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Book #21 - Richard II
Sep. 21st, 2008 01:38 pmThis is the only play for my "Shakespeare's Early Plays" class which I haven't already read and/or performed. And I actually liked it quite a lot. Read it in one sitting, out of my stonking huge Complete Works of Shakespeare because the bookstore was out of the little paperbacks.
Richard himself... I'm kind of ambivalent. Sometimes he's obnoxiously selfish, others he's unbearably mopy "Let us sit upon the ground / and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings," and I only really sympathized with him toward the very end when he's saying farewell to his wife and they can't stop kissing each other (it's really adorable). But the more we talked about it in class, I started equating his bipolar antics with this notion of the king's two bodies. When he's up, he's the King-with-a-capital-K and life is good, and when he's down he's just poor (and mortal) Richard, king-with-a-lower-case-k. Also he might have secret wells of badassery because he singlehandedly killed two or three would-be murderers while he was imprisoned in the Tower.
And then sometimes I felt like I was reading the Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) show. Which is understandable since this is the prequel to that play, but it reminds me of how frustrated I was reading Henry IV, part 1 and feeling like I was watching the Prince Hal show. And oh, yes, that's the next play on our reading list. *facepalm* Maybe on second reading it won't be as much of a slog as it was last time.
Title: Richard II
Author: William Shakespeare
Pages: 352
21 / 24 books. 88% done!
Richard himself... I'm kind of ambivalent. Sometimes he's obnoxiously selfish, others he's unbearably mopy "Let us sit upon the ground / and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings," and I only really sympathized with him toward the very end when he's saying farewell to his wife and they can't stop kissing each other (it's really adorable). But the more we talked about it in class, I started equating his bipolar antics with this notion of the king's two bodies. When he's up, he's the King-with-a-capital-K and life is good, and when he's down he's just poor (and mortal) Richard, king-with-a-lower-case-k. Also he might have secret wells of badassery because he singlehandedly killed two or three would-be murderers while he was imprisoned in the Tower.
And then sometimes I felt like I was reading the Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) show. Which is understandable since this is the prequel to that play, but it reminds me of how frustrated I was reading Henry IV, part 1 and feeling like I was watching the Prince Hal show. And oh, yes, that's the next play on our reading list. *facepalm* Maybe on second reading it won't be as much of a slog as it was last time.
Title: Richard II
Author: William Shakespeare
Pages: 352
