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2021 Richard II: A Criticism of the Mechanisms of Divine Right Jackson Kendall Alley

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THE FLORIDA STATE

UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

RICHARD II: A CRITICISM OF THE

MECHANISMS OF DIVINE RIGHT

By

JACKSON ALLEY

A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major

Degree Awarded: Summer, 2021

The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Jackson Alley defended on March 31 2021.

Professor Bruce Boehrer

Thesis Director

Asst. Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

Outside Committee Member

Asst. Professor Carla Della Gatta

Committee Member

Signatures are on file with the Honors Program office.

2 ABSTRACT

Through a careful look at historical and textual evidence, this essay will endeavor to argue that, by allowing Bolingbroke’s ascension to the throne to be consistent with divine right politics,

Richard II critiques divine right politics as a means of commenting on the crisis of succession.

Showcasing the ways in which divine right doctrine holds royalty accountable to God, Richard II plays off the insecurities of the audience, underscoring questions about the institution of divine right politics that were long circulating in Elizabethan political discourse.

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction – 5

The Question of Divine Right – 6

A Historical Perspective on Divine Right – 12

A Historical Perspective on Elizabethan Society – 18

Final Act – 26

Works Cited - 28

4 INTRODUCTION

It is certainly true that no conception of authority was more magnanimous or widespread in

Early Modern Europe than the divine right of kings. This theory, which proclaimed that royal authority was sanctified by the Christian God, dominated European politics from 800 A.D. all the way up to the enlightenment. However, the doctrine had a very tumultuous history, shifting and taking on new forms throughout its reign. In its earliest configuration, royalty would point to certain passages in the bible to appeal their authority to the masses. Around the year 1100, royalty began to seek legitimacy from the pope through the ceremony of coronation. This arrangement was easy to understand for the faithful populace. However, as England began to form the basis of

Protestantism following the reformation, the king claimed authority over both the political and spiritual realms, and popular understandings of the state, the church, and the king underwent a radical change.

This particular evolution of divine right doctrine proved to be incredibly significant in

England, as the split between Catholic and Protestant conceptions of authority lead to decades of political strife. Not only did English Catholics launch full-scale depositions in an attempt to bring the sceptered isle back under papal control, but Protestant attempts to retain power would seriously undermine divine claims to the throne. The result, according to Patrick Collinson, was an anxious England unsure about the future of the monarchy (47). This tumultuous era birthed

English playwright William Shakespeare, and the angst surrounding the divine right of kings would take center stage in his early political plays, known as the histories.

One of these history plays, Richard II, focused more on the divine right of kings than perhaps any other. Through a strong emphasis on pageantry and ceremony, it tells the story of

King Richard, a young, arrogant, and “rightful” king, who is deposed by his cunning and popular cousin, Henry Bolingbroke. The play reinforces this deceptively straightforward premise by

5 including long soliloquys that lament the fall of the “true king” Richard and lambast the blasphemy of Bolingbroke. Still, critics have found creative ways to reimagine the tragedy since at least the 18 th century. Famed poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge identified that Richard II attached patriotism to rebellion (Forker 47) and English scholar John Heraud suggested in 1865 that the tragedy of

Richard II “respected popular will [over divine right].” Moderns scholars, particularly those of the historicist persuasion, have built off this solid foundation by exploring how the work interacts with

Elizabethan authority. In How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage, Peter Lake aligns Richard II with mid-1590’s texts on tyranny and revolution (591), while Stephen Greenblatt in Tyrant discusses the revolutionary potential of Richard II through the lens of the Essex Rebellion (31), an attempted coup in which the perpetrators requested a private viewing of Shakespeare’s play only days before their siege. However, the brilliant critical history of Richard II still holds the central premise of the play, that being Richard’s divine kingship and Bolingbroke’s blasphemous brand, to be true. I will endeavor to challenge that presumption by casting Bolingbroke as the sacred inheritor to the English throne. Through a close examination of the text, historical sources, and scholarship, I will establish the textual evidence for this interpretation, explore how the new interpretation interacts with historical understandings of divine right doctrine, and finally demonstrate how this interpretation speaks to the revolutionary undercurrents of Elizabethan society. Ultimately, this essay will reveal a radical perspective behind the play by arguing that

Bolingbroke’s divinely conceived succession draws attention to the mechanisms of divine right that hold kings accountable to God, enjoin obedience to God over obedience to kings, and encourage revolutionary action against blasphemous kings.

6 THE QUESTION OF DIVINE RIGHT

It is first necessary to probe how divine right functions within the text. The Oxford

Shakespeare anthology introduces Richard II as a “nuanced representation of [England’s political conflicts]” (1), and Harry Berger Jr. observes that the relationship between divine right and the king’s behavior is the foremost question among modern critics (175). Because of this, it is important to approach divine right politics as the central focus of the work. Although it presents a seemingly clear premise, with Richard as the divinely appointed king and Bolingbroke as the usurper, a closer consideration of divine right within the text reveals a much more challenging conflict. The tale being told is not one of a king losing his divinely ordained rulership at the hands of a traitorous usurper. Rather, it is the tale of Richard’s fall from divine grace and Bolingbroke’s divinely conceived succession. This is clearly demonstratable through the text itself.

