Shakespeare’s Richard II is more famous (or perhaps simply better known) play than Marlowe’s Edward II. The two plays are markedly similar in plot, both deal with the deposing of an anointed monarch, though Marlowe is far more upfront about the homosexual aspect of the plot. The fame of Shakespeare’s play might simply be due to Elizabeth I’s famous reaction when Essex and his supporters tried a Richard II Revival. Lately, I come to believe that Richard II is simply an echo of the superior Edward II.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Shakespeare. I’ve done the pilgrimage. Richard II, however, has never been an outright favorite, and I think I’ve finally figured out why.

Marlowe’s Edward II is a more complex play. One feels sorry for Edward because his opponents become such hypocrites; after they gain power they commit the exact same sin. While I don’t see the play as the call for homosexuality that some critics do, the reason for the charges against Edward II are clear. There is no question that he favors Galveston. In Richard the term favorite is tossed around as a sometimes call to arms, but the reasons for such favoritism are hinted at (Fiona Shaw’s version of Richard makes it much clearer and leaves no doubt in the mind).

True, Richard took Bolingbroke’s inheritance, which becomes the primary reason, but we also told that Richard favors the three would be musketeers – Bushy, Bagot, and Green, who lack the character of Galveston.

What this does, at least for the modern reader, is make Richard a far more sympathetic character. To be honest, the only really truly, sympathetic character is Mowbray, who had the right of it.

Shakespeare’s play is more of a play of politics, and not the circular corruption that lies at the heart of Marlowe’s work. Despite Bolingbroke’s claims at the beginning, it is hard to imagine that the great rebel didn’t already have something in the works before his exile. For instance, he is called out for such a charge. Mowbray delivers a final warning before he leaves for parts unknown (considering his sorrow, maybe France. He is English after all). This means that Bolingbroke is not an example of power corrupting. Additionally, Bolingbroke does not seem to have any favorites. It is true that he pardons Aumerle, but Aumerle is his cousin, his aunt was begging. Additionally, it comes across as something that might be classist, or something that Richard should have done at the beginning of the play, thus preventing his tragedy.

Bolingbroke, to the modern reader, isn’t the hero because he is unjust, and is fully aware of the fact that he has committed a sin. He is reminiscent of Claudius from Hamlet , a man who prays for the repentance he cannot have because he refuses to give up his ill gotten gains (pardon the cliché). Bolingbroke intends to repent, his pilgrimage, but it is telling that he never gives up the throne and just settles for his rightful inheritance. He also separates husband and wife, hardy a loving act. A good political one, however.

Richard sets himself up as martyr to Bolingbroke’s worldly king. He almost seems to gladly give the crown, he barely seems to fight for it (in fact, he seems far more willingly to fight the Irish). When he says good-bye to his wife, there is a sense of sadness and, yes, of love. Richard fights at the end; he goes down fighting. He goes from willing martyr to fighting king. In some ways, he sounds like Mary, Queen of Scots with that same sense of throwing away a kingdom due to stupidity (and in Richard’s case, a dose of greed), a desire for martyrdom, and a late second thought.

There is also a connection to Richard and Beckett, hence the pre-killing scene, the “who will rid me of this man” discussion (or else, Shakespeare was channeling Blackadder the First). This connection hammers in the martyrdom symbolism and makes Richard more sympathetic than Bolingbroke, who has been sinned against. It makes Richard stand out from his uncle York, the human weather vane who cannot bring himself to fully speak up for his son, until he is shamed into by his wife, whom he insults. Of the surviving brothers at the beginning of the play, it is Gaunt who comes across as the most honorable. He wishes to counsel his nephew; he sees and understands the difference between ruler and father. He is loyal to a king who doesn’t deserve his loyalty, something that York attempts but cannot carry out. With Gaunt’s death, dies the old order, the England of the play’s most famous speech. Its life is something that York does not seem willing, or able, to carry on despite all his grand words.

Bolingbroke lacks Richard’s emotion. He seems to love his father, but once his father dies, does he truly love the other members of his family, at least in the play? He seems to be a rather cold fish, as does York. A good political fish, but cold.

If Richard II is about politics, it is about politics in terms of a king who cannot keep his crown and the power hungery cousin, the heir in waiting, who is more than willing to seize it. A concept that Elizabeth I, with her trip to the tower under her sister Queen Bloody Mary would have understood extremely well, far better than her sister Queen to the north and her fictional counterpart of Richard.