Christian Numerology and Shakespeare's The Tragedy of King Richard the Second

Abstract

Number symbolism appears in the works of Renaissance authors such as Milton, Spenser, and George Herbert. Shakespeare in plays such as The Winter's Tale and The First Part of King Henry the Fourth is no exception to this tendency. In The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, Shakespeare uses a multiple of Christ's age at his death—thirty-three—to focus the question of whether King Richard, who was thirty-three at the time of his death, is a Christ figure. Richard and the Duke of York on several occasions have raised this possibility. But Shakespeare, in Richard's final soliloquy of sixty-six lines, shows that the former king's inability to reconcile certain biblical passages precludes his being a Christ figure. Of particular importance in this respect is the chiasmus framing verse thirty-three of the soliloquy.