Richard, a king in love with the poetry of kingship, banishes his cousin Bolingbroke and seizes his inheritance — then watches, almost mesmerized, as Bolingbroke returns to take everything.
It is written entirely in verse, and the language does the work drama usually leaves to swords: the deposition scene turns a transfer of power into a shattering piece of theatre about identity itself. Read it before the Henry IV plays; everything that follows in the tetralogy is an argument about what happened here.
Richard II on screen
1The Hollow Crown: Richard II (2012)
TV film · dir. Rupert Goold
Reading Richard II this year?
Mark it in your record when you finish — one seat, kept for decades.