This is an early play, and lacks a visible theme. Richard II is indecisive, and Shakespeare is indecisive about him. By the end, nothing much has happened except that Bolingbrook is now king (thus becoming Henry IV), Richard’s dead, and there’s an air of mournful foreboding. Richard was a lousy king but should never have been killed, seems to be Shakespeare’s basic judgment. The problem was you couldn’t just vote out a king back then, though Bolingbrook tried to do so.
There are no famous lines that I noticed (which is a bad sign with The Bard). Here is a typical passage:
King: Marshal, demand of yonder champion
the cause of his arrival here in arms.
Ask him his name and orderly proceed
to swear him in the justice of his cause.
A lot of Richard II has this weary, bureaucratic tone. (When there’s no Fool in his play, Shakespeare loses interest.) Yet it sets the stage for Henry IV, Part I, the greatest Shakespearean work – but probably written much later.
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