ABSTRACT
Surprisingly the relationship between Richard II and Italian aesthetics is cited hardly at all by editors and contributors of volumes on the conjunction between the Italian Renaissance and the far later, English 'Renaissance'. Shakespeare attempts to elude the ideologically thorny problem of the usurpation of a badly administered realm and the divine right of kings. Quoting Rabkin and Gradin she sees 'the source of the intellectual play on paradox and contrariety, a pattern of thought to which Shakespeare could consciously and meaningfully appeal' in the influence of a number of works including those by Italian Renaissance thinkers and writers such as Baldassare Castiglione and Giordano Bruno and particularly quotes Talbert's analysis of Richard II as an example of conflicting perspectives, both in the play and its sources, of 'the coexistence and competition of the antithetical meanings of the Lancastrian and Yorkist perspectives'.
