Richard II earned a reputation among Elizabethan audiences as a politically subversive play In 1601, supporters of the Earl of Essex, who would the next day (February 7) mount an unsuccessful rebellion against Queen Elizabeth, paid Shakespeare's company to put on a special performance of the play. Queen Elizabeth was compared to Richard, because of her lack of an heir and due to what some subjects viewed as her inclination toward heavy taxation and indulgence of her favorites Sixteenth-century critics often viewed the play as a politically dangerous commentary on the monarchy, and It was not until the eighteenth century that the play began to generate literary, rather than political, interest.
King Richard II, BookRags