Airs without heirs: Melville’s Richard and Queen Isabel (Andrea Gwynnel Morgan) (Photo by Dennis Lynch)
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King Richard II was probably gay. He was born in 1367. Apparently there were gays even back then.
Richard had two wives and no children by either of them. For the king of England, that’s a bit telling, given the emphasis on lineage that goes with being royal. He also relished the arts, befriended Chaucer and collected fine objects. He so flinched at warmaking that he actually empathized with the cantankerous Irish, claiming to understand their objections to absentee English landlords (until he moved to invade Ireland late in his reign), and even refused to wage war with France. Today, some circles would call that “forward thinking.”
All this came in the face of stern objections by English barons who stood to profit from 14th-century war industries. For these reasons and more, Richard was described as not very kingly. He had Westminster Abbey beautified with a new ceiling and paid inordinate attention to his clothes. He not only used and probably waved a hanky, he invented the thing. I don’t mean to traffic in stereotypes, but when this is all put together, sometimes two plus two really does equal four.
Among the men Richard is reputed to have had sexual affairs with is Robert de Vere, Ninth Earl of Oxford. Their contemporary Thomas Walsingham describes that friendship as “obscene, and not without a degree of improper intimacy.”
For medieval types, Richard’s unnerving antipathy toward killing people in foreign countries while ignoring family values at home didn’t go over well. At the end of his reign, people on the streets of London pelted him with garbage when his parade rode by. (That was the 14th-century equivalent of a public-opinion poll.) By this time, however, he had squandered the treasury, raised taxes, seized lands from nobles and leased them out to help make up the deficit. How much easier things would have been if he’d just started a war like all the other kings. Debt does strange things to people who aren’t producing much. A national debt makes things even stranger. This is a concept we’re familiar with in this country, and is among the reasons why Shakespeare’s King Richard IIis slowly picking up relevance for us.
The Bard’s play about the later Richard, King Richard III, is comparatively well known because it stars a hunchbacked prince who has his little nephews murdered in the Tower of London, just so the swine can wear the crown. Of course, this makes for terrific, Gothic melodrama. But Richard II, crowned when he was 10, had no such villainous drive, which may partly explain why King Richard IIis more ruminative and less frequently performed. It’s an awfully good play, however, written entirely in verse and packed with glorious, intricate arguments and contemporary resonances. More important than that, you can see it for free under the stars (or clouds) in a beguiling production in Barnsdall Art Park by the Independent Shakespeare Company.
He may have been forward-thinking, but Richard II was not particularly smart. (How would you like to be remembered for having invented the handkerchief?) He had an unfortunate habit as a teenager of relying too closely on the counsel of friends he was sleeping with, while fobbing off the advice of more worldly types in Parliament — even when the country was going to shit, which was much of the time. This led to an insurrection by Parliament, resulting in Richard’s confinement in the Tower (their version of censure, rationalized because the king was still a minor), until he got a better grip on reality and on the notion of checks and balances. This never happened. Throughout his life, England waited for Richard to grow up.
Things were better for a while after he came down from the garret — they threw him a lavish party upon his “coming of age” and return to the throne, and he was quite popular until former habits resurfaced. The trouble with Richard was that he really, really believed in the divine right of kings, which included the right to invent his own reality. Such inventions are neither persuasive nor helpful when the nation is sinking in debt.
Actor David Melville is uniquely engaging when portraying Shakespeare’s more reflective characters. His rendition of Hamlet at this same venue was like that of a Brighton Pier standup — his anger manifested itself more in bitter jokes than brooding. A smidgen of that mock-sarcastic amazement manifests itself in his Richard, along with a smidgen of swishiness. At the start of this production, the entire court sinks to its knees at the sight of his imperial, imperious arrival amid snare drums, banners and coats of arms. Melville’s window into the character’s soul lies in the world-weary arm gesture with which he permits them all to rise, accompanied by a small sigh. You can see he’s been at this a while, and it no longer amuses him.
Somebody killed the Duke of Gloucester, and the king has assembled the court to hear evidence. (Historically, the identity of the killer, and even whether Gloucester was murdered or not, remain open questions.) Feisty Bolingbroke (Freddy Douglas) accuses Mowbray (Daniel O’Meara). Challenges between the pair are issued and a duel proffered, but the king will have none of this blood lust. Instead, he banishes both of them from England. But this is no benign intervention. While Bolingbroke is abroad, his father (and the king’s uncle), John of Gaunt (director Joseph Culliton), dies. Gaunt was among the wealthiest landowners in England, and with Bolingbroke out of the way and unable to claim his inheritance, Richard seizes Gaunt’s estates (as he had so many others). Understandably perturbed, Bolingbroke returns from exile to lead a rebellion against Richard, ultimately leading to Bolingbroke’s coronation as King Henry IV.
