FIRST FOLIO Teacher Curriculum Guide Welcome to the Table of Contents Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production Page Number of About the Play Richard II Synopsis of Richard II…..…….….... …….….2 by William Shakespeare Interview with the Director/About the Play…3 Historical Context: Setting the Stage….....4-5 Dear Teachers, Divine Right of Kings…………………..……..6 Consistent with the STC's central mission to Classroom Connections be the leading force in producing and Tackling the Text……………………………...7 preserving the highest quality classic theatre , Before/After the Performance…………..…...8 the Education Department challenges Resource List………………………………….9 learners of all ages to explore the ideas, Etiquette Guide for Students……………….10 emotions and principles contained in classic texts and to discover the connection between The First Folio Teacher Curriculum Guide for classic theatre and our modern perceptions. Richard II was developed by the We hope that this First Folio Teacher Shakespeare Theatre Company Education Curriculum Guide will prove useful as you Department. prepare to bring your students to the theatre! ON SHAKESPEARE First Folio Guides provide information and For articles and information about activities to help students form a personal Shakespeare’s life and world, connection to the play before attending the please visit our website production. First Folio Guides contain ShakespeareTheatre.org, material about the playwrights, their world to download the file and their works. Also included are On Shakespeare. approaches to explore the plays and productions in the classroom before and after the performance. Next Steps If you would like more information on how First Folio Guides are designed as a you can participate in other Shakespeare resource both for teachers and students. We Theatre Company programs, please call encourage you to photocopy articles you find the Education Hotline at 202.547.5688 helpful and distribute them to your students or visit our website as supplemental reading. ShakespeareTheatre.org. Sincerely, The Shakespeare Theatre Company Education Department Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production is part of Shakespeare for a New Generation , a national initiative Enjoy the show! sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation- with Arts Midwest. Miles Gilburne and Nina Zolt are founding sponsors of the educa- tion programs at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. 1 Synopsis of RICHARD II King Richard II and his uncle John of Gaunt try While he agrees to return to London with to settle a quarrel between Henry Bolingbroke Bolingbroke, Richard suspects that Bolingbroke (Gaunt’s son) and Thomas Mowbray. will force him to surrender the crown. When Bolingbroke accuses Mowbray of murdering they arrive, The Bishop of Carlisle warns that Gaunt’s brother Thomas of Woodstock. England will fall into chaos because of the Mowbray cannot say what he knows: that usurpation, so Northumberland arrests him. Richard himself ordered the Bolingbroke then forces assassination. The King Richard to hand over the cannot calm them, so he crown to him, making him allows them to compete in a King Henry IV. trial by combat. But he abruptly stops the joust Richard is ordered by Henry before it begins, and instead IV to go to northern England, sentences the two to and Richard’s queen is banishment from England: ordered to return to her native Mowbray permanently and France. York tells his wife of Bolingbroke for six years Richard’s tragic journey (reduced from ten to lessen through the streets of London, his father Gaunt’s despair). where the commoners threw Inconsolable, Gaunt rails dust and trash at him. York against Richard and dies, then discovers a plot by his and Richard opportunistically son Aumerle (renamed seizes Gaunt’s lands and Rutland by Henry IV for money. Henry Percy (Earl of supporting Richard) to Northumberland), Lord Ross assassinate Henry. York runs and Lord Willoughby all to inform King Henry, but criticize the king for a litany Aumerle and his mother plead of abuses, including taking for pardon, which Henry money from Gaunt and other reluctantly grants. Wallace Acton as Richard II in the nobles to fund a war with Shakespeare Theatre Company’s 2000 Ireland and taxing the production. Sir Pierce of Exton believes commoners. Angered by that Henry wishes Richard these seizures, Bolingbroke secretly returns to dead, and kills Richard in prison at Pomfret England with their help. Bolingbroke’s and castle (in our production, Richard is killed by Richard’s uncle the Duke of York warns Ross). King Henry has the Earl of Salisbury, Bolingbroke that he is wrong to defy the King’s Lord Spencer, Sir Thomas Blunt, and the Earl of order of