Grounded Action and Making Space in Richard II

Abstract

In the previous chapter, I concentrated on the repeated use of “eyes” and sight in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a way of understanding how playgoers are exposed to a variety of notions of how sight functions, both within the frame of the play and for the playgoers themselves. While Richard II is not so obviously dependent on the motif of vision, the visual has important reverberations in the moments when characters are left alone on stage. The noticeable dearth of soliloquies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is also the case in Richard II. In Richard II, only two characters have soliloquies: Salisbury in 2.4 and Richard in 5.6.¹ I think it worthwhile in the first of these to tease out some of the connections to vision in order to pave the way for some of the larger concerns of this chapter.² Salisbury remains on stage after the departure of a Welsh Captain in the very short 2.4. Salisbury’s soliloquy before departure is a brief seven lines, but effectively connects the truth-telling aspects of a soliloquy to many of the recurrent images in the play. Noticeably, Salisbury draws attention to his vision of Richard through the “eyes of heavy mind” (2.4.18). He even more emphatically notes the metaphoric nature of his vision by providing the linking “like” when he says, “I see thy glory like a shooting star / Fall to the base earth from the firmament” (2.4.19–20).