[Richard II (Folger Shakespeare Library)] [Author: Shakespeare, William] [July, 2005]

by William Stuart Long

Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare, William. . Simon & Schuster, 2005 .

Genres: Plays

Mass Market Paperback

About the author

Violet Vivian Finlay was born on 2 January 1914 in Berkshire, England, UK, the daughter of Alice Kathleen (née Norton) and Sir Campbell Kirkman Finlay. Her father was the owner and director of Burmah Oil Company Ltd., whose Scottish family also owned James Finlay and Company Ltd. The majority of her childhood and youth was spent in Rangoon, Burma (now also known as Myanmar), where her father worked. During her life, she frequently journeyed between India, Singapore, Java and Sumatra.

Although Vivian is well-known by the surname of Stuart, she married four times during her lifetime, and had five children: Gillian Rushton (née Porch), Kim Santow, Jennifer Gooch (née Stuart), and twins Vary and Valerie Stuart.

Following the dissolution of her first marriage, she studied for a time Law in London in the mid 1930s, before decided studied Medicine at the University of London. Later she spent time in Hungary in the capacity of private tutor in English, while she obtained a pathologist qualification at the University of Budapest in 1938. In 1939, she emigrated to Australia with her second husband, a Hungarian Doctor Geza Santow with whom she worked. In 1942, she obtained a diploma in industrial chemistry and laboratory technique at Technical Institute of Newcastle. Having earned an ambulance driver's certificate, she joined the Australian Forces at the Women's Auxiliary Service during World War II. She was attached to the IVth Army, and raised to the rank of sergeant, she was posted to British XIV Army in Rangoon, Burma in October 1945, and was then transferred to Sumatra in December. After the WWII, she returned to England. On 24 October 1958, she married her fourth and last husband, Cyril William Mann, a bank manager.

She was a prolific writer from 1953 to 1986 under diferent pseudonyms: Vivian Stuart, Alex Stuart, Barbara Allen, Fiona Finlay, V. A. Stuart, William Stuart Long and Robyn Stuart. Many of her novels were protagonized by doctors or nurses, and set in Asia, Australia or other places she had visited. Her romance novel, Gay Cavalier published in 1955 as Alex Stuart got her into trouble with her Mills & Boon editors when she featured a secondary story line featuring a Catholic male and Protestant female who chose to marry. This so-called "mixed marriage" touched nerves in the United Kingdom.

In 1960, she was a founder of the Romantic Novelists' Association, along with Denise Robins, Barbara Cartland, and others; she was elected the first Chairman (1961-1963). In 1970, she became the first woman to chair Swanwick Writers' Summer School.

Violet Vivian Finlay Porch Santow Stuart Mann passed away on August 1986 in Yorkshire, at age 72. She continued writing until her death.

Reviews

[Lacey]

The history plays are always on my 'to-read-one-day-soon' list in my mind and now I'm seeing that I've been missing out! While the politics can be convoluted, the more I delve into this play, the more depth I'm finding. You can read it on the surface level, for plot, like so many Shakespeare plays. But there is so much more to sift through, and it's here where I marvel at this man's gift.

I particularly enjoyed the complex characterisation of Richard II : a foolish man, an inept king, a pitiful soul and a plaintive poet.

[Rick Patterson]

There are so very many unlikeable characters in this play that's hard to begin itemizing them. The title character is, of course, a self-indulgent prat with no sense of responsibility for everything he does. Because he has absolute power, or so he thinks, he can get away with anything at all and send the bill to God, so to speak. Of course, running out of money is a possibility, even for a king, and that's the situation Richard finds himself in when he wants to pursue a war in Ireland for very sketchy reasons. The solution presents itself when two of his courtiers, Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray--both of whom were historically part of the Lords Appellant group that actually challenged Richard's prerogative and found themselves in the king's disfavor--accuse the other of treason. Richard's impulse is to allow them to fight out their disagreement in a trial by combat, but by the time the event is about to start, he has second thoughts because whoever wins is likely to be a much more present danger to his authority. This is indicated by Richard's decision to exile both men, putting them away from altogether, but not before he extracts their oath that they will not cause any trouble for himself or England in the future. Mowbray, at least, is true to this word and ends up dying in Venice after doing some time in the Holy Land, all of which indicates that he was probably not the person Richard should have been worrying about. As soon as Henry is out of the picture, his father, John of Gaunt, has a health setback that puts him in his grave, much to Richard's delight, because that gives him the opportunity to appropriate the estate for his own purposes, effectively disinheriting the absent Bolingbroke. He is not a good fellow, certainly. Given that he has just had his whole family fortune liquidated for the king's personal benefit, Henry ends up reneging on his oath, breaking his own exile, and leading a rebellion when he returns early to England after the death of his father. The purported reason for Henry's return is to claim what is due to him as the new Duke of Lancaster, but that doesn't explain the massive number of men-at-arms who accompany him as he travels up and down the countryside, eliminating many of Richard's loyal supporters while claiming fealty to the king. Henry is clearly not a good fellow either. While Richard is off entertaining himself and spending the Lancaster fortune on prosecuting a war in Ireland, his uncle, the Duke of York, is left in charge, doing his viceregal duty by berating the invading Henry before folding like a wet shirt and acknowledging that Henry's unstated intention of taking the throne is already a fait accompli. Although that doesn't make him a bad fellow, York's weakness does not distinguish him as a man of much character. It is only later, after Bolingbroke has taken the throne as Henry IV, that York proves himself to be a pretty bad fellow as well. His son, formerly the Duke of Aumerle but now demoted to the Earl of Rutland because of his previous association with Richard, has foolishly and weakly joined himself to a group of nobles and clergy who are plotting the death of the new king. Because Aumerle is very very bad at dissimulation, his part in the plot is quickly discovered by his father whose immediate intention is to blow the whistle on his own son and have him executed as a traitor, all of which is avoided by Aumerle and his mother extracting a pardon from the king, but which nevertheless paints York as a really bad fellow indeed. We've already dealt with Aumerle, who is more an idiot than a bad person, but who can't seem to stop himself from implicating himself in stupid conspiracies. One particularly funny scene--although it probably isn't intended to be funny--shows the new king trying to get to the bottom of the murder of another uncle, Thomas Woodstock of Gloucester. No fewer than three witnesses testify that Aumerle had shot off his mouth about being ready, willing, and able to get rid of his relative, so many that Aumerle has to ask for an extra gauntlet to throw to the ground in order to defend his obviously not very defensible honor. That is funny stuff, but it isn't to Aumerle's credit, really. No, he's a bad fellow too.
In the end, the Richard who is deposed is a much more tolerable person than the selfish and short-sighted despot who opens the drama, although his predilection for moping and whining gets old pretty quickly. One wonders, at the end, why his own queen--or even the Groom in the penultimate scene--has any affection for him at all. He deserves a spanking more than a murder, but that of course is what he gets, because that is what he (almost certainly) got in real life, and Shakespeare doesn't want to deviate too too far from the historical events.
Why isn't this five stars? Again, the characters are just a bit too tiresome, obnoxious, pompous and/or hateful, and it's not easy to invest a lot of emotional energy in such a crew of badly behaved fellows.

[Lili_Recs]

Very well written. One of my first completed Shakespeare plays and I really enjoyed it.
Might add some of my favorite quotes later.