KING JOHN and RICHARD II
ShakespeareNYC presents a rare chance to see all ten of Shakespeare's monumental English History plays, presented in historical order, beginning this June with a double bill of KING JOHN and RICHARD II. Both monarchs were luxury loving, their courts celebrated-- and cursed-- for their lavish display, which will be reflected in the brilliant period costumes for which ShakespeareNYC is known.
KING JOHN is a remarkable play with some of Shakespeare's most dazzling characters, foremost of which is Philip Faulconbridge, later re-named at his knighting Sir Richard Plantegenet, known in the brutal simplicity of the time as The Bastard. He is the natural son of England's greatest hero of the Middle Ages, Richard the Lionhearted, King John's dead brother. The Bastard is adopted into the royal circle by the King's formidable mother, 
Eleanor of Aquitaine (known to modern audiences from The Lion in Winter). The Bastard is an astonishing invention, and, as Harold Bloom observed, "with Faulconbridge the Bastard, Shakespeare's own world begins, and that originality, difficult as it is now to isolate, has become our norm for representation of fictive personages." ShakespeareNYC is fortunate to have Jim Jack
(above left) as The Bastard, and, in the great role of Hubert, the endlessly versatile Joseph Small (right), pictured here as the dolled-up page in SHREW. Peter Herrick, Richard in RICHARD II, plays Salisbury in KING JOHN.
The first play of Shakespeare's to be filmed was KING JOHN in 1899 with Beerbohm Tree as John. It was a silent, of course, which seems odd to us, but what the 19th-century British theatre loved was what the late 20th- and early 21st-century Broadway theatre loved: spectacle, and KING JOHN, with it's two coronations, processions, battle controntations etc provided expansive opportunities for hundreds and hundres of extras swanning about in lovely costumes.
FAMOUS LINES FROM KING JOHN
"Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth."
The Bastard Act I scene i
"...that pale, that white-faced shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides
And coops from other lands her islanders,
...that England, hedged in with the main,
That water-walled bulwark, still secure
And confident from foreign purposes,
... that utmost corner of the West..."
Austria Act II scene i
"I was never so bethumped with words
Since first I called my brother's father Dad."
The Bastard Act II scene i
"Mad world, mad kings, mad composition!"
The Bastard Act II scene i
"That smooth-faced gentleman, tickling Commodity,
Commodity, the bias of the world"
The Bastard Act II scene i
"Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back
When gold and silver becks me to come on."
The Bastard Act III scene iii
"Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form."
Constance Act III scene iv
"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,...
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."
Salisbury Act IV scene ii
"... now my soul hath elbow-room."
King John Act V scene vii
"This England never did nor never shall
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror...
...Naught shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true."
The Bastard Act V scene vii
RICHARD II is entirely in verse, written at the same time as ROMEO AND JULIET and A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, teeming with amazing poetry and heart-stopping imagery. At the same time it's a play about politics as politics really were and really are. It is reported that Queen Elizabeth I, on learning that her former favorite, the Earl of Essex, had paid for a performance of Richard II to rouse public feeling for 
usurpation, commented "I am Richard II, know ye not that?" Richard, like Elizabeth, was very conscious, even obsessed, with molding of public opinion and burnishing of his image. Unlike her, however, he was an incompetent ruler, but unlike an incompetent ruler today, he's also a poet, who, as he falls, looks hard into his soul, bringing us with him to the abyss. In the role of Richard's sorrowful wife is Gretchen Howe (above left), pictured in ShakespeareNYC's THE WINTER'S TALE, and as the devious Aumerle, Steven Eng (right), the much put-upon Grumio in our SHREW. Nicholas Stannard, John in KING JOHN, plays Northumberland in RICHARD II.
The fastidious Richard II is credited with inventing the handkerchief. Note from Iago to Richard: Great idea! Thanks!
FAMOUS LINES FROM RICHARD II
"My native English, now I must forgo;
And now my tongue's use is to me no more
Than an unstringed viol or a harp"
Mowbray Act I scene iii
"All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens."
Gaunt Act I scene iii
"This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England..."
Gaunt Act II scene i
"Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an anointed king."
King Richard Act III scene ii
"... Of comfort let no man speak.
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
Let's choose executors and talk of wills.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings--
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed,
All murdered. For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court..."
King Richard Act III scene ii
"I'll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,
My gay apparel for an almsman's gown,
My figured goblets for a dish of wood,
My scepter for a palmer's walking staff,
My subjects for a pair of carved saints,
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little, little grave, an obscure grave..."
King Richard Act III scene iii
"Down, down I come, like glist'ring Phaeton,
Wanting the manage of unruly jades."
King Richard Act III scene iii
"O that I were a mockery king of snow
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water drops."
King Richard Act IV scene i
"I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world,
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it. yet I'll hammer it out."
Richard Act V scene v