banishment. Kent executed for supporting Richard, and Sir Leonard Brocas and Sir Bennet Seely for Bolingbroke defeats and executes Richard’s plotting with Aumerle to kill Henry. The Abbot of councilors, Sir John Bushy and Sir Henry Green Westminster kills himself to avoid capture, for “misleading” the King. Meanwhile, Richard though the Bishop of Carlisle is ordered by returns from war in Ireland to discover that his Henry to live out his days in some remote place. armies are crumbling and that many nobles and Finally, Exton brings Richard’s corpse to the commoners are joining Bolingbroke’s rebellion. king. Henry, however, is not happy to see Despondent, Richard flees to Flint castle with Richard dead, fearing that his death will create York’s son Aumerle, the Earl of Salisbury, Sir more trouble. He banishes Exton, and vows to Stephen Scroop, and the Bishop of Carlisle. travel to the Holy Land as penance for Richard’s When Bolingbroke arrives, he asks Richard to murder. repeal his banishment in exchange for peace. 2 An Interview with the Director: Michael Kahn discusses Richard II When we were planning the season last Now, many of those qualities might arise if year, it really interested me to deal with an you were told from birth that you were put issue that was on everyone’s mind before on earth by God to run the country, but in the Presidential election (and still is today): addition to his belief in the divine right of what are the qualities we look for in a leader kings, his personality seems to fit into a in a time of crisis? So we decided to find two modern understanding of a classic plays that would contrast ideas of narcissist. That insight has opened up for leadership, and who better to go to than me a way of looking at him as a Shakespeare, who really understood person who is more than just careless. politics and power? We picked two contrasting plays: Richard II, about a leader who is born with power and misuses it, but As always, one is continually amazed by then as that power is stripped from him Shakespeare’s understanding of what we learns what it means to be a human being; now know as modern psychology. We’ve and Henry V, about a flawed human being done this play several times at the who learns what it means to be a great Shakespeare Theatre Company, and I’ve leader. We hope that this repertory of plays always been aware of how mystified the will add to the discussion of what a person audience is for the first four scenes. needs to do to lead a nation. Richard is There’s been a murder before the play mercurial and moody, he goes from one begins, but as an audience we don’t know extreme of emotion to another very quickly, the importance of the person who has and he has very grandiose ideas about been killed, or how much maneuvering is himself. going on behind the scenes. The audience loves the poetry and the pageantry of those first scenes, but they usually don’t know what is going on until the fifth scene. That concerned me, and so I found a wonderful unfinished Elizabethan play (the author is unknown, but some scholars attribute all or part of it to Shakespeare) called Thomas of Woodstock , which tells the story of the events that lead up to Richard II. Thomas is Richard’s powerful uncle, and he is the one who dies under mysterious circumstances. So we’re going to start Richard II with scenes from that other play, Edward Gero as Henry Bolingbroke and which will help us to understand the Richard Thomas as Richard II. duplicity that goes on in those early Photo by T. Charles Erickson. moments, when almost everybody is lying and trying to make sure that nobody else tells the truth. 3 Historical Context of Richard II : Setting the Stage for the Wars of the Roses The Wars of the Roses marked a dark period in England’s history. The conflict centered around two opposing sides of the same Plantagenet family – the Houses of York and Lancaster, both descendants of King Edward III – who fought for possession of the crown. The name “Wars of the Roses” comes from the traditional use of the red rose as a symbol for the House of Lancaster and the white rose as a symbol for the House of York. Shakespeare dramatizes the conflict in a series of eight plays: Richard II , Henry IV Parts I and II , Henry V , Henry VI Parts I, II and III and Richard III . Although the first battle of the war was officially fought in 1455, the roots of the war can be traced to a question of succession in 1377, the year that Edward III died and young Richard II became king at the age of ten. Edward III outlived four of his seven sons including his eldest, who was also named Edward. Young Edward earned the nickname the “Black Prince” during his conquests in continental Europe, where he overpowered armies and won lands for England.