Authors often perform the task of cultural historians, eternalizing with their written word the popular perspectives and social opinions of their time. Shakespeare himself perfectly encapsulated in his writing the Renaissance mentality towards...

Honorable Mentions

The characters Prince Hal and King Henry in William Shakespeare’s drama Henry IV portray an unlikely father-son relationship. Shakespeare demonstrates Prince Hal's fate by associating him with consistent approaches of...

It is good to be the king, they say. What is perhaps not so good is being close enough to the king that you are presented with the opportunity to speak the truth when you clearly see somebody needs and nobody will. Kings, of course, lied under the...

In the 16th century, Niccolo Machiavelli stated on "The Prince" that leadership came mostly from theatrics. That is to say, to be a good leader one must first be a good actor, or at the very least be convincing enough to get the loyalty of the...

In Shakespeare’s King Henry IV, the people in the places of leadership manipulate the ordinary citizens for their own gain. In the wartime environment, basic common sense is sacrificed for the benefit and personal gain of people in power. Major...

In Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, Shakespeare appears on a micro level not to support divine right as characters throughout the plays consistently disrespect God and try to act above Him, yet when viewed more holistically it is clear that...

Individuals in power play a dangerous game as their agenda and leadership skills can subsequently result in the demise of a governing system, hence demanding the engagement with the political process. Shakespeare’s historical play king Henry IV...

Virtue is behaviour showing a high moral standard. In both Henry IV and Astrophel & Stella, virtue (or honour) is acknowledged but self-interest is shown to consistently dominate, with characters using varying modes of dishonesty to achieve or...

Immediately after learning of her husband’s imminent deposement, the Queen likens the abdication of King Richard II to the exile of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. “What Eve, what serpent hath suggested thee / [t]o make a second fall of...

Many tragic villains throughout a scope of tragedies have left audiences debating whether they were truly in the wrong, writers often introduce an ambiguity to their plays, novels or poems to allow the audience to debate the morality of the play....

The idea that the pride displayed by tragic heroes elevates them rather than diminishes them can be proven in relation to Shakespeare’s “Richard II” and Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” In both texts the protagonists display a great deal of pride...

William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of King Richard II, first published in a quarto edition in 1597, is the first in a sequence of four history plays known as the second tetrology, which deal with the early phases of a power struggle between the...

How valid is the distinction between history and tragedy in Richard II?

An attempt to sort Shakespeare's plays into neat categories may appear to have its benefits when striving to understand his work, but even a superficial reading of Richard II...

Shakespeare's genius in character and plot development is exemplified in two of his most complex history plays, Richard II and Henry IV, Part I. With these sequential plays, Shakespeare vividly develops characters and sets up complicated plots by...

Richard II, like most of Shakespeare's history plays (though, notably, unlike his comedies and tragedies), establishes a theatrical world dominated by men and masculinity. Female characters are few, and those that appear on the stage tend to say...

When Edmund challenges himself to conjure the worst prophecy he can think of for the forthcoming eclipse, he not only anticipates the plot of King Lear, but also highlights the fears of Tudor political society as

unnaturalness between the child and...

Known as a fine interpreter of human thought and action, William Shakespeare often relied on gender roles and stereotypes to create within the audience an opinion of a character or event. Since Elizabethan society made such great distinctions...

Thus I play in one person many people,

And none contented. Sometimes I am king,

Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,

And so I am.

V:v:31-34, King Richard II

While entangled in the throes of dramatic suspense, the self-reflexive concept of...

In the study of three of Shakespeare's plays, Twelfth Night, or What You Will, The Tragedy of Richard II, and Henry IV, Part 1, one of the themes that is presented is the contrast of "appearance vs. reality." Sometimes the confusion is comedic,...

What does an author intend to convey when he repeats certain words throughout a novel or a play? William Shakespeare uses this rhetorical strategy in his famous historical play, King Richard II. The two words "sacred" and "subject" are repeated...

Although the mighty king persona is almost always on display in the characters of Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V, the audience is at times presented with the inner workings found within the deep recesses of each monarch’s mind. The reader and...

Several of Shakespeare’s plays, including historical and tragedy, involve the political intrigue which results in the killing of a king. While the action revolving around this event may involve many more obvious themes, it is interesting to note...

Shakespeare’s history plays tend to focus on the drama of the rise and fall of kings, as we see in both Richard II and Henry IV Part 1. While the outcome of these stories was known to the theatergoers of his time, Shakespeare retold these stories...

In William Shakespeare’s Richard II, 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV, the idea of kingship undergoes radical transformation produced by Bolingbroke’s rebellion. Before this rebellion, the king is regarded as sacred, inviolable and divinely ordained....