ABSTRACT
Faced with the unfolding denouement of his own tragic downfall, Shakespeare’s Richard II posed a series of questions at the notion of surrendering his crown and royal dignity.1 ‘What must the king do now? Must he submit? The king shall do it: must he be deposed?’2 The concerns Richard expressed on the late sixteenth-century English stage echoed serious political anxieties that arose not only in 1399, but in a relative explosion of incidents in the late fifteenth century involving hostage kings. Amid a backdrop of the civil discord that acutely affected English politics between 1455 and 1487, three different kings were constrained by their own subjects on five separate occasions. This significant intensification of royal hostage activity interrupted the reign of Henry VI who was held by the Yorkists in 1455, 1460, and finally from 1465 to 1470. Additionally, Edward IV and his eldest son, the uncrowned Edward V, were held hostage in 1469 and 1483, respectively, by the most powerful figures within the Yorkists’ own ranks.
