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Florida State University Libraries )ORULGD6WDWH8QLYHUVLW\/LEUDULHV 2021 Richard II: A Criticism of the Mechanisms of Divine Right Jackson Kendall Alley Follow this and additional works at DigiNole: FSU's Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected] 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.
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