Although it is the prelude to the great cycle of Shakespeare's English history plays, Richard II is much less often produced than Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Richard III. In fact, unless you live in England or in a city where there's a theater devoted to Shakespeare or an annual Shakespeare festival, you may never have an opportunity to see this in a stage production.Happily, the BBC produced the entire cycle of Shakespeare plays in the 1970's and this Richard II is among the best. It has Derek Jacobi as Richard, John Gielgud as John of Gaunt, his eldest uncle, Jon Finch as Bolingbroke, Gaunt's son, later Henry IV, Wendy Hiller as the Duchess of York and Charles Gray as the Duke of York.Say what you will, no one does Shakespeare better than the British, and Jacobi, Gielgud and Hiller are among the best interpreters of the past century. I saw this play once years ago at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford in a production I thought slightly superior to this one -- but the acting was in no way better. Although I DO live in a city with a Shakespeare theater and attend it regularly, this is only the second production of Richard II that I have managed to see in the ensuing years.Richard II has the added distinction of being one of the few Shakespeare plays that is entirely in verse. Why it is not more often played, I do not know. If you love Shakespeare, don't miss this DVD.

This has been one of my favourite Shakespeare plays ever since I studied it at school so it's a joy to own at last the Beeb's Shakespeare Collection on DVD.Through that school study I've always felt an interest in this king and some sympathy for his dilemmas. A king with such flaws and yet such cunning is so much more interesting beside any tough warrior king who goes about fighting aka his more famous and in the past revered namesake Richard I. And surely we can all feel for his love for his wife, and her despair as he is forced in tears to send her away to safety outside England. So it was a joy to see this amazing performance by Jacobi, confirming all my memories of this play as one of the best of Shakespeare. Whilst Jacobi dominated as the electrifying personality Richard, the rest of the cast are also so very good. Being sympathetic to Richard (as I feel Shakespeare was), I always loathed unartistic Bolingbroke and this actor's excellent performance in this version was very satisfyingly hate-able! I am looking forward to seeing how the Beeb deal with his reign as King when he discovers that being King isn't as easy as he'd thought. I could also happily despise York for the chancer he was, keeping on the winning side, so excellently portrayed by Charles Gray in a performance equalling Jacobi's in quality. My one very slight disappointment was in Gielgud's great patriotic speech, This England. We all had to learn this by heart at school as part of the study, and it's still my most favourite Shakespeare speech. It's not easy for any actor, however amazing, to do it just as I want to hear it. So I don't blame Gielgud at all for not grabbing me with his version, how could I blame such a great actor! I just wanted it done a little differently to satisfy my own ideas of how it should be.I noted when reading up the other comments, a remark that some people had criticised the Beeb's sometimes stark settings. But Shakespeare's plays were performed on a virtually bare stage! The Beeb's versions are positively crammed with scenery and atmosphere which Shakespeare's actors had to create just by their personalities and performance. I didn't see anything stark in the settings in this play. It's a tragedy. You don't expect it to be in a jolly sunlit field!

Richard II is the setup for the cycle of history plays, and as such devotes much time to explication. So it can be a little dry compared with some other Shakespeare, and so it is here.The cast is almost uniformly excellent. Jon Finch is a sturdy Bolingbroke, and Sir John Gielgud is memorable, speaking John of Gaunt's "This England" speech as if no one had ever spoken it before.Charles Gray, usually a "damn-the-torpedos" scene stealer, here defers magnificently to Dame Wendy Hiller. When the two plead on their knees simultaneously for and against a royal pardon of their son, they teeter sublimely on the razor's edge of urgent melodrama and marital farce - an exquisite and very difficult moment.The problem for me is a very intelligent, much praised performer who fails in the title role. Derek Jacobi often makes wise choices as he prepares and analyzes the text. Then he commits the actor's unpardonable sin of monitoring his own performance while delivering it. He winds up admiring his own work while doing it, which in serious drama is disgusting.It is also a truism among actors that either the actor cries or the audience cries, but never both. Unfortunately Mr. Jacobi cries so much there's no reason for us to join in; he sheds enough tears for all of us, and we just sit and stare.The other odd thing about Mr. Jacobi's delivery is his total lack of velocity. It doesn't matter whether he speaks quickly or slowly, loudly or softly, there's no movement, no snap, no impetus, no forward motion. Everything emerges from a thick, suet-y, pudding-like stillness, and he never actually manages to get from point A to point B - compare with Gielgud's performance in the same play, where the older man has lost his long breath, but manages to gallop nonetheless.The BBC videos of Shakespeare's comedies and romances have much more engaging production design than the histories, but what we see here is perfectly adequate, if not arresting.The all-important pacing is uneven, except for the scene of the handing over of the crown, which grinds to a dead halt. This last should have been tightened in the editing. Overall, tedium is not avoided, it's embraced.So if you really think that Derek Jacobi is a great Shakespearian actor, don't mind me, just plunge right in without hesitation.I personally would rather get my hands on a copy of the Shakespeare Recording Society version from the 1960's, starring Sir John Gielgud as Richard II with Michael Hordern, Leo McKern and Keith Michell; this is available on audio cassette in the UK and on CD nowhere, and that's a scandal HarperCollins should address.

Richard II is Shakespeare's first great tragedy, for here he realizes that character is destiny, and no English King was so brought to ruin because of his flawed character than the weak and stupid Richard II, son of Edward the Black Prince and grandson of Edward III.Jacobi's performance gets to the very root of Richard's personality: his arrogance, poor judgment, false bravado, impulsiveness - and in the end, his elegiac suffering as he collapses in tears, shorn of his crown and titles. "I cannot see," he wails when signing his abdication papers. "My eyes are too full of tears!" And was there ever a line in literature more heartbreaking than this: "I wasted time and now doth time waste me." A brilliant performance from start to gut-wrenching finish. Shakespeare has never been done better. The entire cast is marvelous.I hear too many complaints that BBC productions have poorly designed sets and costumes. Puh-leeeze! Shakespeare is all about the WORDS. If you want impressive spectacle, go rent one of Cecil B. DeMille's adaptations of the Little Golden Book of Bible Stories. BBC gives us truly GREAT actors reciting Shakespeare, uncut, unedited, and unexpurgated.Richard II was the first play in a cycle of eight plays that cover British history from 1377 to 1485 and chronicles the rise and fall of the high-hearted, ill-starred Plantagenets. Richard II is followed by Henry IV, Parts I and II; Henry V; Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III; and concluding the cycle, Richard III. This was part of a project by BBC to televise ALL of Shakespeare's plays for television. I don't know if they ever finished the series, but what they did complete was excellent, play after play.If American PBS stations really want to raise money for their support, stop with the stupid pledge drives and auctions! Get all these great performances on VHS and DVD and sell them to a public ravenously hungry for good and intelligent entertainment.