Richard Of Bordeaux

In choosing the subject of Richard II, Gordon Daviot was at once bold and
wise: wise, because a dramatic pose was second nature to Richard and his
reign is essentially a drama; bold, because she inevitably challenged
comparison with Shakespeare. Not only did she have a story that lent
itself readily to dramatic situations, but she had at least one advantage
over Shakespeare in that modern historical writings have added
considerably to our understanding of the reign. Shakespeare's play covers
the last three years of Richard's reign; Gordon Daviot realizes that
those last three years are continuous with the past, and are merely the
culmination of a drama the first act of which was played long years
before. In the last act of his play Shakespeare makes a despairing effort
to enlist sympathy for an unlikeable Richard; Gordon Daviot's play
throughout shows us a king, of whom a modern historian [Vickers.
_England in the later Middle Ages_.] has written "his principles were,
as far as we can gather, generous and his career suggests a sympathy for
the poor at every turn." The great charm of her play is that she
re-creates for us, not a crowned and temperamental poet as Shakespeare
does, but a high-spirited, very human boy, with something of the
undergraduate about him, developing into an earnest man, heart-broken it
is true, but with a high sense of his responsibility, a Richard, in fact,
who may be the authentic Richard of history. "I warn you," Richard says
in the first scene, "I shall be intolerable to him," to which Anne
answers, "You know that when the time comes you will be charming to
him"--a suggestion that the success which Richard won before 1399, a
success that it has often bothered historians to explain, may have been
due to that indefinable charm which is the happy possession of a few, and
which might have been Richard's salvation had his lot chanced to be cast
in less difficult times. When one has seen the play, no scenes linger
longer in the memory than those, such as the scenes with the Queen or the
closing scene with Maudelyn, in which his warm-hearted attractiveness is
conspicuously exerted. All his "princely gifts"--to misquote
Lancaster--are in this play the personal beauty for which he was known,
his love of beautiful things, which lifted him above such rude
contemporaries as Gloucester and Arundel, his undoubted ability, and love
of peace, his happy home-life, and his sympathy with the under-dog, even
those furious gusts of passion which are his best-known characteristic,
and in one of which he felled Arundel to the ground for arriving late at
the Queen's funeral--we have them all. Historically, the play stands or
falls by its delineation of Richard: his success and then his fall have
to be made credible. Shakespeare made his fall credible by depicting him
as weak and incapable; the success of Shakespeare's Richard is
incredible. It is harder to see why Gordon Daviot's Richard fails, but if
you look for it you will find it in the corrupting effect of success:

"Canterbury...What is destroying Richard, my lord, is something more
potent than his enemies. Success. Remember this, Henry of Lancaster, in
days to come: it is not the possession of power that offends the
multitude but the flaunting of it. You may have all earth for your
footstool if you refrain from prodding it with your toe."

And again, "He holds England in his two hands and laughs like a wicked
child and men pause and hold their breath." The Richard of history
boasted that the laws of England resided in his own breast and treated
his subjects' possessions as if they were his own. "Anne might have
counselled differently." Anne's death is the turning-point of the play:
after it Richard talks "savagely" or "bitterly," "wearily" or "in pain."
He is still the same gentle Richard to his friends but the savour has
gone out of his triumph and he, who always posed a little, now that he
has no Anne to correct him, rejoices in the display of his power.