Richard II

The historical Richard II was born in 1367. He was the son of Edward, the Prince of Wales (the eldest son of Edward III), who was known as “the Black Prince,” probably because he wore black armor. The Black Prince died in 1376, leaving Richard the direct heir to his grandfather, Edward III. When Edward III died in 1377, 10-year-old Richard became king. Initially, a council was appointed to rule on his behalf in which Richard’s uncles—John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, and Thomas of Woodstock, the Duke of Gloucester—played prominent roles. Gaunt remained Richard’s advisor until his death in February 1399.

Even before he attained adulthood, Richard played a prominent role in affairs of state. Most notably, in 1381 he helped to put down the Peasants’ Revolt, a rebellion against poll taxes, for which the adolescent king was praised for his courage. In 1389, at the age of 22, he assumed full royal authority. In 1394, Richard managed to pacify Ireland; in 1396, he made peace with France. To solidify the new peace, he married Isabel, the French king’s daughter, who was only six years old at the time. His first wife, Anne of Bohemia, had died in 1394, without having had any children.

In 1397, Richard quarreled with some of his nobles and arrested three of them, including the Duke of Gloucester. Gloucester died in prison at Calais. While some historians believe that Gloucester was murdered, whether Richard ordered the murder and whether Mowbray carried it out is not known. The dispute between Mowbray and Bolingbroke began in December 1397, and Shakespeare’s Richard II begins at the end of April 1398 with Bolingbroke accusing Mowbray of treason. This was the beginning of the end for Richard’s reign, as the play shows.

Richard’s death took place in February 1400 at Pontefract Castle (the Pomfret castle of the play), only a few months after Bolingbroke was crowned king as Henry IV in October 1399. According to one account given by Holinshed, Richard fought back against his attackers and killed four of them. However, modern historians do not know for certain the cause of Richard’s death, and the extent of Henry IV’s involvement is likewise a matter of dispute.

Shakespeare used a number of sources for the play. Most important was the second edition of Chronicles (1587), a work by the English historian Raphael Holinshed. Shakespeare made some alterations to Holinshed’s account by omitting some material, adding some elements, and sometimes condensing the time sequence. For example, Shakespeare condensed the events depicted in Act II, Scene 1. The death of Gaunt, Richard’s departure for Ireland, and Bolingbroke’s return from exile follow in quick succession, whereas in reality these events took several months to unfold.