Recently, a number of essays have challenged and stressed our assumptions about

Richard’s divine right in Richard II. In The Philosophers English King, Harold Craig remarks that

Richard’s interruption of the duel is contrary to the will of God (11). In “Holy Dying in Richard

II,” Robert Schula impressively suggests that John of Gaunt’s death scene invokes widely understood demonic imagery in the character of Richard, arguing that the duel scene represents

Richard’s fall from grace (53). Although putting forward diverse arguments, both essays identify the duel scene as an important turning point in the play and uphold the scene as, what I would like to call, a holy betrayal. This holy betrayal signals several dramatic shifts in Richard II.

Characterizations, dialogue, and imagery take on new forms after duel scene, displaying Richard’s fall from divine grace and suggesting a divinely conceived succession for Bolingbroke.

Prior to the duel scene, Shakespeare goes through great lengths to establish Richard as the rightful king of England. According to Leonard Tennenhouse, “…few if any monarchs in the entire sequence of history plays are represented at the outset of their dramas with a more secure claim to

7 the throne [than Richard]” (76). No doubt this comes from his lineage, being the first-born son of a first-born prince, as well as the respects paid to his divinity by the supporting cast. Certain lines, such as this one from Richard in the premier scene, make this premise seem unquestionable. He says of Bolingbroke, “Should nothing privilege him nor partialize / the unstooping firmness of my upright soul” (I.i.120), clearly asserting the “superiority” of his claim to the throne.

John of Gaunt, Uncle to Richard and Father to Bolingbroke, emphatically protects

Richard’s divine claim to the throne prior to the duel scene. In Act 1 Scene 2, despite the overwhelming sorrow of his brother’s murder at the hands of Richard, he cannot bring himself to question the king’s divine claim to the throne. He says: “God’s is the quarrel; for God’s substitute,

/ His deputy anointed in His sight, / Hath caused his death, the which if wrongfully / Let heaven revenge, for I may never lift / An angry arm against His minister” (I.ii.250). In this comment,

Gaunt staunchly defends Richard’s divine right. Only heaven can judge Richard, for he has no right to challenge “God’s substitute.” Gaunt cannot question the divinity of the king because

Richard has not yet committed the holy betrayal in the duel scene. Despite this, the phrase “let heaven revenge” rings as an eerie premonition; The same divine privileges which now protect

Richard from the wrath of Gaunt will later betray the young king as his prayers for protection against Bolingbroke’s siege go unanswered.

The duel scene itself is established as a chivalric and holy ritual from the very beginning.

When declaring the time and place for the duel in the opening scene, Richard says that, “we shall see / Justice design the victors chivalry” (I.i.208), indicating that divine justice will decide the outcome of the duel. The religious nature of the duel becomes more explicit in the lists as the

Lord Marshall commands Mowbray and Bolingbroke to “Speak like a true knight, so defend thee heaven” (I.iii.308), and the combatants seek “to prove by God’s grace” (I.iii.332) the treachery of their opponents. Because of this, we can see that the duel is based on “the premise that the victor

8 was favored by God” (Craig 5), and its abrupt abortion is “made to seem [like] a sacrilegious violation of chivalric ritual” (McCoy 1). The result of this, according to Robert Schuler, is a fallen king who has betrayed God by arrogating himself above Him (53).

This monumental event results in noticeable changes in certain characters. John of Gaunt, who was previously incapable of the slightest criticisms of Richard, is freed of any such apprehensions following the holy betrayal. Directly in opposition to his earlier characterization of

Richard as “God’s Substitute,” Gaunt confronts him with his mortal limitations, lamenting that

Richard “cannot lend [him] a morrow” (I.iii.538). Later in that same scene, Gaunt commands

Bolingbroke to “Think not the King did banish thee, / but thou art the King” (I.iii.580), a glib foreshadowing that undermines the synthesis of God and Richard by theoretically granting the privilege of kingship to Bolingbroke. In the very next scene, Gaunt warns to York that “[Richard’s] rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last” (II.i.715) and says to Richard, “O, no, Thou diest, though I the sicker be” (II.i.775), foreshadowing Richard’s fall from divine grace while providing a diagnosis, that Richard’s “blood, like the pelican, / Hast thou tapp’d out and drunkenly caroused” (II.i.810).

This damning proclamation becomes even more powerful when it is considered alongside Gaunt’s prophetic nature. According to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the final speeches from Gaunt are “so beautiful and proper” that “in the mouth of a dying man…[they] thence partook in prophecy”

(Forker 97). With this in mind, it is clear that Richard’s fall from Gaunt’s graces is more significant than a family feud. Rather, there is a divine component in Gaunt’s glib predictions of the former king’s fate.

Richard himself undergoes a similar shift after his holy betrayal. While he previously emphasized “forgiveness” (I.i.158) in the first scene when mediating the dispute between Mowbray and Bolingbroke, his conditions for their banishment following the duel scene are decidedly unchristian. Richard says, “You never shall, so help you truth and God! / Embrace each other’s

9 love in banishment…nor reconcile / This louring tempest of your home-bred hate” (I.iii.483). This depraved command is strikingly out-of-pocket for a Christian king. As Leon Craig puts it, “a promise to continue to hate one’s enemy, rather than forgive and love him, [is] downright diabolical on the part of God’s anointed deputy” (11). Furthermore, Robert Shuler’s essay “Holy

Dying in Richard II” locates demonic undertones from Richard in the duel scene. He remarks that

“the contrived language of his charges against the Dukes…is ironically self-indicting…because these explicitly Luciferian faults lead, he says, to the very horror of which he himself is already guilty:

‘wad[ing]even in our kindred’s blood’” (53). This all suggests an unfortunate change in his character, and Richard’s penchant for indicting himself continues into the following scene.

