IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE PRINCIPAL PARTNERS OF SHAKESPEARE’S GLOBE’S 2019 SUMMER SEASON
Though the new production of Richard II we’ve been discussing here is taking place at the Globe, it’s perhaps worth remembering that the original didn’t. The play precedes the building of the first theatre by half a decade or so. It is thought to have been written in 1595; its first recorded staging is from the winter of that year in a private house in the presence of Queen Elizabeth’s privy councillor Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury (who would go on to be a pivotal figure in her reign and the early Jacobean era). Its first appearance in print was in a Quarto of 1597.
The play, as I noted a couple of weeks ago, was a political hot potato then as now, and more than just for the historical resonances of its content.
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