Richard is deposed in a public trial, which Bolingbroke and Northumberland hope to turn into a Soviet-style mockery in which Richard confesses all his wrongs. Instead, he steals the show, and makes them look like bullies and himself like a martyr—like Christ as the Man of Sorrows. The scene was not printed until after the death of Elizabeth, who is reputed to have said, “Know ye not I am Richard II?”

Richard, having made enormous, though eloquent, speeches of self-pity instead of bolstering the morale of what followers remain to him, holes up in Flint Castle. But when confronted by Bolingbroke and his fellow rebels, descends, slowly and ritualistically, from the walls, surrendering without the slightest resistance into the hands of his enemies. In the next scene, the Queen, speaking to a Gardener, speaks of her husband’s fate as a second fall of Man.

The exiled Bolingbroke lands in England and gathers an army, claiming he has returned only to claim his legal rights as the heir of John of Gaunt. Old York, the last of the 7 sons of Edward III, helpless and feeble, switches his allegiance to Bolingbroke, the symbolic turning point of the play. Richard returns from Ireland and makes a bizarre, theatrical speech about how the earth itself will rise up and angels descend to aid him because he is God’s anointed king.

John of Gaunt is inspired on his deathbed with a famous speech about the glorious land of England—now fallen on hard times due to the corrupt Richard II. Richard comes in, and Gaunt tells Richard what a fool he is being, angering Richard. Gaunt dies offstage, and Richard immediately moves to take his estates, which should go to Gaunt’s son Bolingbroke, in order to fund wars in Ireland. This not only gives Bolingbroke yet more reason for rebellion but creates sympathy for his cause. Richard puts old, feeble York, the last of the fabled 7 sons, in charge of England while he is in Ireland.

In a ritualized, formal scene, Bolingbroke opens the play by accusing Thomas Mowbray of having murdered Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. Mowbray denies it, and a date for a trial by combat is set. Mowbray hints what is widely believed, that he was acting on the orders of Richard II himself. Gloucester’s widow seeks justice from John of Gaunt, but Gaunt says nothing can be done because the king, who is clearly guilty, is nonetheless “God’s anointed.”

The place of the history play among the four genres that Shakespeare wrote in. Its origins as a native form of drama, unlike tragedy and comedy, derived from Classical literature. The historical background of the plot of Richard II, the first of Shakespeare’s double tetralogy dramatizing English history for well over a century before his time.

After the crisis of Act 4, with two sets of lovers estranged and good friends quarreling, a happy ending brought about by Hero’s symbolic death and rebirth. A ritual at her supposed tomb is followed by a wedding of Claudio to a masked woman, who turns out to be Hero. Much Ado is a play about the instability of the human condition, the revolution of opposites: merry and melancholy, love and hate, friendship and enmity, youth and age. peace and war. The hope is that such instability can be good as well: it means we can change, that we can undergo “conversion.”

Claudio, out of revenge, publicly shames Hero by accusing her of infidelity at her own wedding ceremony. All the men behave badly in reaction—except Benedick. Benedick and Beatrice finally confess their love for each other in a short but touching scene.

Their friends contrive through staged conversations intended to be overheard to bring Benedick and Beatrice together. Meanwhile, Don John and his henchmen also stage a false drama, attempting to make Hero seem unfaithful. Dogberry and the Watch, the lower class characters, overhear the plotting and actually arrest Don John’s henchmen, but they are not “noted” by their social superiors.

Don John the melancholic. “Merry” and “melancholy” as two of the play’s many opposites. His attempt to cause mischief by telling Claudio that, in the masked ball in the first part of Act 2, Don Pedro woos Hero for himself rather than for the sake of Claudio. Meanwhile, Beatrice wounds the disguised Benedick by telling him that no one respects Benedick because he is too “merry,” always joking and frivolous. Much ado about “noting,” i.e., about taking note of: a comedy of gossip, rumor, deliberate lies spread both innocently and malevolently, a play with a new relevance in the age of social media.