SOURCE: Macaulay, Alastair. “An Eloquent Examination of Kingship.” Financial Times (5 January 2001): 16.

In the following review of Steven Pimlott's 2000 Royal Shakespeare Company staging of Richard II, Macaulay applauds the stark production for its arresting investigation of existential themes.

Who is worthy to rule? Shakespeare's plays ask the question again and again, and it is a central irony of Richard II that the title character only starts to seem fit for the throne as he abandons it. Shakespeare is often at his most powerful when he shows the gap between the crown and its former wearer: as when the deposed Henry VI is arrested, as when the Duke in Measure for Measure wanders his own state in disguise, and—supreme—as when King Lear rages on the heath. The key point is one we all know in life: that it is only when you have stopped doing something that you...