Recently Read: Richard II

Shakespeare. Shakespeare!

Sorry, that was a bit of a silly start, but yes, I've recently read Richard II.

A great play. It didn't really add much in regard my musings on Elizabeth I, but it was a good read. I don't want to write too much, so I won't review it in great detail. The character of Richard II is so strange I'll have to comment on that though. He's a bad king, who's let his kingdom fall into ruin, and he's also pathetic. A sissy, prima donna type of man. Sort of more how I'd imagine Charles I to be than Elizabeth I. However ..he's also incredibly poetic.

Of course, Shakespeare's writing his words, but still, it's an odd thing to witness. Such beautiful words coming from so weakened a man.

Snakes in my heart-blood warmed, that sting my heart! Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas!

It creates a real balance, where the sacred sense of overthrowing a king (Bolingbroke, later Henry IV, takes his crown) is expressed, even though he obviously needs overthrowing for being so bad.

The ambivalence in these Shakespeare plays is chalk and cheese compared to other plays of the era - where the villains are obviously wrong and the goodies obviously good. My last post was in review of the 1607 play, Sir Thomas Wyatt. This was head and shoulders better in quality. Almost from another planet.

England as the Best Land

The play also really lionises the idea of being English. This assured sense that there's just something better about it. It almost goes beyond patriotism and is said as if just stating fact.

Bolingbroke. Then, England’s ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu,
My mother and my nurse that bears me yet.
Where’er I wander, boast of this I can,
Though banished, yet a trueborn Englishman.

You wonder if this English self-assuredness has always been there, or if it was something essentially created, and written into life, by Shakespeare.

It brings to mind the Cecil Rhodes quote: ""Ask any man what nationality he would prefer to be, and ninety nine out of a hundred will tell you that they would prefer to be Englishmen."

Being objective you'd have to say this is just bias on the part of the English Cecil Rhodes, and of Englishmen in general. That no doubt all nations have a similar bias, though perhaps not to quite the same self-certain degree. However, as an English person, I have to admit that I really do feel this way. Deep down I do think that everyone would want to be English if they could choose. Arrogant though it sounds.

Where did this come from? Was it instilled in me through cultural osmosis?

This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessèd plot, this earth, this realm, this England

Finally

And finally, as ever I do like the little anachronisms. So it's worth noting there was another reference to the Tower of London being built by Caesar.

Queen. This way the King will come. This is the way

To Julius Caesar's ill-erected Tower

The other reference came in Richard III.