Title: The Misread Text and History: Richard II and the Essex Incident of 1601

Abstract: The widely accepted belief that there was a strong connection between the Essex “rebellion” and William Shakespeare’s Richard II has limited scholars’ interpretation of this play. This research sheds light on how a supposed “historical context” has consistently misled the understanding of the play. The Earl of Essex’s political opponents within the Elizabethan government used John Hayward’s The First Part of the Life and Raigne of King Henrie IIII to implicate Essex in a plot, portraying his group as scheming by staging a performance of Richard II on the day before the “rebellion”. They even intentionally conflated Hayward’s historical account with Shakespeare’s play to emphasize Essex’s presumed political maneuvering. This research reconstructs the political and cultural context closely associated with Richard II, revealing how the play reflected more deeply on and influenced the development of late sixteenth-century ideas of kingship.

Keywords: Richard II, the Essex incident, divine right of kings, The First Part of the Life and Raigne of King Henrie IIII, State Papers

Author: Qingyu Wang, Ph.D. Candidate, School of Foreign Languages, Peking University, Beijing, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2024.01.003