ABSTRACT
This chapter offers thoroughgoing analysis of Richard II in terms of its original performance values in the playhouse. Recovering the provocative weave of hitherto unrecognized deixis (audience address) in the script, the chapter argues that the play generates an emotionally driven anti-monarchism. Richard, indisputably a tyrant, is turned by quick-change plyings of the audience into a mesmerizing theatrical powerhouse, whilst Essex-Bullingbrooke, promising commonweal reform, is shriveled into a remote and alien stage presence, outside the charmed circle of live audience address. Further, the chapter identifies, contra Greenblatt, Shakespeare’s strategic contamination of emotive regal symbolism; and it demonstrates the pervasion of Shakespearean dramaturgy by ‘hidden’ audience address, working to inflict political impact, and always flagged by imagery of water, odour, or earth/ground. As such, the chapter pioneers recognition of Shakespeare’s brilliant political stagecraft, invisible on the censor’s page but activated by performance.