Immediately after the conclusion of the conclusion of the duel scene, Richard exclaims that

Bolingbroke acts as though “our England in reversion his / And he our subjects next degree in hope” (II.i.649). This astonishing foreshadowing is especially poignant when considered alongside

Charles Forker’s statement that Richard’s rhetoric “obliterates the space between the signified and the signifier” (qtd in Schuler 53). This observation, combined with the prophecies of John of

Gaunt as well as the explicitly demonic undertones of Richard’s behavior throughout the duel scene, leads me to conclude that Richard’s foreshadowing seals his own fate as the lame-duck king of England.

This observation is confirmed by the unfortunate prophecies and demonic imagery that occur throughout the remainder of the play. Take this soliloquy from the Earl of Salisbury as an example: “Ah Richard! With the eyes of heavy mind / I see thy glory like a shooting star / Fall to the base earth from the firmament. / Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west, / witnessing storms to come, woe, and unrest. / Thy friends are fled to wait upon thy foes, / And crossly to thy good all fortune goes” (II.iv.1349). This soliloquy features dramatic movements of rising and falling; The setting sun and falling star are likened to Richard, and their nature as celestial bodies draws

10 important connections to the divine that are reinforced by the religious imagery; The word

“firmament” specifically recalls the opening lines of Genesis, and Shakespeare appropriates the imagery of a fallen angel as Richard “like a shooting star [Fall’s] to the base earth…” The final line,

“crossly to thy good all fortune goes,” invokes religious imagery of the cross while implying that

Richard’s “good fortune,” his divine claim to the throne, now works against him.

The subversive strands of this soliloquy begin to take form when we consider the ways in which Shakespeare used wordplay. As M.M. Mahood explains, “wordplay was a game that the

Elizabethan’s took seriously” (1). Shakespeare was a master this game, and he used his talent to weave several different meanings into the soliloquy’s simile “I see thy glory like a shooting star.”

The technique used in this simile is a kind of wordplay known as “associative wordplay” (Mahood

21), which takes advantage of a word’s disparate definitions in order to create new meanings or to add depth. In the simile, the noun “glory” is the focus of this kind of pun. For one, a possible definition of “glory” is “the praise or worship of God” (OED), a definition which continues the demonic imagery of Richard’s fall by implying that Richard’s “praise of God” has “fallen to the base earth.” The other definition of “glory” here is “something that is beautiful, impressive, or deserves praise.” However, this certainly does not sound like Richard! After all, he is a “weed” that has “choked up [his land’s] fairest flowers,” a lame-duck king that is hardly worthy of being called

“glorious.” In fact, Richard’s only quality that is “beautiful, impressive, or deserving praise,” is his divine right to rule. Therefore, the word “glory” is not exactly a descriptor, but is instead offered up as an abstract representation of Richard’s divine right to rule. When considering both of the puns on the word “glory,” it is understood that when Salisbury remarks that he sees Richard’s

“glory…falling to the base earth from [heaven],” he is not only observing a decline in Richard’s character, but rather witnessing Richard’s fall from grace and his descent into the “base earth.”

11 M.M. Mahood remarks that these devices “contribute to…the descent of Richard and rise of Bolingbroke like buckets in a well.” Just as the fall of Richard is communicated through subversive wordplay that suggests the loss of his divine right, Bolingbroke’s rise is communicated through identical wordplay which conversely suggests that he has “taken up” Richard’s divine station. For example, when Richard exclaims 3 that Bolingbroke “threats the glory of [his] precious crown” (III.iii.1731), he is “attaching” his divine right to rule, the meaning teased out of the associative wordplay from the Earl of Salisbury, to his “glorious” crown.

The fact that this “glorious” crown then takes center stage in the deposition scene is incredibly significant. This dialogue from Richard, “Up, cousin up: your heart is up, I know, /

Thus high at least (indicating his crown), although your knee be low” (III.iii.1843) kickstarts the more-formal pageantry of the deposition scene with the imagery of the crown. Richard begins by flattering Bolingbroke’s heart before making the shocking comment that his usurper is “at least” as

“high” as his glorious crown. The obvious conclusion here is that Richard, who’s rhetoric

“obliterates the space between signified and signifier” (qtd in Schuler 53), is either recognizing or manifesting Bolingbroke’s new status as the divinely sanctioned king of England. This conclusion is further supported by the unmistakable imagery of the heart. The heart, used throughout Richard

II as an organ that contains divine blood as well as the essence of one’s soul, is as “high up” as the glorious crown. The significance of the crown reaches its climax during the first scene of Act 4 as

Richard hosts the formal transition of power. Richard directs Bolingbroke to “…seize the crown; /

Here cousin: / On this side my hand, and on that side yours. / Now is this golden crown like a deep well / That owes two buckets, filling one another” (IV.i.2169). The divine crown is crucially represented as an absolute whole; not partialized or diminished as Bolingbroke assumes it, as one were to expect if he were truly a despot. Rather, the crown is always at an equilibrium, and

Bolingbroke assumes the divine crown in its whole capacity as Richard relinquishes it.

