SOURCE: Bennett, Kenneth C. “Climax and Anti-Climax in Richard II.” Essays in Theatre 6, no. 2 (May 1988): 123-35.

In the following essay, Bennett evaluates the dramatic structure of Richard II and contends that it depicts the two parallel tragedies of Richard and Bolingbroke.

Every drama presents a problem in construction, and what Shakespeare had to face in dramatizing the origins of the Wars of the Roses was the anti-climax inherent in the deposition of Richard, a weak but an anointed king. The rise and fall of fortune's wheel in the de casibus tragedies from medieval times on up through the Mirror for Magistrates was likely to be anti-climactic, if not monotonously predictable, and Shakespeare must have been aware of the pitfall. While some critics have pronounced Richard II anti-climactic, most have been content to use words like “ceremonial”, “ritualistic”, and—rather to the same effect—“elegiac”. Much has been said...