In what ways, and to what ends, do Shakespeare’s plays reflect upon their own theatricality?

Abstract

William Shakespeare’s Richard II—chronicling the king’s reign and downfall at the hands of Henry Bolingbroke’s revolution—centres the importance of acting and artifice in obtaining, shaping, and legitimising power within the archaic, blood-bound systems of English monarchy. This essay analyses the rhetoric of Bolingbroke’s revolution in order to expose the theatricality of politics, driven not by morals but by the most convincing facade of morality. While the Divine Right of Kings and notions of the body politic equate the King’s body with the health of the nation, the rebels’ ability to rhetorically undress Richard’s rule in order to legitimise their political dissent reveals that sovereignty is not secured by divine authority alone, but is contingent upon persuasive performance and collective belief. The metatheatricality of the players ‘act[ing]’ evidences a chilling disconnect between political reality versus its appearance, revealing the ability of politicians to act in ways that can moralise misdeeds (5.2.24). In this way, the play reveals crucial and enduring anxieties about political reliance on performance rather than moral truth.