King Richard II

King Richard II, a graceful and poetic but vain and extravagant ruler, banishes his cousin Henry Bolingbroke and then seizes his inheritance to pay for a war in Ireland. While Richard is away, Bolingbroke returns with an army, the nobles desert the king, and Richard, in a series of beautiful, self-pitying speeches about the sacred right of kings, is forced to give up his crown. He is imprisoned in Pomfret Castle, and Bolingbroke becomes Henry IV.

Written around 1595, entirely in verse, the play contains John of Gaunt's famous praise of England as 'this sceptred isle'. The scene of the king's deposition was considered so dangerous that it was left out of the early printed editions, and supporters of the Earl of Essex paid for a performance on the eve of his rebellion in 1601. Continue with Henry IV, Part 1.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616), born in Stratford-upon-Avon, actor, playwright and shareholder of a London company, wrote about thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets.

The tragedies Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear, and comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, are here in full, with hundreds of editions and studies from HathiTrust.