12 Finally, this significant imagery comes to a head as Richard deposes his “glories” in Act 4.

He says, “My crown I am; but still my griefs are mine: / You may my glory and my state depose, / but not my griefs; still I am king of those” (IV.i.2180). Bolingbroke is certainly taking up a divine responsibility when Richard relinquishes the crown. This weighty claim is further supported by the curious word choice of the second line, “You may my glory and my state depose.” Richard’s invocation of this weighty word confirms that his divine right has “fallen to the base earth,” only to now be taken up by Bolingbroke, the true and sacred king of England.

II. A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON DIVINE RIGHT

By committing a holy betrayal in the duel scene, evidenced by Richard and John of Gaunt’s dramatic shift after the scene as well as previous scholarship on the topic, Richard has fallen from divine grace. Bolingbroke, by taking up Richard’s symbolically divine crown and deposing his

“glory,” sufficiently demonstrates that his ascendance to the throne is greater than a base political act. Certainly, he has attained a divine consent to rule England. However, how does this challenging interpretation align with historical conceptions of divine right and sacral kingship?

According to John Neville Figgis, the divine right of kings in Elizabethan England was defined by the following four conditions: (1) Monarchy is a divinely ordained institution, (2)

Hereditary Right is indefeasible, (3) Kings are accountable to God alone, and (4) Non-resistance and passive obedience are enjoined by God. In order to fully understand the ways in which

Richard II’s comments on divine right, each of these components should be considered individually in their literary and historical context. Doing so will reveal the ways in which

Shakespeare emphasizes the dissentious aspects of the doctrine throughout Richard II.

First, it hardly needs to be expounded upon that Richard II affirms Monarchy as a divinely ordained institution. However, t is incredibly important to note that, according to Figgis, “The

13 theory of the Divine Right of Kings belongs to an age in which not only religion, but theology and politics were inextricably mingled…even for utilitarian public policy, all men demanded some form of divine authority” (11). In other words, criticisms of authority did not necessarily “escape” the sanctification of royalty. Instead, they would uphold the theological qualities of kingship, and instead focus their criticisms on the piety of their rulers. One particularly noteworthy example of this is found in Thomas Starkey’s Dialogue Between Pole and Lupset, “one of the most significant works of political thought written between Fortescue and Hooker” (Mayer 1). This dialogue claims that “since tyranny resulted from the fall of man and was not God’s creation, men have the right to usurp tyrants” (Murphey). By concocting a divinely conceived succession in Richard II as a direct result of a fall from “God’s creation,” Richard II, like Starkey’s Dialogue, questions the divinity of corrupt rulers. In many ways, the assertion that Richard II criticizes Divine Right politics by upholding its central premise is not as outlandish as it initially seems. According to John Neville

Figgis, it is the single most likely way that a criticism of authority would have been presented.

The second condition, which upholds the necessity and legitimacy of patriarchal succession, is expounded upon by Filmer’s Patriarcha, a notorious work of political science that details the nature of kingly succession. Patriarcha contends for the divine right of kings through two concurrent arguments, that kings are as fathers in a patriarchal family, and that kings extend their patriarchal authority to the whole of their kingdoms by God’s will, which is inherited through superior bloodline succession to Adam. This idea, called “Patriarchalism,” is considered to “form the most symmetrical form of the doctrine of divine right” (Figgis 8).

The comparison between fatherhood and kingship is an incredibly important characteristic of divine right doctrine. In section III of Patriarcha, Filmer says that “…Patriarchs had, by right of fatherhood, Royal authority over their children” (4). Citing the biblical story of Judah and Tamar, among others, Filmer makes the argument that the natural station of the patriarch is to command,

14 judge, make war, and conclude peace. These are “the chief works of sovereignty found in any monarch…As the Father over one family, so the King, as Father over many families, extends his care to preserve, feed, clothe, instruct and defend the whole commonwealth” (4). According to

Filmer, just as the father is the monarch of the household, so is the monarch is the father of his kingdom. In Richard II, this relationship between king and father is represented through simile;

“Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks, Which, like unruly children, make their sire Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight” (III.iv.1893). The same apricock tree which “Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf” (III.iv.1914) is weighted by the prodigal weight of his “unruly children.” The simile likens the king to a father, and his subjects to his children, mirroring the thesis of patriarchalism that royal authority is attached to patriarchal authority.

According to is located through superior bloodline descendance from Adam. In

Patriarcha, this descendance is demonstrated by exercising patriarchal authority over lesser fathers.

According to Filmer, “Civil power…in general is by Divine institution, [and so is] the assigning of it specifically to the eldest parent” (4), and furthermore; “For as Adam was lord of his children, so his children under him had a command over their own children, but still with subordination to the first parent, who is lord paramount over his children’s children to all generations, as being the grandfather of his people” (4). Because of this, demonstrating patriarchal authority over lesser fathers is perhaps one way of signifying divine right to rule.

Considering exactly who wields this royal/patriarchal authority in Richard II, and therefore who possesses a divine claim to the throne, reveals a contrast in kingliness between Richard and

Bolingbroke. On one hand, Bolingbroke demonstrates the sort of patriarchal authority that aligns with the qualities of legitimate kingship. For example, Bolingbroke skillfully parries the objections of his uncle and eldest patriarch, the Duke of York, when he begins his siege in Act 2 Scene 3.

