SOURCE: Wilson, Richard. “Power to the Scapegoat.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5228 (13 June 2003): 20.

In the following review, Wilson evaluates Tim Carroll's 2003 all-male, Elizabethan staging of Richard II at London's Globe Theatre, focusing on Mark Rylance's illuminating performance of Richard as a “pouting toy-king.”

“Know ye not that I am Richard?” Elizabeth I's complaint to her spin-doctor William Lambarde has had more impact on current Shakespearean thinking than any other historical remark, unless it is her comment that “We princes are set on stages in sight of all the world”. The Globe has made the Queen's identification with the tragedy-king its starting-point for a season of plays entitled “Regime Change”, in a clear nod to critics such as Stephen Greenblatt, who have taught a generation that “theatre is not set against power, but is power's essential mode”. So, whether or not the play Elizabeth resented was Shakespeare's—put on at...