On Pater's Commentary on Richard II
An Essay

by Kimber

In the commentary "Shakespeare's English Kings", the 19th century English essayist Walter Pater extolls the poetic virtues of the majority of the kings in Shakespeare's plays and King Richard II in particular. He comments of Richard's use and eloquence of prose in almost any situation, his penchant for self-pity and his seeming naivete toward his position which he trades in the end for shrewd emotional manipulation. It's hard to tell from the final paragraph whether Pater is defending Richard the character or that part of Shakespeare which created him, but defend he does. It is a positive essay.

"One gracious perogative, certainly, Shakespear's English kings possess: they are a very eloquent company, and Richard is the most sweet tonged of them all." My guess is that this sentence qualifies as one of the great understatements. As Pater pointed out in the essay quite often, there was no situation undeserving of his poetic wit. His tastes all ran to the extravagant and expensive; his lifestyle was frivolous and irresponsible. His absolute naivete about his friends, enemies and position was all part of the poetic mentality given him in the first two-thirds of the play. He has an almost fanatical devotion to his trust in Divine Right as a protector to his position. It is only in the end, when everything and everyone has turned against him, that the reality of his mortality dawn fully on his consciousness. But even then his poetic bent shows in the mirror scene where he verbally lacerates his enemies while yielding to the logic of the situation. Pater basically thought of Richard as a very poetic Shakespearean character.

I thought Richard II was an artist; or should have been. He has all the classic symptoms of extreme If-I-Ignore-It-It-Doesn't-Exist syndrome. All he wanted to do, really, was enjoy life. If he had been brought up in a different environment I don't think the idea of being king would have ever crossed his mind. Somehow, I see him more as a starving, decadent poet freezing en masse with four other poets in a garret in Paris for love and art. Not a sovereign with the responsibility of a whole country on his shoulders.

This essay did nothing in the way of showing me any great revelations into the characters of Richard II or Shakespeare. (Knowing his histories, it was all politically motivated anyway.) It merely confirmed a feeling I've had ever since reading the play that of all the heroes in all the plays, this is the one I pity most. Richard II was forced down a long path of events over which he had no control and was killed for something he wasn't meant to be. Richard was an artist, not a king.