Shakespeare's Richard II and King Lear

Shakespeare is renowned for his ability to portray the fallen hero. Whether the character focused upon is a king or a peasant, the reader/audience is given the proper components to either sympathize or despise them. Certain similarities between characters in his separate plays are evident. Both Richard II and King Lear are the fallen heroes (though some may argue that Richard was anything but a "hero") and throughout their respective plays descend from grace and learn more about life through this fall than comfort and preservation of their status could ever have taught them. Though these two characters share many qualities and flaws, they also have their striking dissimilarities.

Both kings begin their plays in the audience of their courts. King Lear, planning to divide his kingdom in three parts to his daughters, Regan, Goneril and Cordelia, childishly asks for them to assure him of their love for him. Upon that basis, he will delegate properties and rights before sinking into a somewhat "retired" life. Lear, when his youngest daughter Cordelia will not step forward and declare her love for him in so many words, flies into a rage, disowning her and giving her to the King of France with no inheritance whatsoever. In his irrationality, he also banishes the Earl of Kent for daring to defend Cordelia.
King Richard, with his court before him, is forced to deal with two men of power who are accusing each other of treason. While Richard is unable to gain control of the situation and eventually decides to let them duel in a medieval type of jousting competition, an "honorable" way of settling these types of arguments, King Lear takes full control of his situation. Richard the II is a man of many words and no authority while Lear is a man of action, authority and passion. Where Richard cannot make a decision, Lear has the aggressive mentality to do so.

In the first acts of both plays, both kings have their power challenged. Richard commands Mowbray and Bolingbroke to forget the entire affair and return home, but they outright refuse. Richard even sees this himself, remarking "We were not born to sue, but to command;/which since we cannot do..." (1.1.199-200) This is a mark of resignation and defeat for Richard, who cannot control his own subjects. He, unlike Lear, takes it in stride and either out of lethargy or fear, allows the two men to have their duel, whereas Lear, hearing Cordelia's rebuttal, goes mad with anger and acts cruelly and irrationally. By the time Richard learns to act and King Lear learns to contemplate and embrace the hopelessness and futility of life, it is far too late for either of them.

Richard the II has distinctly Christian overtones. As the play progresses, Richard compares himself more and more to Jesus Christ. He relates his subjects, Bushy, Bagot and Green as "Three Judases, and each one thrice-worse than Judas" (3.2.128) for defecting. This idea is strengthened by the fact that Richard depends on words rather than action, and even speaks such. The idea of "Divine Right of Kings" is an issue here. Richard whole-heartedly considers himself pertinent to that fact. This is exemplified is in the second act, third scene where he reflects on his unending status as king. "Not all the water in the rough rude sea/Can wash the balm from an anointed king". This "Divine Right" is one of the only things that allows Richard to order his men. The fear of God in that age was very apparent.

This is in direct opposition to King Lear. There were no Christian themes in ­King Lear. Shakespeare wrote this play at the time where it was not legal for theatres to include references to God in their plays. Instead, Lear's belief's were polytheistic and ancient. "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;/They kill us for their sport" is one blatant example after the blinded Glouscter reflects on human existence. (4.1.37-38) The most spiritual theme in this play was that of Nature. The tempest that rages outside of Lear's castle reflects the storm building within Lear's broken kingdom and within his breaking mind. The storm's climax is the point where Lear begins to go mad from his extreme losses as he gives the tempest a speech.

The obvious similarity between both kings is their dethronement, though the method in which their respective loss of their thrones was attained was far different. King Lear chose to divide his kingdom to his daughters, which in turn their suitors would control. Lear put his complete trust in his daughters with no idea that they would ever disrespect him as they did. In fact it is this rash haste and blindness to everything but his own passions which evokes our pity for him. For who among us has not been subject to the unyielding temptations of our desires, be they just or unjust? Lear's gradual but swift loss of power can eradicate the reader's previous disdain of the king for the treatment of Cordelia. Regan and Goneril, whom he was foolish enough to give his power to, deny him of everything that makes him King. Lear is turned out of both his home by his daughters for becoming angry when Goneril demands that he lessen his train (knights) by half. Lear, his fool and the returned Earl of Kent are forced to stay on the heath while a storm rages until they take shelter in a hovel, where Edgar, Edmund's brother wrongly accused of attempted murder, pretends to be a madman hiding from demons.

