From TVtropes on Richard II. I’ve heard this a lot, but I keep wondering: couldn’t Shakespeare have made it gay on his own?
Also what do you mean “ambiguous” lol.
Heh. I think the ambiguity refers to the fact that it’s possible to do a production that doesn’t portray Richard as particularly queer or doesn’t make his sexuality an issue, whereas you couldn’t do that at all with Edward II. The only character in Richard II who actually mentions it explicitly is Bolingbroke, who is hardly a disinterested party (as everyone who has peer-reviewed my scholarly work on the play has been at GREAT PAINS to point out*). That said, he could be making false accusations against Bushy and Green or he could just as well be using Richard’s and his favorites’ actual sexualities to justify his actions against them – note that every other accusation he makes against Bushy and Green is about them taking his stuff, whereas the illicit minion-schtupping is the only “principled” issue he brings up. Although that brings us back to the subtext** that while Bolingbroke says that the favorites have “made a divorce betwixt [Richard’s] queen and him,” he’s the one who actually breaks them up, in a scene where the Queen asks Richard, “Hath [Bolingbroke] been in thy heart?” Plus I think instantly dismissing the issue with “oh, Bolingbroke’s executing them on trumped-up charges” kind of accepts the idea that it’s an accusation to say someone’s queer, like if they really were than they’d deserve what they’re getting.
As for Shakespeare’s debt to Marlowe: the connection between Edward II and Richard II offered itself pretty easily; they were both doomed fourteenth-century kings who had favorites, and on top of that Richard’s affinity for his great-grandfather was information that was available in Shakespeare’s day (it’s referred to by Holinshed, for instance). So two dramatizations of their lives are naturally going to have some parallels. I would (like anyone familiar with the two plays) absolutely acknowledge that Shakespeare’s play is in dialogue with Marlowe’s, but I’d never say it’s the reason Richard’s queerness is alluded to, at least not in the way critics sometimes talk about when they refer to Bolingbroke’s speech in 3.1 as some sort of leftover Edward II fragment – it’s much more integrated into the fabric of the play than that, but also, it does different things with it. Which might be part of the dialogue, but the whole issue is more nuanced than “Shakespeare shoehorned gay stuff into Richard II because he was inspired by Edward II.”
*One person who said this to me also felt it was important that we take Mortimer at his word in Edward II when he says he’s not bothered by Edward’s homosexuality, just his choice of boyfriends. Whatever lets us minimize the importance of queer stuff, I guess. **And you know what that’s an anagram for!*** ***It’s “buttsex”
That’s what I was wondering about, the sense people get of Shakespeare just shoehorning in the Gay™ because Edward II was Gay™. I get a different sense of the queerness between the two plays, probably a product of the difference in focus as you said, individuality vs. politics. I couldn’t imagine Shakespeare not having his own reason for something, it had to be more nuanced than that.
Modern Life is Rubbish 