Richard II

Richard II centers upon the problem of order and legitimacy in government, exploring both the issue of effective kingship and the difficulties in resolving deep-seated social and political divisions. Through both Richard’s decline and Henry IV’s problematic rise to power, the play depicts England as in a serious state of crisis which offers no easy resolutions.

In the political allegory offered by the gardener after Richard’s deposition, the country is compared to a garden, with the role of the king depicted as akin to that of a gardener who must tend to it so it can flourish: “All must be even in our government” (3.4.36), says the gardener of their work, since the “noisome weeds […] suck / The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers” (3.4.39-40). His assistant asks why they should bother when the whole kingdom:

Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers chok’d up

Her fruit-trees all unprun’d, her hedges ruin’d,

Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs

Swarming with caterpillars? (3.4.44-47).

In comparing the kingdom to a “disordered” garden that has been left “unprun’d,” “ruin’d,” and beset by “caterpillars,” the assistant points to how corrupt and ineffective Richard’s reign has been. In neglecting the common good and letting his kingdom go to ruin, Richard has called into question his own legitimacy as a king: The gardener regrets that Richard has not “so trim’d and dress’d his land / As we this garden” (3.4.56-57), in which case he would not have lost his crown. The gardener’s reasoning suggests that kings can only maintain their power through personal merit and the consent of their subjects.

The problem of legitimacy, however, only intensifies through Bolingbroke’s seizure of the throne, as Richard conceives of kingly legitimacy from quite another angle. When Richard first hears of Bolingbroke’s rebellion, he insists upon the legitimacy of power via the divine order of the world, proclaiming, “The breath of worldly men cannot depose / The deputy elected by the Lord” (3.2.56-57, emphasis added). By appealing to his status as a “deputy elected by the Lord,” Richard characterizes kingship as something that is divinely ordained, which “worldly men”—his mortal subjects—have no right to “depose” regardless of how they feel about his rule. Similarly, when Richard is called forth to renounce his crown, he accuses his subjects of committing a crime by defying their lawful king, describing his title as “usurp’d” (4.1.257) instead of lawfully passed on to Henry IV.

The play’s ambiguous ending leaves the question of legitimacy unresolved, as Henry IV’s fledgling reign is already beset by treasonous plots and tensions amongst the nobles remain as high as ever. The ending, with Henry IV’s horrified reaction to Richard’s murder, implies that a dangerous precedent has been set: If Henry IV has deposed Richard, then his own throne may not be all that secure either, as the nature of kingly legitimacy is now a matter of open dispute.