SOURCE: Matheson, Lister M. “English Chronicle Contexts for Shakespeare's Death of Richard II.” In From Page to Performance: Essays in Early English Drama, edited by John A. Alford, pp. 195-219. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995.

In this essay, Matheson explores the issue of Shakespeare's source materials, using the death scene in Richard II as an example.

The murder of the king, weapon in hand, struck down (probably with a poleaxe) by Sir Pierce of Exton, in Shakespeare's Richard II (1595) is remarkable for several reasons. It shows a decisive aspect of Richard's character that is free of any sense of resignation or passive fatalism—in his last moments the roi fainéant becomes a man of action imbued with “desperat manhood” (as a marginal note in Holinshed puts it), who refuses to “go gentle into that good night.” Derek Traversi characterizes the murder as “no more than a...