Bolingbroke says to York, “Noble uncle, I beseech your grace / Look on my wrongs with an

15 indifferent eye” (II.iii.1273), to which the Duke of York responds with a declaration of his own inferiority to Bolingbroke, “Because my power is weak and all ill left…so fare you well”

(II.iii.1317).

Richard, on the other hand, frequently allows John of Gaunt to undermine and overpower him. In Act 2 Scene 1, John of Gaunt says “O, spare me not, my brother Edward's son, / For that I was his father Edward's son” (II.i.808). By shirking the admonition of his nephew, John of Gaunt asserts his political power over Richard as the patriarch of the family. Just as Filmer says, “No child can be free from subjection to their parents…which is the fountain of all royal authority” (4), and just as no child can be free from subjection to their parents, Richard is unable to free himself from his subjection to the superior familial patriarch. Richard, unable to exercise this dominance which is “the fountain of all royal authority” finds himself in an incredibly fragile state; unable to secure his claim as patriarch, and therefore unable to secure his claim as king.

The struggle between Richard’s assume divine appointment and his inability to exercise patriarchal authority results in a tension between himself and historical conceptions of royal authority. The privilege of divine appointment goes to Bolingbroke, who is able to exercise patriarchal authority over his Uncle. Due to this important contrast, Richard II simultaneously displays Bolingbroke’s divine succession to Richard while pointing out that a core condition of divine right, that “hereditary right is indefeasible,” does not protect tyrants.

Figgis’ third condition of divine right contends for the absolute legal authority of kings. The

Elizabethan king is “Lex Loquens,” a latin phrase that means “speaking law,” and their word cannot be challenged by any act of parliament. However, despite their seemingly absolute authority, kings are still expected to lead according to the word of God. In a 1584 sermon, Lord

Chamberlain William Dickinson proclaims that “KINGS are to consider whose person they sustaine, that they Iudge not for man, but for the Lord who is with them in the Iudgement” (12).

16 The punishment for rejecting this responsibility was divine retribution; Later in that same sermon, the Lord Chamberlain remarks that “whosover breaketh an hedge, a Serpent shall bite him” (12), a couched reference to this punishment that tyrants were expected to receive.

The historical belief that kings are accountable to God is a prominent theme of Richard II.

In these well-known lines from Act 1 Scene 2, John of Gaunt declares that “God's is the quarrel; for God's substitute, / His deputy anointed in His sight, / Hath caused his death: the which if wrongfully, Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift /An angry arm against His minister” (I.ii.250).

Here, John of Gaunt comforts himself with the knowledge that Richard will face judgement from

God for his actions. As the events of the play unfold, Richard does feel the wrath of “heaven’s revenge,” as the “usurping hands [that] trample him” (III.ii.1425) remove him of his station, his pride, and eventually his life.

John of Gaunt’s reflex to value divine judgement over his own will perfectly reflects the fourth condition of divine right, that “non-resistance and passive obedience are enjoined by God.”

According to Figgis, “Under any circumstances, resistance to a king is a sin, and ensures damnation” (8). Still, the prerogative to obey kings under all circumstances is blunted by the qualifier that God is to be obeyed over kings. In an address from the University of Cambridge to

King Charles II in 1681, the lecturer reads: “…whenever the magistrate commands something which is not contrary to some command of God, then we are bound to act according to that command of the magistrate to do that thing he requires. But when he enjoins anything contrary to what God hath commanded…we are in that case to obey God rather than man…” (qtd. in Figgis 7).

Kings that “enjoined anything contrary to what God hath commanded” were branded as “tyrants.”

In many ways, “tyrant” was an incredibly important label; not only did it mean that a king had fallen from divine grace, but, according to some early thinkers such as Thomas Starkey, it also meant that the people had a duty to disobey or overthrow these rulers on behalf of God.

17 Filmer proposes a second “path” to tyranny in addition to disobeying God. He says, “a

King, governing in a settled kingdom, who degenerates into a tyrant ceases to be a King and ceases to rule according to his laws” (10). In this context, the phrase “his laws” means the laws of the kings

“forefathers and predecessors,” which all kings are “bound to ratify” (Filmer 10). To Filmer, the royal Patriarchy is eternal, because each king speaks the will of God into law, and each son is bound to ratify these holy laws. Therefore, any act against a forefather is an act against God and a devolution into tyranny.

Richard II constantly exposes Richard’s tyranny; He does not act according to God’s commands, and he does not ratify the laws of his predecessors as he is bound to do. In addition to the more or less obvious ways in which Richard betrays God’s commandments (murder, idolatry, and theft), Richard II makes a point of emphasizing Richard’s corrupted relationship to his forefathers. John of Gaunt says; “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” (II.i.792). This example, which again emphasizes Richard’s accountability to his superior fathers, is buttressed by a shocking threat of deposition. Because Richard has not ratified the laws of his forefathers, and has not obeyed the commands God, he has devolved into tyranny and has been removed of his kingship.

This conclusion is supported by Gaunt’s closing insult, “Landlord of England thou art” (II.i.113), which quietly strips Richard of his kingship well before his official deposition.

We can see that certain historical conceptions of divine kingship were highlighted throughout Richard II in a way that was explicitly radical. These final two conditions, which state that kings are accountable to God, and that people are to obey God over kings, were of particular importance, as they hold kings and queens accountable to authorities beyond themselves. Richard

18 II, through the divinely conceived succession, reminds those in power that they are not, as Richard had foolishly believed, immutable or unquestionable; that they are, in fact, deposable.

