DALLA TERRA DESOLATA AL PARADISO RICONQUISTATO: RIFLESSIONE E RIVELAZIONE IN RICHARD II

From the Waste Land to the Paradise Regained:
Reflection and Revelation in "Richard II"


In the complex texture of Richard II, the role played by Queen Isabel is only apparently marginal. The play offers a wide-ranging reflection on sovereignty, the ethics of power, and on the State and its government, and Queen Isabel’s words and actions institute a bridge between past and future, announcing a new beginning for English history. I analyze the relationship between the tragic (and lyrical) narrative of a fragmented regality − with the initial apparent opposition between Richard and Bolingbroke gradually resolving into a specular symmetry − and the prophetic vision of a second coming, the rise of a new genealogy of monarchs capable of giving England unity and identity, i.e., the Tudor dynasty, under Queen Elizabeth in particular.