Hall Editorializes: The Day Richard Lost His Name
Zach Davis
Actors can benefit hugely from finding where their characters converge and diverge with written history. Playwrights don’t tend to do things arbitrarily, especially not Shakespeare, so we should assume their every decision is made to enhance the play as a whole. Each fabrication exists to improve the story; each verisimilitude exists because it was significant enough to reproduce.
So let’s look at what Hall has to say about Richard II’s deposition. We’ll pay particular attention to moments when Shakespeare follows these texts closely, moments that seem to be entirely his own creation, and moments where he makes up a fictional version of actual events.
Hall’s chronicle history, The union of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre and Yorke, was published 51 years after Richard II’s deposition. Richard doesn’t get a whole lot of ink, because Hall’s account proper starts with Henry IV, the former Bolingbroke, Richard’s successor. However, the introduction does touch on the events around Henry IV’s accession. Early in the description, it states Richard is meant to be deposed not only of his crown but of "al honor" (Fol. Viii r.). This is an unusual choice of words. Kings are deprived of their crowns as well as their dignities and honors, plural. "Honors" are all of the monarch's royal titles. But "honor" in the singular seems to refer to the definition we’re familiar with: personal reputation for bravery, courtesy and integrity. One’s honor is a central part of one’s identity, and to have it taken away can be incredibly painful and disorienting.
Hall’s mention of smeared honor is the first of many hints in Hall to suggest this was a hugely distressing time for Richard. As an actor, this makes one think Richard’s games in Act Four, Scene One might by played with a hysterical, jagged edge, quickly swinging between terrified confusion, wildly demonstrative grief and sharp anger.
One of Hall’s most telling descriptions of Richard comes just before Richard officially yields his crown. We see in Hall’s asides and word choices hints that Richard is so disoriented and sad he is beginning to lose touch with the world:
So let’s look at what Hall has to say about Richard II’s deposition. We’ll pay particular attention to moments when Shakespeare follows these texts closely, moments that seem to be entirely his own creation, and moments where he makes up a fictional version of actual events.
Hall’s chronicle history, The union of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre and Yorke, was published 51 years after Richard II’s deposition. Richard doesn’t get a whole lot of ink, because Hall’s account proper starts with Henry IV, the former Bolingbroke, Richard’s successor. However, the introduction does touch on the events around Henry IV’s accession. Early in the description, it states Richard is meant to be deposed not only of his crown but of "al honor" (Fol. Viii r.). This is an unusual choice of words. Kings are deprived of their crowns as well as their dignities and honors, plural. "Honors" are all of the monarch's royal titles. But "honor" in the singular seems to refer to the definition we’re familiar with: personal reputation for bravery, courtesy and integrity. One’s honor is a central part of one’s identity, and to have it taken away can be incredibly painful and disorienting.
Hall’s mention of smeared honor is the first of many hints in Hall to suggest this was a hugely distressing time for Richard. As an actor, this makes one think Richard’s games in Act Four, Scene One might by played with a hysterical, jagged edge, quickly swinging between terrified confusion, wildly demonstrative grief and sharp anger.
One of Hall’s most telling descriptions of Richard comes just before Richard officially yields his crown. We see in Hall’s asides and word choices hints that Richard is so disoriented and sad he is beginning to lose touch with the world:
What profite, what honoure, what suretie had it bene to kyng Richarde, if he when he myght, which professed the name and title of a kyng, whiche is as much to saie, the ruler or keper of people, had excogitate or remebred to have bene a keper of his owne hedde and lyfe, whiche nowe beying forsaken, reiect and abandoned of al such as he, being an euil sheperd or herdeman, before time dyd not plie, kepe and diligently ouerse was easily reduced and brought into the hades of his enemies. Nowe it was no mastery to perswade a man beyng desperate pensife and ful of dolour, to abdicate him selfe from his empire and imperiall preheminene: so that in onlie hope of his life and sauegard, he agreed to al thynges that of hym were demanded, and desired his kepers to shewe and declare to the duke, that if he wold vouchsafe to accord and come to him, he wolde declare secretely thynges to hym both profitable and pleasant. … There kyng Richard … affirmed those accusacions to be muche trewe whiche the comminaltie of the realme alledged against him: that is to say, that he had euel governed his dominion and kingdome, and therfore he desyred to be disburdoned of so great a charge and so heavy a burden. (Fol. Viii v.; my emphases)
Passages such as this may have influenced Shakespeare’s decision to emphasize Richard’s growing identity confusion. Hall mentions Richard has lost both the "name" and "title" of King, while Richard says, during his deposition, "I have no name, no title… and know not what name to call myself" (IV.i.266, 270). We have to wonder how tangled Richard’s corporeal self became with his image of himself in the office of king. When the latter was taken away, Richard found to his horror that he only knew how to define himself in terms of his social role. He can’t find any everlasting core, any inherent Richard; everything he was grew from an externally imposed social role. He eventually wails, "Nor I nor any man that but man is / With nothing shall be pleased till he be eased / With being nothing" (V.v.38-40).
His identity confusion, then, seems to call for a sort of distracted intensity in performance. Richard’s grief and confusion come up too often in the chronicles for them to be fictions, and so we can expect him to take this scene seriously. A subtle performer might even mirror Richard’s internal incoherence with erratic and dream-like speech and movement onstage. We should not hear a whole man when Richard speaks; too much has been taken from him by this point.
His identity confusion, then, seems to call for a sort of distracted intensity in performance. Richard’s grief and confusion come up too often in the chronicles for them to be fictions, and so we can expect him to take this scene seriously. A subtle performer might even mirror Richard’s internal incoherence with erratic and dream-like speech and movement onstage. We should not hear a whole man when Richard speaks; too much has been taken from him by this point.