I read “the Henriad” out of order and couldn’t be happier.

**This post is Part 10 of an ongoing series in which I’ll be reading various Shakespeare plays, along with the Harold Bloom commentary from his book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and providing my thoughts/reactions.**

• An ironic triumph of the play is its lack of sympathetic characters. As Bloom puts it, “We wonder with Richard, we admire his language, but we never suffer with him, even when he is deposed and subsequently murdered” (Bloom, 252). Bolingbroke–the coming Henry IV–is no more relatable or venerable. This lack of emotional involvement with the characters gives the audience a critical distance from which the craft of the play can be fully appreciated.
  
• And it is crafty. Again, Bloom nails it when he says, “It is a radically experimental play, questing for the limits of a metaphysical lyricism, and brilliantly successful if we accept its rather stringent terms” (Bloom, 252). What are its terms? I think it is a play that demands to be appreciated for its ability to build tension with neither action nor uncertainty. The plot is simple and undivided, and there can be no such thing as suspense in a play whose outcome is a matter of historical fact. And yet, it is entertaining throughout.
  
• Much of the entertainment does come through the much-hailed poetry of Richard II himself, but I think John of Gaunt, the Bishop of Carlisle, and even Bolingbroke have some of the most expressive and elegant voices in Shakespeare’s histories. By comparison, all of the characters in the Henriad (save, of course, Sir John Falstaff) seem imprecise and vulgar in their language.
  
• Similar to Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing, I think Richard II does a nice job of humanizing the political actors. It is all too easy to identify those in great power with the state itself, but the play shows an earnest human wrestling with feelings of duty, remorse, and pride in each of the most influential characters. One gets a sense of the gravity of their choices, and of course, the history lends further heft to this impression.
  
• The play is extremely salient in 2025, as it is less about the deposition of a king than it is about the importance of the unwritten rules in politics, society, and life. The usurpation revealed that England was not held together by laws but rather by norms; it was not the law itself but rather the respect for the law that gave it sovereignty. More adequately here than in his own plays, Henry IV is shown here to understand the far-reaching implications of his actions in overthrowing Richard II. The play is a treatise on the ugly necessity of civil disobedience, as well as the malleability of the law in the hands of those willing to violate its spirit, both of which seem particularly relevant today.
  
• It manages, however briefly, to deal wonderfully with Death, the power against which no king is sovereign. In Act III, Richard give us this gem, which in its full text, I like as much as Macbeth’s famous “sound and fury,” though I’ll only quote a small bit here:
  
  “… within the hollow crown
  That rounds the mortal temples of a king
  Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,
  Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
  Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
  To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks;
  Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
  As if this flesh which walls about our life
  Were brass impregnable; and, humor’d thus,
  Comes at the last, and with a little pin
  Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!”
  – Act III, Scene II, 165-175

Rating: 8.5/10, with great surprise

P.S. I am not a huge history buff, but reading these plays–along with listening to Tyler Cowen’s conversation with Helen Castor–has convinced me to read her latest book, The Eagle and the Hart, about the lives of Richard II and Henry IV. I’m a little more than a quarter of the way through and not regretting it yet.

Editing to add: if you came here from MR Assorted Links and are interested in a vibe check on this blog, see this post from the last time Tyler included me in Assorted Links.