III. A Historical Perspective on Elizabethan Society

The idea that Shakespeare uses the divinely conceived succession to draw attention to the radical aspects of divine right doctrine is further elucidated by the tumultuous time period that gave rise to Shakespeare and his playhouses. According to Ronald Asch, “16th Century monarchs who had relied on Religion to give their authority legitimacy could easily find themselves in a treacherous no man’s land between competing religious groups and movements” (13). Queen

Elizabeth I, a savvy ruler who had “defined the visual culture of 16th Century England” (Asch 37) and enjoyed a great deal of general stability, was no exception to this phenomenon. She was greatly involved in a power struggle between the Roman Catholic Church and different protestant churches. Queen Elizabeth I’s position was rendered even more precarious by the looming crisis of succession, which would determine England’s allegiance to Rome for decades to come.

However, the ways in which she would resolve these tensions would consequentially undermine her authority as Queen and her legitimacy as “God’s Lieutenant,” and draw clear and obvious comparisons to the threads of subversion previously teased out of Richard II.

First, it is absolute vital to consider that, while Richard II drew attention to the aspects of divine right doctrine that held authority accountable, the English ruling class had done everything in their power to escape this accountability in the years leading up to the play’s first performance.

Even the very first condition, that “monarchy is a divine institution,” was significantly challenged by the rule of Queen Elizabeth I. Of course, it is certain that she would have been seen by the English population as divinely legitimate. Her heroism on the battlefield during the 1580’s wars with Spain,

19 as well as her legislative victories, were largely attributed to her Protestant faith: “The heroicall vertue of Magnanimite ever springs out of the fountaine of faithe” (Qtd. in Asch 37). However, it is also true that expectations of divine rulers varied widely between religious and social groups, and

Queen Elizabeth I’s prerogative to perform her sacral kingship while appealing to a wide

Elizabethan audience resulted in significant political tensions (Asch).

It was always true that Queen Elizabeth I would have inescapable political enemies, such as the Catholics and Jesuits who “sought to bring England back into the fold of the true church”

(Lake 155). However, Elizabeth’s particular incarnation of divine right politics was controversial even to her potential allies. Her public and gaudy performances of her divinity, which included washing the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday and regularly healing the Scrofula, was offensive particularly to the Puritans, who were “the major manifestation of [Protestantism]” (Asch 38).

Although put on in an effort to legitimize herself to a broader scope of Elizabethan citizens, her religious rituals profoundly confronted the existing Puritan belief that worship is due to God alone.

Furthermore, Ronald Asch remarks how, from the perspective of the Puritans, Elizabeth’s seemingly opportunistic performance of her divinity “must have seemed disturbing” (38). Because of this, there were “more than enough strictly Protestant clergy and preachers who had their doubts about Elizabeth’s real credentials as a godly ruler” (37) and objections to Elizabeth’s divine claim to the throne were not reserved only for the Catholics and Jesuits.

It is easy to see how Queen Elizabeth I’s performance of divinity would have called into question the legitimacy of sacral kingship for many 16th Century English citizens. These performances were further undermined by the looming crisis of succession. The crisis of succession, which heightened tensions between Catholics and Protestants and laid bare the political interests behind their respective divine claims to the throne. “Between 1547 and 1587,” Nathan

Lake explains, “the most likely heir to the throne was always of the opposite religious persuasion to

20 the current incumbent. The heir of Edward, a protestant, was Mary, a Catholic; the heir of Mary, a

Catholic, was Elizabeth, a protestant; the heir of Elizabeth, a protestant, was Mary, queen of Scots, a Catholic. The result was that there was always a reversionary interest of the opposite confessional colouring threatening the stability of the current regime” (Lake 57). This, of course, is hardly a stable or preferable arrangement, and the political anxieties of English citizens certainly reflected this (Lake 57).

Perhaps the most important figure in understanding this tension, other than the Protestant

Queen Elizabeth I, was the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots. The threat of her potential ascension was a consistent source of anxiety throughout Queen Elizabeth’s reign, as her coronation would no doubt bring England back under papal control. In an initial attempt to defuse the threat of princess

Mary, King Henry VIII passed three “Acts of Succession.” The first act made Mary Queen of

Scots ineligible to inherit the crown, then the second act made both Mary and Elizabeth ineligible, and then the final act reinstated them both as eligible inheritors to the crown. Although this entire sequence was relatively short, taking place over a period of 8 years, it was nevertheless a consequential and farcical display which showcased the willingness of the state to undermine the same doctrine which legitimized it.

Despite these efforts, the threat posed by Mary Queen of Scots would carry well into the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Poised to take power should the childless Elizabeth I pass unexpectedly, advisors to the Queen implored her to take action to prevent a Catholic takeover of the Crown. One option to prevent the succession of Mary Queen of Scots was to grant to an expanded parliament, controlled by protestants, the power to govern the realm and select a successor should Queen Elizabeth I die without producing an heir (Lake 59). In order to legitimize this strategy, “Elizabeth’s councilors in the 1580’s tended to emphasize that England was no mere monarchy, but a sort of ‘monarchical republic’ in which the royal succession was subject to

21 approval by the political nation as represented by the Privy Council” (Asch 35). While these proposals would never quite be enacted into law (Lake 59), the willingness of the state to undermine the “indefeasibility of patriarchal succession” was once again on display. So long as the interests of the incumbent Royal were protected, good-faith adherence to popular understandings of the conditions of divine right was of secondary concern to the ruling class.

