Richard II

It's weird that none of the moods on StoryGraph seem appropriate for this play, but it was still really good. Richard II is a king well-respected by the nobles, clergy, and commoners alike, but after years of mismanagement and a serious abuse of Bolingbroke's rights he finds himself with few supporters and an imminent revolt.

I knew very little about the play going in, and it was interesting that it took me a couple of acts to figure out who the tragic figure of the play really was. Richard is presented at the start as righteous, and in spite of the uncertainty around the wisdom of his judgment in the first act he seemed a fine king. But in the second act we see things dissolve; his war in Ireland has trashed the country's finances, and he makes blunder after blunder in resolving both that affair and ones in his own court. Even as he falls from grace, we see him struggle to maintain his sense of pride until his kingly attitude seems to be a poor echo of Henry's newfound majesty.

My only major complaint is that Richard's decline starts out rapid before settling into something more feasible. In the first act, as mentioned, he is basically fine. Not someone who would be deposed. Very early in the second act he makes some absolutely horrid decisions, dropping my estimation of him like a rock, and from the bottom of that cliff his tragedy proceeds at a normal pace.

While it's not my favourite of Shakespeare's plays, it is certainly a good one. Lots of political machinations with the most exciting opening I've seen in his plays yet.