1595 Monday 26 th November 2012 Insert genealogy DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER Fear not that madam Englands not mutinous Tis peopled all with subjects not with outlaws Though Richard much misled by flatterers ID: 234796
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Slide1
Richard II (1595)
Monday
26
th
November
2012Slide2
Insert genealogySlide3
[
DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER]
Fear not that, madam. England’s not mutinous;
‘Tis
peopled all with subjects, not with outlaws.
Though Richard (much misled by flatterers)
Neglects and throws his
scepter
carelessly,
Yet none dares rob him
of
his kingly rule
.
Woodstock,
II.iii at http://www.american-shakespeare.com/scriptsSlide4
King Richard
II
Needs must I like it well: I weep for joy
To stand upon my kingdom once again.
Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,
Though rebels wound thee with their horses' hoofs:
As a long-parted mother with her child
Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting,
So, weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,
And do thee favours with my royal hands.
Feed not thy sovereign's foe, my gentle earth,
Nor
with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense;
But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom,
And heavy-gaited toads lie in their way,
Doing annoyance to the treacherous feet
Which with usurping steps do trample thee:
Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies;
And when they from thy bosom pluck a flower,
Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking adder
Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch
Throw death upon thy sovereign's enemies.
Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords:
This earth shall have a feeling and these stones
Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king
Shall falter under foul rebellion's arms.
Richard II
, III.ii.4-26Slide5
Edmund of Langley.
Then, as I said, the duke, great Bolingbroke,
Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed
Which his aspiring rider
seem'd
to know,
With slow but stately pace kept on his course,
Whilst all tongues cried 'God save
thee, Bolingbroke
!'
You would have thought the very windows
spake
,
So many greedy looks of young and old
Through casements darted their desiring eyes
Upon his visage, and that all the walls
With painted imagery had said at once
'
Jesu
preserve thee! welcome, Bolingbroke!'
Whilst he, from the one side to the other turning,
Bareheaded, lower than his proud steed's neck,
Bespake
them thus: 'I thank you, countrymen:'
And thus still doing, thus he
pass'd
along.
RII
, V.ii.7-21Slide6
Servant.
Why should we in the compass of a pale
Keep law and form and due proportion,
Showing, as in a model, our firm estate,
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,
Her fruit-trees all upturned, her hedges
ruin'd
,
Her knots
disorder'd
and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars?
III.iv.40-47
Gardener.
They are; and Bolingbroke
Hath
seized the wasteful king. O, what pity is it
That he had not so
trimm'd
and
dress'd
his land
As we this garden! We at time of year
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees,
Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself:
Had he done so to great and growing men,
They might have lived to bear and he to taste
Their fruits of duty: superfluous branches
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live:
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,
Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.
III.iv.54-66Slide7
John of Gaunt.
This
royal throne of kings, this
scepter'd
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 blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd
by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear
dear
land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
II.i.40-60Slide8
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself
.
II.i61-66Slide9
Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land
Wherein thou
liest
in reputation sick;
And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
Commit'st
thy anointed body to the cure
Of those physicians that first wounded thee:
A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;
And yet,
incaged
in so small a verge,
The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.
O, had thy grandsire with a prophet's eye
Seen how his son's son should destroy his sons,
From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,
Deposing thee before thou
wert
possess'd
,
Which art
possess'd
now to depose thyself.
Why, cousin,
wert
thou regent of the world,
It were a shame to let this land by lease;
But for thy world enjoying but this land,
Is it not more than shame to shame it so?
Landlord of England art thou now, not king:
Thy state of law is
bondslave
to the law
;
II.i.95-114Slide10
Sir Edward Coke’s Abstract of Issues to be Put to Hayward in Interrogation on July 11
th
1600
he
selecteth
a story 200
yere
olde
, and publisheth it this last yere, intendinge the application of it to this tymemaketh choice of that story only, a kinge is taxed for misgovernment, his council for corrupt and covetous for their private, the king censured, for conferring benefits of hateful parasites and favourites, the nobles discontented, the commons groaning under continual taxations. Hereuppon the king is deposed by an erle and in the ende murderd.
When the vilest of all indignities are done unto me, doth religion force me to sue? Or doth God require it? Is it impiety not to do it? What, cannot princes err? Cannot subjects receive wrong ? Is an earthly power or authority infinite
?
Essex to Lord Keeper
Egerton
in 1598Slide11
divine right of kings,
doctrine in
defence
of monarchical absolutism, which asserted that kings derived their authority from God and could not therefore be held accountable for their actions by any earthly authority such as a parliament. Originating in Europe, the divine-right theory can be traced to the medieval conception of God’s award of temporal power to the political ruler, paralleling the award of spiritual power to the church. By the 16th and 17th centuries, however, the new national monarchs were asserting their authority in matters of both church and state
. Slide12
Further Reading
Glenn
Burgess, ‘The
Divine Right of Kings
Reconsidered’,
The
English Historical Review
, Vol. 107, No. 425 (Oct., 1992), pp.
837-861.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/574219 Maynard Mack, Killing the King: Three Studies in Shakespeare’s Tragic Structure (Yale University Press, 1973), pp. 1-74.David Norbrook, ‘The Emperor’s New Body? Richard II, Ernst Kantorowicz, and the Politics of Shakespeare Criticism’, Textual Practice
10 (2), 1996, 329-357.Slide13
In his classic,
The King's Two Bodies
(1957), medievalist Ernst
Kantorowicz
describes
a profound transformation in the concept of political authority over the course of the Middle Ages. The change began when the concept of the body of Christ evolved into a notion of two bodies — one, the
corpus
naturale
, the consecrated host on the altar, the other, the
corpus
mysticum, the social body of the church with its attendant administrative structure. This latter notion — of a collective social organization having an enduring, mystical essence — would come to be transferred to political entities, the body politic. Kantorowicz then describes the emergence, in the late Middle Ages, of the concept of the king's two bodies, vivified in Shakespeare's Richard II and applicable to the early modern body politic. Whereas the king's natural, mortal body would pass away with his death, he was also thought to have an enduring, supernatural one that could not be destroyed, even by assassination, for it represented the mystical dignity and justice of the body politic. The modern polity that emerged dominant in early modern Europe manifested the qualities of the collectivity that Kantorowicz described — a single, unified one, confined within territorial borders, possessing a single set of interests, ruled by an authority that was bundled into a single entity and held supremacy in advancing the interests of the polity. Though in early modern times, kings would hold this authority, later practitioners of it would include the people ruling through a constitution, nations, the Communist Party, dictators, juntas, and theocracies. The modern polity is known as the state, and the fundamental characteristic of authority within it, sovereignty
.Slide14
Printing history of Shakespeare’s
Richard
II
[
Q1] 1597. The
Tragedie
of King Richard the second. As it hath been
publikely
acted by the right Honourable the
Lorde
Chamberlaine his Servants. [Q2] 1598. By William Shakespeare. [Q3] 1598.[Q4] 1608. With new additions of the Parliament Sceane, and the deposing of King Richard. As it hath been lately acted by the Kinges Majesties servantes, at the Globe. [The added passage is IV.i.154-318][Q5] 1615.[F1] 1623 (Collection of most of Shakespeare’s works)[Q6] 1634.Read the excised section of the text which was restored in 1608. How seditious does this seem to you in the light of the ensuing scandal? Why would James not feel equally threatened by it in 1608?