Ultimately, the issue of what to do about Mary Queen of Scots was settled convincingly and permanently by a highly controversial act of Regicide in 1584. After a failed coup attempt known as the Babington Plot, in which Mary Queen of Scots expressly consented to the murder of Queen

Elizabeth I, Protestant advisors and Elizabethan subjects alike pushed for the execution of Mary

Queen of Scots with the primary motivation that this would quell the anxiety surrounding a potential Catholic takeover of the Crown. These demands were ultimately seen to fruition.

However, this public, retaliatory, and opportunistic act of murder seriously undermined Elizabeth

I’s prerogative to “uphold the commandments of God.” According to Patrick Collinson, monarchy was no longer conceived “as an indelible and sacred anointing but a public and localized office,” as disenchanted and illegitimate and secular as “any other form of magistracy” (47).

Despite the high political cost, the regicide of Mary Queen of Scots would not even help alleviate the crisis of succession. If anything, “the removal of the immediate Marian threat freed up the succession issue to operate in far less unifying ways, as different groups and individuals started to jockey for position in…the next regime” (Lake 68). This tension had “plunged the regime into something like crisis; a crisis that culminated in the fiasco of the Essex rebellion” (Lake 69). The

Essex rebellion, an attempted coup of Queen Elizabeth I in which the conspirators requested a performance of Richard II just days before their siege, draws a famous connection between the political tensions of the crisis of succession and the Elizabethan playhouse.

22 There are striking similarities between the political turmoil plaguing England during the

Elizabethan era and the events of Shakespeare’s Richard II. For one, King Richard’s murder of

Thomas Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, is presented as a politically opportunistic sin which draws a clear comparison to Queen Elizabeth I’s politically motivated execution of Mary Queen of

Scots. Furthermore, the attempts to escape the long-accepted doctrine of divine right politics by mere administrative action is perhaps reflected in these lines by John of Gaunt; “With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds, / That England, that was wont to conquer others, / Hath made a shameful conquest of itself” (II.i.746). It could even be said that these lines draw an explicit comparison to Queen Elizabeth I, who’s continued escalation with Spain and France fueled the same contested (Catholic) claims to the English throne which she sought to avoid. Elizabeth’s famous comment to historian William Lombarde, “I am Richard II, know ye not that?” strengthens the connection between the royal consciousness and the play, as does this statement in

Act 2 Scene 1, “That blood, like the pelican, hast thou tapp’d out and drunkenly caroused”

(II.i.810) which compares Richard’s tyranny to the pelican, a commonly understood symbol of

Queen Elizabeth I.

Richard’s tyranny and Bolingbroke’s divinely conceived succession draw clear parallels to the regicide of Mary Queen of Scots and the inconstancy surrounding the process of succession in

Elizabethan England. Furthermore, Shakespeare’s audience would have been uniquely receptive to these subversive interpretations. Although it is certainly true that “What occurs within the minds and hearts of some thousand men and women is not casually revealed,” and that “almost any audience is as difficult to appraise as the human race itself” (Harbage 1), it is also true that “the commoners of Tudor England were far from pre-political and ideologically docile” (Murphey).

Not only does the large proportion of London parishioners suggest this (Goldie 153), but Harbage himself identifies how London was “split into many class-conscious and often mutually antagonistic

23 groups.” “In London, the ritch disdayne the poore. The Courtier the Cittizen. The Cittizen the

Countriman…” (qtd in Harbage 13). However, the theater was somewhat of a respite from these superficial class barriers; “In the theaters, the rights and privileges of class melted before the magical process of dropping pennies in a box” (Harbage 13). In many ways, the theater was a democratizing place, stratified in architecture yet unified in a belligerent solidarity. The playgoers, mostly unrestricted by the class barriers which alienated them in their day-to-day lives, used the playhouse as an environment to organize. According to Sir Edmund Chambers, the playhouse was

“not only the occasion[s] for frays and riots, but also brought bad characters together, and were suspected of affording secret opportunities for the hatching of sedition” (qtd in Harbage 8).

In addition to the rebellious atmosphere described by Alfred Harbage, there are also tenuous links between the works of Shakespeare and subversive political ideologies. Of course, the

Essex Rebellion certainly comes to mind. Mere days before launching an attempted coup against

Queen Elizabeth I, the rebels involved in the Essex Rebellion had requested a private performance of Richard II, perhaps admiring the subversive politics of the play which may have affirmed them as divinely legitimate rulers had they succeeded. This singular incident suggests a broader pattern of political playgoers identified by Chris Fitter in his book “Radical Shakespeare.” There, he says that “there prevailed in the amphitheaters a climate of moral and poltical irreverence, its deeply anti-authoritarian impluses the product…of a wide confluence of factors” (37).

These factors included the very same political upheavals that draw parallels to Richard II.