Richard, however, remains on his pedestal, preaching of his "Divine Right" and unwilling as ever to fight for his throne when the banished Bolingbroke returns for his lands. He doesn't do much of anything at all to resist Bolingbroke's rebellion. "Giving" his title as King away to Bolingbroke, he manages a moral victory and may win the sympathies of the reader, but Richard is self-pitying, and would rather whimper about it than struggle and fight. Though Richard is stripped of his power, he manages to maintain what Bolingbroke never had, a flourishing use of language and dramatic ceremony. He makes an ordeal out of the deposition and recalls the coronation ceremony in such a way that it seems impossible for him to yield the throne to another man.

"I give this heavy weight from off my head,
And this unwieldy scepter from my hand,
The Pride of kingly sway from out my heart.
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duteous oaths.
All pomp and majesty I do forswear.
My manors, rents, revenues I forgo.
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny." (4.1.194-203)

It is not until the imprisoned Richard is brought food that his keeper refuses to taste for poison that he abandons his need for language and at last acts, attacking the man. In doing so, he causes his own death at the hands of Exton, who runs in to defend the keeper.

The death of King Lear is far more sympathetic. Here is a man who has lost everything- his title, his children, his home and his wealth. So passionate was Lear for all of this that he goes mad. By the end of the play, he is enveloped in his own madness, becoming almost childlike in his innocent acceptance of the way things are and the utter spiraling despair of life. He sympathizes with beggars and the unloved. He attunes himself with nature. And when he and Cordelia are captured at the end of the play, he is nearly blissful, relating how the two will "sing like birds I' the cage". But at Edmund's orders, Cordelia is hanged. Lear returns with her in his arms, with one last hope in all the world (as the rest have been dashed) that she will awaken. When at last he thinks she is about to open her eyes, Lear himself dies.

There is more nobility in the death of Lear, who has truly lost everything, not just his throne than the death of Richard II, whose poor political judgment, turning people against him by heavy taxation for unpopular wars, seizing John of Gaunt's properties to pay for the war with Ireland, listening to flatterers while treating powerful nobles with contempt and banishing Bolingbroke, brought his own downfall upon him. Had he chosen to use his authority properly and fight
Bolingbroke's seizure of the throne, the play might have gone differently. Richard's change from language and ceremony to war and violence came too late.
Both characters had someone to tell them what to do, to warn them of their current behavior and of how to stop it. The Fool pointed out the mistake Lear made in allowing his daughters to take control of him, for they were lustful for power. Richard had John of Gaunt who addressed him in less levity than the Fool on how to be a good king. Whereas Richard completely ignores John of Gaunt on his dying bed, even telling him that if he were not already dying, he would have cut off his head, Lear, when he at last listens to the Fool, reaches his epiphany, even in his madness. The Fool, like Gaunt, fades away from the play.

In both plays there is really no hope for either king. In many cases, the reader of ­Richard II finds no sympathy for the final despair and death of Richard. But for Lear, it is a different story. Lear encompasses human emotions and the madness that one can face when stripped of all things that make him human. He becomes, eventually, a beast, or so he calls himself, and a plaything of the gods. Lear's life goes from bad to worse in the course of the play, which in itself is filled with grievous despair at all times. It is only the Fool's jollity and wit that breaks the ice at the most shocking and hopeless moments of the play. There was no Fool to alleviate the situation in Richard's case. Had they listened to their respective "prophets", the outcome of their lives might have been very different.

WORKS CITED
Shakespeare Head Press Oxford. William Shakespeare, the Complete Works. Michigan: Barnes & Noble Books, 1994.