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As one of Shakespeare's earlier plays--perhaps his eleventh--Richard II has received a fair degree of unfavorable criticism. Derek Traversi had less than kind words with respect to some of the dramatic construction, calling the murder of Richard ''no more than a pedestrian piece of melodramatic writing.'' A. C. Swinburne, as cited by Kenneth Muir, was particularly harsh in his analysis of Shakespeare's characterizations: ''The poet was not yet dramatist enough to feel for each of his characters an equal or proportionate regard . . . . The subordinate figures became to him but heavy and vexatious encumbrances, to be shifted on and off the stage with as much haste and as little of labor as might be possible to an impatient and uncertain hand.'' Where Swinburne saw York, Mowbray, and Aumerle as particularly ill-defined, however, Muir perceives them as amply developed.

Elsewhere, A. L. French condescendingly describes the passages and events associated with the deposition of King Richard as an ''imaginative blur,'' eventually coming to the sketchily justified conclusion that ''when he wrote Richard II Shakespeare was not quite sure what he was trying to do.'' In general, however, French seems to be allergic to any moral ambiguity, complaining that the play ''suffers from what we might call double vision, giving us one truth in one place, and another in another, with apparently equal weight and conviction . . . . The overall impression produced by an attentive reading or witnessing of the piece is one of bafflement and irritation at the way our sympathies are tampered with.'' Of course, especially in light of the issue of Queen Elizabeth's succession, a dramatic presentation of Bolingbroke's usurpation of the throne would necessarily have been ambiguous in certain respects.

Indeed, in discussing the relevance of Shakespeare's circumstances, Lewis J. Owen, in his lecture on Richard II, provides a sensible counterpoint to French's confusion and frustration: ''This dependence for final meaning upon an understanding of particular circumstances is especially true of dramatic art, which by its very nature--its dependence upon special actors and a special audience--becomes more entangled with the conventions of its own times--its manners, its language, its popular beliefs--than does any other literary form.'' In fact, Owen goes so far as to concede that ''Shakespeare's histories cannot rank with his tragedies, whose backgrounds and issues are eternal.'' Thus, the modern reader should perhaps have different expectations with regard to gleaning personal understanding from histories like Richard II.

Many critics have praised the play's finer points. The extremely nuanced characterization of Richard has provoked endless scholarly debate, especially as to whether or not he should be regarded sympathetically. In general, while he is often condemned from a historical point of view, critics give him high praise from a literary point of view. Walter Pater notes that Shakespeare's English kings in general are ''a very eloquent company, and Richard is the most sweet-tongued of them all.'' Muir, in turn, comments on how essential Richard's characterization is to the play as a whole: ''In Richard II the tragedy is firmly based on character and, as in King Lear, the character of the hero acquires greater depth as his fortunes decline.'' Potter echoes these sentiments in discussing the presentation of Richard II on the stage: ''If Richard's part is not a good one, the play is simply not worth seeing; and 'good,' in theatrical terms, means not necessarily virtuous but interesting.'' Potter goes on to contend that Richard's character is indeed more interesting than virtuous.

Richard Altick regards Richard II with foremost consideration for the quality of Shakespeare's use of thematic imagery. In comparing Richard II with later plays that make superior use of such imagery, he remarks that Richard II has ''the method: the tricks of repetition, of cumulative emotional effect, of interweaving and reciprocal coloration. What is yet to come is the full mastery of the artistic possibilities of such a technique.'' Elaborating on this point of critique, he notes, ''The ultimate condensation, the compression of a universe of meaning into a single bold metaphor, remains to be achieved.'' Still, while Altick describes the play's dramatic qualities as lacking refinement, he extends the highest praise to its poetic qualities: ''Thanks to its tightly interwoven imagery Richard II has a poetic unity that is unsurpassed in any of the great tragedies.'' Kenneth Muir provides a more moderate assessment of the play, perhaps better representing the sum of critical reactions to the play; he simply declares, ''It is closer to mature Shakespearean tragedy than any of the previous plays had been.''

Bibliography:

Altick, Richard, ''Symphonic Imagery in Richard II,'' in The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, by William Shakespeare, New American Library, 1963, pp. 199-234.

French, A. L., ''Who Deposed Richard the Second?,'' in Essays in Criticism, Vol. 17, No. 4, October 1967, pp. 411-33.

Muir, Kenneth, ''Introduction,'' in The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, by William Shakespeare, New American Library, 1963, pp. xxiii-xxxvii.

Owen, Lewis J., ''Richard II,'' in Lectures on Four of Shakespeare's History Plays, Carnegie Institute of Technology, 1953, pp. 3-18.

Pater, Walter, ''Shakespeare's English Kings,'' in The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, by William Shakespeare, New American Library, 1963, pp. 191-98.

Potter, Lois, ''The Antic Disposition of Richard II,'' in Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 27, 1974, pp. 33-41.

Shakespeare, William, The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, edited by Kenneth Muir, New American Library, 1963.

Traversi, Derek, Excerpt from ''Shakespeare from Richard II to Henry V,'' in The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, by William Shakespeare, New American Library, 1963, pp. 235-48.

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