Fitter describes the degree to which paranoia surrounding the health of Queen Elizabeth I was exasperated by the succession crisis so much so that the queens underwear is said to have been regularly inspected to prevent contact poisoning, hardly the precautionary measures a stable and secure government would have preferred to take. Furthermore, the execution of Mary Queen of

Scots only worsened the tension surrounding competing claims to the throne. However, the anti-

24 authoritarian impulses in Shakespeare’s audience had just as much to do with the unique geography and accessibility of the playhouse as it did with the political anxieties surrounding the

16th century. Fitter identifies how “the levelling effect of open admission can be gaged by the contrast with official insistence that the political role of commoners was questionless submission,” and furthermore how, “For the price of a few beers, laborers and stableboys, washerwomen and fruit vendors, common sailors and ex-soldiers, bricklayers and apprentices could survey, judge, and even vocally condemn government decisions and the behaviors of princes [in the yard of the playhouse]” (39). It is this audience, sympathetic to sedition and frustrated by their station, to whom Shakespeare writes.

It is very likely that this popular audience would have been seeking a subversive message by attending Shakespeare’s dramas. It is equally likely that the Bard himself would have catered to this desire for sedition. Fitter observes how direct addresses to the “ocean” of groundlings are

“woven into the scripts themselves in politically critical moments of audience address,” and furthermore that the groundlings would have “comprised nearly half the audience” while

“[dominating the] mood and spectacle” of the playhouse (42). This “principal audience,” as

Andrew Gurr calls them, “must have enjoyed a kind of primary possession of the drama” due in part to their geographic proximity to the stage (Fitter 42). Still, the brash and belligerent desire of the groundlings to confront authority from within the walled safety of the playhouse “must surely have conferred upon the entire auditorial community” (Fitter 42), as the composition of the upper decks, particularly the younger students of the court, “may have been just as given to demonstrative reveling and subversive humor” (Fitter 43).

What is observed here in the Elizabethan playhouse is a swell of energy that travels up from the groundlings to the upper decks, and perhaps even to the players and playwriters themselves. This powder keg of revolutionary potential did not go unnoticed by Elizabethan

25 observers, nor contemporary Shakespeare scholars. Gary Taylor remarked that “The official censor demanded changes in Henry IV and King Lear, not because he expected each individual to interpret the text differently, but because he feared that three thousand spectators would respond collectively to Shakespeare’s dangerous irreverence and would thereby recognize their own subversive cohesion” (qtd. in Fitter 40). Shakespeare’s Richard II, who’s deposition scene featured near identical themes of sacral kingship and was subject to similar censorship, should not be excluded from this critical observation. The revolutionary message of Richard II was expected by the spectators, recognized by Elizabethan authorities, and encouraged by the very nature of the playhouse itself, and was realized fully by revolutionary action.

There may perhaps even be an answer as to why Shakespeare would have couched his criticism of authority by upholding the institution of divine right in Richard II. Chris Fitter remarks that; “Whilst pronounced ideological rhetorics of the surface enabled scripts to pass the censor and to pleasure the court, the plays’ stagecraft secrets harbored dissident subtextual dimensions that were readily triggered in the conditions specific to the public playhouse, with its distinctive horizons of expectation” (Fitter 36). Meaning, by avoiding any openly seditious conceptions of divine authority, Shakespeare was able to put on a subversive play which, to the audience experiencing the “revolutionary powder keg” of the Elizabethan playhouse, would have been able to draw parallels to current events, understand the ways in which Richard II challenges authority by emphasizing the radical aspects of divine right doctrine, and reach the conclusion that divine claims to the throne in the Elizabethan era were not motivated by a natural and sacred constructs, but rather by sacrilegious human material and political interests of which it is the duty of a faithful populace to rebel.

IV. Conclusion

26 Throughout this thesis, I have shown that Shakespeare’s Richard II criticizes authority by emphasizing the radical aspects of divine right doctrine through Bolingbroke’s divinely conceived succession while concluding that this interpretation is not only consistent with historical conceptions of divine right doctrine but also may have been particularly effective during the time of the plays original debut. Importantly, I paid careful attention to the character of Bolingbroke, breaking free of his typical characterization as a usurper by casting him as a legitimate king. Furthermore, I examined the often-overlooked historical conditions of divine right doctrine in order to identify how the doctrine was radical in some important ways, before finally considering how these contributions interacted with Elizabethan England. This thesis carves out an interesting niche in the critical history of Shakespeare’s Richard II by breaking free of the typical characterizations of Richard and Bolingbroke while legitimizing this new interpretation with historical evidence. I imagine that future scholarship will build off of this foundation by continuing to challenge the characterizations of Richard and Bolingbroke, particularly as it relates to their standing within the framework of divine right politics. This research has many important implications, particularly when it comes to Shakespeare’s relationship to Holinshed’s Chronicles and early modern perceptions of the historical kings

Richard II and Henry IV. I also anticipate that future scholarship will continue to acknowledge the radical or anti-authoritarian aspects of divine right doctrine which has important implications for the character of Bolingbroke as his story continues throughout the tetralogy. In conclusion, this thesis builds off of previous knowledge by introducing the divinely conceived succession, which significantly challenges the characterizations of Richard and Bolingbroke, while uniquely situating this text-heavy claim within the context of Elizabethan England and early modern conceptions of authority.

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Murphey, Elliot. “Shakespearean Anarchism: The Dreams that Stuff is Made Of.” 2014.

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Schuler, Robert M. “Holy Dying in Richard II.” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance Et Réforme, vol. 30, no. 3, 2007, pp. 51–88. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43446050.

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