'Mock Not': The Problem of Laughter in Richard II

Abstract

Richard II's fall from power in Shakespeare's play has been attributed to many causes: the weakness ofthe king's 'poetic' temperament; the strength of his un-poetic determination to 'affirm a policy of royal absolutism'; his un-Christian willingness to allow a trial by combat; his failure to allow the trial by combat to proceed; his excessive leniency to both friends and enemies; his complicity in his uncle's murder. Most recently, his fate has been ascribed to the effect of a pervasive 'carnival spirit' that shapes the world of this play and the plays that follow it. Richard, according to David Bergeron's 'Richard II and Carnival Politics,' is a 'mock king' who, governed by the rules of carnival games, must inevitably be thrust down, belittled, and cast out to make place for another: 'history and the play's carnival spirit ... displace him, subvert and substitute him. There is, of course, no actual carnival in the play, but Bergeron argues that Shakespeare 'uses language and ideas associated with carnival as a means of exploring the topsy-turvy world of this play,' with the result that 'carnival is not marginal but preeminent in the play as metaphor and reality.' In the spirit of popular festivity Bolingbroke too will 'have his day to "monarchize," but will eventually be subsumed in the carnival process that dethrones every king, every power. '[C]arnival pulls down, if only for a moment, established order, whether government or church.'