounding up soldiers and fighting Bolingbrook. 342 00:38:20,740 --> 00:38:30,640 Richard collapses instead into tragic self-pity. For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings. 343 00:38:30,640 --> 00:38:31,120 In some ways, 344 00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:39,770 Richard's downfall is that he knows too early on is in a tragedy and is therefore not very much at the very much point trying to do anything about it. 345 00:38:39,770 --> 00:38:46,120 Bolingbrook, on the other hand, reveals himself quite differently, thinking in its broadest sense. 346 00:38:46,120 --> 00:38:51,310 Bolingbrook is in a comedy. His star is rising. Things are getting better for him. 347 00:38:51,310 --> 00:39:01,280 And as a comic character, he reveals himself in dialogue and company, not in isolation. 348 00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:10,490 But that does mean that there is a loss of audience involvement with Bolingbrook and with his cause. 349 00:39:10,490 --> 00:39:17,570 So it may be that we're arguing in the end that balance is at the heart of the play structure. 350 00:39:17,570 --> 00:39:23,150 Perhaps we could see Richard, the second as a kind of animated version of the grammar school debates, 351 00:39:23,150 --> 00:39:27,200 which were so important for humanist sixteenth century culture. 352 00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:37,760 The technique of arguing in a Trump Kway part term in Trump kwe Partons from either side of a proposition with equal, emotive and rhetorical force. 353 00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:46,190 The point of that grammar school education was not what you really believe, but how persuasively you could put both sides. 354 00:39:46,190 --> 00:39:54,320 This may be a sign of Shakespeare's measured approach to contemporary politics or of or of a kind of habitual evasiveness that may 355 00:39:54,320 --> 00:40:04,700 find its biographical corollary in the case discussed by Charles Niccolò in his book The Lodger or Shakespeare on Silver Street. 356 00:40:04,700 --> 00:40:11,150 Nickel in this book talks about a legal case where Shakespeare is called as a witness to clarify 357 00:40:11,150 --> 00:40:20,030 whether his landlord had bestowed a larger dowry on his daughter than was now being claimed. 358 00:40:20,030 --> 00:40:26,480 It ought to be a really fascinating insight into Shakespeare. And in fact, it kind of is, but not in the way you would expect. 359 00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:35,690 So Shakespeare is brought forward having as a witness, having witnessed the agreement with the daughter's husband about the dowry. 360 00:40:35,690 --> 00:40:42,600 And he's asked what the dowry is. And Shakespeare says he can't remember, can't remember how much it might have been. 361 00:40:42,600 --> 00:40:47,400 Public political even-handedness may have corresponded to private slipperiness. 362 00:40:47,400 --> 00:40:51,600 He seemed like a man who will not put his not nail his colours to the mast, 363 00:40:51,600 --> 00:40:57,330 will not say when given a choice between two things, he will not not plump for either of them. 364 00:40:57,330 --> 00:41:05,280 And that may be something that we're seeing in the plains. Gary Taylor, writing of the possibility that Shakespeare was a closet Catholic, 365 00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:13,410 suggests that this characteristic refusal to back one side over another is the consequence of a lifetime of self-censorship. 366 00:41:13,410 --> 00:41:20,910 The constant act of ventriloquism which is necessary for so-called church papists who only pretended allegiance to the Church of England. 367 00:41:20,910 --> 00:41:29,700 He argues that this is a very Catholic idea. Not to say what you believe is is one of the ways we could identify Shakespeare as a Catholic thinker. 368 00:41:29,700 --> 00:41:37,530 You might want to look for other examples of apparent even handedness in King John, for instance, or in Julius Caesar or in the trilogy. 369 00:41:37,530 --> 00:41:45,000 Henry, the six other examples of plays about struggle in which Shakespeare seems not to take sides. 