Dream it. “For god’s sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings” — Richard II, Act III, sc. ii.

Scena Mundi were invited by the Sorbonne University to play William Shakespeare’s Richard II in Paris as part of the symposium “The King’s Body on Stage : The Theatre of Kingship in Early Modern Europe” (see details in French or English).

The Cordeliers Hall in Paris in which Scena Mundi staged Richard II dates back to the time of Richard’s actual reign.

Richard II is a multi-faceted jewel of a play, subtle, refined and highly ornate, one of the most beautiful texts ever written in English.

Richard II revolves on the king’s extravagant and passionate use of language, a whirlwind of images and conceits born off the dexterous, hyperactive mind of a poet-king. As the play progresses, Bolingbroke, the “silent king”, takes over, mocking Richard’s ornate metaphors, silencing the king’s eloquent gift and replacing it with his own, simple, kingly rhetoric of power. Richard’s flowery woes and words are silenced, now the time has come for Bolingbroke’s word-thrifty rule.

Summing up the trajectory of the play can be done very simply through Shakespeare’s own words: Richard II takes us “[f]rom Richard’s night to Bolingbroke’s fair day” (Act III, sc. iii). It does so by following the king as the sun figure who, from the highest of places in the heavens, is precipitated to a hell of night and despair by his own folly, arrogance and lack of discrimination. Richard’s journey takes him from being God’s image on earth to being “nothing” on the great stage of the world.

Yet Richard’s downfall is paradoxically his rising to grace. Never more noble and royal than once he has been “unking’d by Bolingbroke”, the fallen and naked king achieves the status of a Christ-like figure. His death, simple, swift and noble, could be seen like a metaphysical rising of Richard’s soul after the earthly fall of his spirit.