The Wars of the Roses (adaptation) IV", Hall wrote, "underlying these plays is the curse on the House of Lancaster. Bolingbroke deposed Richard II to become Henry IV. Richard II was a weak and sometimes a bad king, ungoverned, unbalanced; he could not order the body politic. Yet for Shakespeare, his deposition is a wound on the body politic, which festers through reign after reign, a sin which can only be expiated by blood-letting. The bloody totalitarianism of "Richard III" is the expiation of England." John Jowett argues the production very much reinforced the teleological assumptions upon which the Tudor myth is based; "it generated an
Richard II of England Richard II of England Richard II (6 January 1367 – c. 14 February 1400), also known as Richard of Bordeaux, was King of England from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. Richard, a son of Edward the Black Prince, was born in Bordeaux during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III. His father was Prince of Aquitaine. Richard was the younger brother of Edward of Angoulême, upon whose death Richard, at three years of age, became second in line to the throne after his father. Upon the death of Richard's father prior to the death of Edward III, Richard,