![]() ![]() The Hollow Crown Trailer (Focus Features) A brief comment by the new king, Henry IV, leads to Richard being murdered in his cell. ![]() By the end of the play, he is not king anymore he is dead. When Richard II begins, Richard is in full king mode: throne, crown, sceptre. The “Henriad” shows the monarchy in a state of turmoil. These plays were recently presented as the BBC series The Hollow Crown (2012-2016). It is the first part of the “Henriad”, a sequence of eight historical plays that span the “Wars of the Roses”: Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI parts 1, 2 and 3, and Richard III. Shakespeare wrote Richard II around 1595. ![]() It is also a play that saw Shakespeare risking some serious trouble with the God-appointed monarch of his time, Elizabeth I. Shakespeare’s Richard II is a play that asks us, among other things, what it means to have power, what it means to take power, and what we’re left with when power is gone. What do you do with a bad king? And what do you do when that bad king is (allegedly) appointed by God? ![]()
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