Richard II by William Shakespeare

Published 1597 · 23,048 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Drama, Historical Fiction

How hard is Richard II to read?

Richard II scores 67 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 85 out of 100
Shakespeare's language is inherently archaic, featuring numerous words no longer in common use (e.g., 'mew'd,' 'hap,' 'holp,' 'cacodemon,' 'pell-mell') and familiar words used with unfamiliar meanings. The text also employs rich poetic diction and classical allusions that demand a sophisticated vocabulary from the reader. This places it significantly above 'Moby-Dick' in its consistent linguistic challenge.
Sentence structure: 78 out of 100
The play features long, complex sentences with frequent inversions, embedded clauses, and rhetorical structures typical of Elizabethan drama. While not reaching the extreme stream-of-consciousness of 'Ulysses,' the dialogue often requires careful parsing to follow the intricate arguments and emotional shifts. This sustained grammatical demand is comparable to the subordination found in 'In Search of Lost Time'.
Abstraction: 75 out of 100
While rooted in historical events, 'Richard III' delves deeply into complex psychological states, moral philosophy, and the nature of power and evil. Characters frequently engage in soliloquies and dialogues that explore abstract concepts like conscience, fate, and divine justice, moving beyond concrete narrative to philosophical debate, similar to 'Brothers Karamazov'.
Information density: 70 out of 100
The play is dense with political intrigue, character motivations, and rapid plot developments, often conveyed through highly compressed poetic language. Each scene and speech is packed with subtext, allusions, and dramatic irony, requiring close attention to grasp the full implications. This sustained demand for interpretive engagement is higher than 'Lolita' but less encyclopedic than 'Ulysses'.
Narrative indirection: 68 out of 100
Richard's frequent soliloquies directly expose his intentions and manipulative strategies to the audience, reducing the need to infer his personal motives. However, the play demands significant inference regarding the gullibility of other characters and the societal conditions that allow Richard's deceptions to succeed. The audience must constantly read between the lines of Richard's public pronouncements and the reactions of those he manipulates.
Symbolic density: 80 out of 100
Richard II is rich with pervasive symbolism, notably the sun imagery associated with Richard's kingship, the garden scene as political allegory, and the mirror Richard smashes in the deposition scene as a symbol of shattered self-image. Queen Margaret's prophetic curses and the ritualistic language of divine right imbue the narrative with layers of allegorical meaning beyond literal events. The play's exploration of the gap between sacred title and practical power further elevates its symbolic weight.
Ironic distance: 82 out of 100
The play features a profound and sustained ironic distance, primarily driven by Richard's self-dramatizing awareness of his own fall — he understands his predicament intellectually while remaining unable to act politically. This creates intense dramatic irony, as the audience watches a man perform his own deposition with elaborate theatrical flourish while Bolingbroke waits in silence. The gap between Richard's poetic eloquence and his political impotence is a central interpretive challenge.
Resolution withholding: 35 out of 100
As a history play and tragedy, Richard II provides a clear, definitive narrative resolution with Richard's deposition, imprisonment, and murder, and the establishment of Bolingbroke as Henry IV. While the play raises enduring questions about legitimacy and the nature of power, the primary plot lines and character fates are resolved. The ending establishes a new order while hinting at the civil wars to come.
Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
Richard II employs a largely linear and chronological narrative structure, typical of Shakespearean drama, with a clear progression of events from Richard's misrule to his downfall. While it features multiple characters and political factions, it avoids experimental formal devices, fragmented timelines, or complex narrative shifts. Richard's soliloquies, though providing a unique perspective, serve to clarify rather than complicate the plot.

How Richard II is regarded

Richard II holds a literary regard score of 89 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where Richard II sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (51 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Richard II scores 47 out of 100. A second mythos, irony, pulls at it with a weight of 0.15. About the map of stories.

Mode: High Mimetic
Not all the Water in the rough rude Sea Can wash the Balme from an anoynted King;
Symbol: Formal
Now is this Golden Crowne like a deepe Well, That owes two Buckets, filling one another,
Mythos: Tragedy iv (tragedy iv)
Seeke you to seize, and gripe into your hands The Royalties and Rights of banish'd Herford?
Genre: Drama
Flourish. Enter on the Walls, Richard, Carlile, Aumerle, Scroop, Salisbury.

Where the story of Richard II takes place

  • England, the deposition of Richard II, 1398-1400 (1398 to 1400), the main setting
  • England and Wales under Richard II and Bolingbroke's usurpation, 1398-1400 (1398 to 1400)

6 things that are true of Richard II, with the passage for each

  1. Richard stops the trial by combat at Coventry at the last moment by throwing down his warder, and exiles both men: Bolingbroke for ten years, then six, and Mowbray for life.

    Stay, the King hath throwne his Warder downe

  2. Gaunt's dying speech calls England a 'sceptred Isle' and an 'other Eden', then accuses Richard of leasing it out like a farm.

    This other Eden, demy paradise,

  3. Richard prays for Gaunt's death so that the dying man's wealth can pay for the Irish wars.

    Now put it (heauen) in his Physitians minde, To helpe him to his graue immediately:

  4. A gardener and his servants discuss the state of the realm in terms of tending a garden, and the Queen overhears that Richard has been deposed.

    Goe binde thou vp yond dangling Apricocks,

  5. During the deposition Richard calls for a mirror and then breaks it, having looked at his own face.

    Giue me that Glasse, and therein will I reade.

  6. Exton, who thinks he is carrying out the new king's wish, kills Richard in his prison cell, and the play ends with the dead king's coffin.

    Exton strikes him downe.

Scenes in Richard II that Frye would name

30 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Hamartia, untitled
Thinke what you will: we seise into our hands, His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands Richard's seizure of Bolingbroke's inheritance, against York's warning, is the fatal misstep.
Anagnorisis, untitled
Giue me that Glasse, and therein will I reade. Richard looks at himself in the mirror and recognizes the difference between his outward face and his inner grief.
Pathos, untitled
Mount, mount my soule, thy seate is vp on high, Whil'st my grosse flesh sinkes downward, heere to dye Richard's death at Pomfret is the sacrificial pathos, with the soul ascending as the body sinks.
Katabasis, untitled
Downe, downe I come, like glist'ring Phaeton, Richard descends from the walls of Flint Castle to the 'base Court', a literal and symbolic fall compared to Phaeton's.
Lyric, untitled
I haue bin studying, how to compare This Prison where I liue, vnto the World: Richard's prison soliloquy is an overheard lyric meditation on time, thought and nothingness.
Agon, untitled
Pale trembling Coward, there I throw my gage, The opening contest between Bolingbroke and Mowbray stages the agon as a formal challenge to trial by combat.

Books that share these scenes with Richard II

About the author

William Shakespeare