Abstract
For most readers, the Queen in Richard II is an adult. As Jean Howard and Phyllis Rackin put it, Shakespeare “transforms the child [of historical record] into a mature woman,” in a manner that is, like so much of Shakespearean history, “unhistorical.”1 In his Cambridge edition of the play, Andew Gurr states that Shakespeare’s queen is actually a conflation of the historical Isabelle de France and her predecessor, Richard’s first wife, Anne of Bohemia: a tradition that appears to stem from Horace Walpole.2 Theatrical productions of the play thus tend to cast the Queen as a grown woman: Kathryn Pogson, Anna Carteret, and Michael Brown in an all-male production of the play, played the role in their thirties, and Sian Thomas and Ellen Tree (Mrs. Charles Kean) played it in their forties.3 Clémence Poésy, at thirty, recently played her in the BBC television production of The Hollow Crown.4 The name that production gave to the character was “Queen Isabella Anne.”
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Notes
The theatrical tradition of the adult Isabelle is illustrated by G.H. Broughton’s, Queen Painting Isabella and Her Ladies. Charles Knight’s Imperial Edition of The Works of Shakespeare 2 vols. (London: Virtue and Company, 1873–1876).
J.J.N. Palmer, England, France, and Christendom 1377–1399 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972): 169–79 and his “The Background to Richard II’s Marriage to Isabel of France (1396)” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research XLIV. 109 (May 1971): 1–17.
Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest vol. 2 (London: Henry Colburn, 1851): 2.
Helen Ostovich, “‘Here in this Garden’: The Iconography of the Virgin Queen in Richard H” Marian Moments in Early Modern British Drama ed. Regina Buccola and Lisa Hopkins (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007): 21–34 at 21. Ostovich’s argument, one of very few serious treatments of this character, links Shakespeare’s treatment of the queen to medieval iconography of the Virgin Mary.
Nigel Saul, The Three Richards: Richard I, Richard II, and Richard III (London and Hambledon: Continuum, 2005): 136.
Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550. Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002): 43–61.
Léon Mirot, “Isabelle de France reine d’Angleterre, comtesse d’Angoulême, duchesse d’Orléans (1389–1409). Épisode des relations entre la France et l’Angleterre pendant la guerre de cent ans” Revue d’histoire diplomatique 18 (1904): 546–73 and 19 (1905): 60–95, 161–91, and 481–522. For historical references to Isabelle’s life see Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397–1400: The Reign of Richard H ed. Chris Given-Wilson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993).
Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997): 531.
John Stow, A Survey of London ed. William J. Thorns, Esq. (London: Whittaker and Co., 1842): 10.
Ostovich, “‘Here in this Garden,’”21; Dillian Gordon, The Wilton Diptych (London, 1993), and “The Wilton Diptych: an Introduction” in The Regal Image ofRichard H and the Wilton Diptych ed. Dillian Gordon, Lisa Monnas and Caroline Elam (London: Harvey Miller, 1997): 19–26.
Simpson, “Contemporary English Writers,” and R. Voaden, “Out of the Mouths of Babes: Authority in Pearl and in Narratives of the Child King Richard” in Youth in the Middle Ages ed. P.J.P. Goldberg and Felicity Riddy (York: AMS, 2004): 61–72.
William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, The B-Text ed. A.V.C. Schmidt (London: Everyman, 1987) and Richard the Redeless ed. James M. Dean (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000).
Simpson, “Contemporary English Writers” and The Chronicle of Adam Usk ed. and trans. C. Given-Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997): 3.
Christopher Fletcher, Richard II: Manhood, Youth and Politics 1377–1399 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Record and Process in Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397–1400 ed. Chris Given-Wilson, 168–9 and Simpson, “Contemporary English Writers,” 116–17.
See Anna Jameson, Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical, and Historical vol. 2 (London: Saunders and Otely, 1832): 238.
Augustine Skottowe, Richard II and the Truth of History vol. 1. (London, 1824): 141.
And John A. Heraud, Shakespeare: His Inner Life as Intimated in his Works (London: John Maxwell, 1865): 118–26. See Richard II. Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition ed. Charles Forker (London: The Athlone Press, 1998).
She goes on, “That knowledge and appreciation of womanhood which is one of the noblest components of his later works, is lamentably deficient here.” Beverley E. Warner, English History in Shakespeare’s Plays (New York: Longman’s 1894): 60–1, 79–88.
The Victorians pay more attention to the Queen than current scholars, for whom the Queen is simply “marginalized.” Jeremy Lopez, The Shakespeare Handbooks: Richard II (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009): 29. Lopez makes the interesting suggestion that Shakespeare downplays the relationship between the Queen and Richard in order to avoid tainting it with Richard’s performative inauthenticity.
Nahum Tate, The History of King Richard the Second Acted at the Theatre Royal under the Name of the Sicilian Usumer (London: Richard Tonson, 1681).
Samuel Daniel, The First Four Books of the Civil Wars Between the Two Houses of Lancaster and York (London, 1595) book II, stanzas 66–98.
George M. Logan, “Lucan — Daniel — Shakespeare: New Light on the Relations Between The Civil Wars and Richard II” Shakespeare Studies 9 (1976): 121–40. See also Andrew Gurr: “Daniel gave a precedent for Shakespeare’s queen” (65) and “Like Daniel, Shakespeare unhistorically makes Isabel a grown woman” (2. 2. On). Forker concurs, “By making the Queen an adult (as did Daniel), Shakespeare can use her to draw sympathy to the King as well as to sound an effective voice of tragic foreboding.” King Richard II, 274.
Gaulfridus Anglicus, Promptorium Parvulorum (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1516): 1.2.v,
and John Withals, A Shorte Dictionary for Young Beginners (London: Iohn Kingston, 1556): Z.1.v.
For a detailed discussion of this passage from a different perspective see Scott McMillin, “Shakespeare’s Richard II: Eyes of Sorrow, Eyes of Desire” Shakespeare Quarterly 35.1 (1984): 40–52.
Anne Rudloff Stanton, The Queen Mary Psalter: A Study of Affect and Audience (Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 2001): 114–16.
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© 2014 Deanne Williams
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Williams, D. (2014). Isabelle de France, Child Bride. In: Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137024763_3
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