370 00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:52,230 Arguing along these lines might suggest that Shakespeare cannot answer the question about the justification of Bolin Brooks actions. 371 00:41:52,230 --> 00:41:58,810 Taking the throne is neither right nor wrong. It just is. 372 00:41:58,810 --> 00:42:05,740 As often then in these lectures, the question of whether bullying Britt was right to take the throne from Richard is just that a question. 373 00:42:05,740 --> 00:42:13,060 The play invites us to ask it and it gives us different frameworks in which to come to a provisional conclusion. 374 00:42:13,060 --> 00:42:18,160 But it's always aware of the other side of the argument. 375 00:42:18,160 --> 00:42:28,690 And we might end perhaps by thinking about a medium, the theatre in which such careful balance can seem dramatically or ethically unsatisfactory. 376 00:42:28,690 --> 00:42:34,570 What can seem on the page like a fine balance between opposing readings or an ability? 377 00:42:34,570 --> 00:42:42,910 A susceptibility to multiple reasons can seem in the theatre confusing or bland or evasive. 378 00:42:42,910 --> 00:42:47,560 Reviews, for example, of Stephen Pimlott are sea production of 2000. 379 00:42:47,560 --> 00:42:54,240 Speak of a fragile, ironic Richard matched with a thuggish, ambitious following Brooke. 380 00:42:54,240 --> 00:42:55,620 In nineteen ninety six, 381 00:42:55,620 --> 00:43:03,300 Fiona Shaw played an immature and irresponsible Richard who believed that Bowling Brooks personal loyalty would kerb his ambition. 382 00:43:03,300 --> 00:43:11,520 Michael Pennington has played dandified regency Richard giving way to the sober, buttoned up Victorianism of Bolingbrook and his followers. 383 00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:20,100 Ron Daniels directed Alex Jennings as a tyrannical Richard ruling over a totalitarian state toppled by a reluctant, intelligent dissident. 384 00:43:20,100 --> 00:43:25,470 Bowling Brook, played by Aunt on Lessa, a famous mediaeval book of hours inspired production, 385 00:43:25,470 --> 00:43:34,350 had Jeremy Irons as an introspective, poetic king who is rather relieved to pass on the world of politics to his cousin. 386 00:43:34,350 --> 00:43:42,120 You can read all these reviews and others in John O'Connor and Katherine Goodwin's collection of Shakespeare on the modern stage. 387 00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:46,950 The point I wanted to make by raising them very briefly is that decisions of casting, 388 00:43:46,950 --> 00:43:55,950 setting and direction can and usually do clarify or reshape the play's balance on stage. 389 00:43:55,950 --> 00:44:02,820 The actions of a stage bowling brook may therefore be interpreted with more clarity than those on the page. 390 00:44:02,820 --> 00:44:06,990 And it might be that there are endless provisional answers to whether Bowling 391 00:44:06,990 --> 00:44:12,750 Brook is justified by looking at the play in different kinds of performance. 392 00:44:12,750 --> 00:44:20,970 The answers to our interpretive questions about Shakespeare can be found, albeit in provisional and contingent form in the theatre. 393 00:44:20,970 --> 00:44:28,870 Even when we can't find them, however hard we try in the play on the stage. 394 00:44:28,870 --> 00:44:34,800 So I'm thinking I guess my conclusion is I don't think Shakespeare tells us if that's not comfortable for you. 395 00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:38,380 You need to look in the theatre where directors do tell us. 396 00:44:38,380 --> 00:44:42,730 So if you want an answer to the question, you can answer it in relation to specific productions. 397 00:44:42,730 --> 00:44:49,020 To do that, you can answer it very easily in relation to the play itself. 398 00:44:49,020 --> 00:44:54,000 Next week, I'm going to talk about Antony and Cleopatra, and the question I want to ask them is, whose tragedy is it? 399 00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:59,160 Who's tragedy? Is it? I think that will give us the chance to continue the discussion of the genre 400 00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:15,585 of tragedy and to think about gender reception and doubleness in that play.