Richard of Bordeaux


 


 

Richard Of Bordeaux A Play in Two Acts 

by Gordon Daviot Edited 

By C. H. Lockitt, M.A., B.Sc.

 

First published 1933

 

 


Author’s dedication to the original edition.

FOR JOHN GIELGUD


INTRODUCTION

THE AUTHORESS

Miss MacKintosh is a young Scots lady, who, after having been trained as an instructress of physical training in Birmingham, tried her hand at short stories and, later, at three novels. She adopted the pseudonym of Gordon Daviot, Richard of Bordeaux, which was first produced in 1932 and published in March 1933, being her first play; it ran for over a year at the New Theatre, where her later plays, The Laughing Woman and Queen of Scots were both produced in 1934.

THE PLAY

In choosing the subject of Richard II, Gordon Daviot was at once bold and wise: wise, because a dramatic pose was second nature to Richard and his reign is essentially a drama; bold, because she inevitably challenged comparison with Shakespeare. Not only did she have a story that lent itself readily to dramatic situations, but she had at least one advantage over Shakespeare in that modern historical writings have added considerably to our understanding of the reign. Shakespeare’s play covers the last three years of Richard’s reign; Gordon Daviot realizes that those last three years are continuous with the past, and are merely the culmination of a drama the first act of which was played long years before. In the last act of his play Shakespeare makes a despairing effort to enlist sympathy for an unlikeable Richard; Gordon Daviot’s play throughout shows us a king, of whom a modern historian [Vickers. England in the later Middle Ages.] has written “his principles were, as far as we can gather, generous and his career suggests a sympathy for the poor at every turn.” The great charm of her play is that she re-creates for us, not a crowned and temperamental poet as Shakespeare does, but a high-spirited, very human boy, with something of the undergraduate about him, developing into an earnest man, heart-broken it is true, but with a high sense of his responsibility, a Richard, in fact, who may be the authentic Richard of history. “I warn you,” Richard says in the first scene, “I shall be intolerable to him,” to which Anne answers, “You know that when the time comes you will be charming to him”—a suggestion that the success which Richard won before 1399, a success that it has often bothered historians to explain, may have been due to that indefinable charm which is the happy possession of a few, and which might have been Richard’s salvation had his lot chanced to be cast in less difficult times. When one has seen the play, no scenes linger longer in the memory than those, such as the scenes with the Queen or the closing scene with Maudelyn, in which his warm-hearted attractiveness is conspicuously exerted. All his “princely gifts”—to misquote Lancaster—are in this play the personal beauty for which he was known, his love of beautiful things, which lifted him above such rude contemporaries as Gloucester and Arundel, his undoubted ability, and love of peace, his happy home-life, and his sympathy with the under-dog, even those furious gusts of passion which are his best-known characteristic, and in one of which he felled Arundel to the ground for arriving late at the Queen’s funeral—we have them all. Historically, the play stands or falls by its delineation of Richard: his success and then his fall have to be made credible. Shakespeare made his fall credible by depicting him as weak and incapable; the success of Shakespeare’s Richard is incredible. It is harder to see why Gordon Daviot’s Richard fails, but if you look for it you will find it in the corrupting effect of success:

“Canterbury…What is destroying Richard, my lord, is something more potent than his enemies. Success. Remember this, Henry of Lancaster, in days to come: it is not the possession of power that offends the multitude but the flaunting of it. You may have all earth for your footstool if you refrain from prodding it with your toe.”

And again, “He holds England in his two hands and laughs like a wicked child and men pause and hold their breath.” The Richard of history boasted that the laws of England resided in his own breast and treated his subjects’ possessions as if they were his own. “Anne might have counselled differently.” Anne’s death is the turning-point of the play: after it Richard talks “savagely” or “bitterly,” “wearily” or “in pain.” He is still the same gentle Richard to his friends but the savour has gone out of his triumph and he, who always posed a little, now that he has no Anne to correct him, rejoices in the display of his power.

 

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE PLAY 

Coming to the throne at the age of ten, Richard found his uncle, John of Gaunt (the Lancaster of the play) the outstanding personality of the kingdom, and his country suffering from an unhappy war, unhappily conducted. The Council which controlled the realm was partly composed of the friends of Richard’s mother, widow of the Black Prince, and partly of the supporters of John—men of whom Richard rightly says “They have no vision.” For nine years they conducted the war and governed England with some un-wisdom and much lack of distinction; they suppressed the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, an event which redounded more to Richard’s reputation for courage—everyone has heard how the boy of fourteen by his presence of mind saved the situation after Walworth slew Wat Tyler—than of theirs for capacity. This quiet if undistinguished period came to an end with John of Gaunt’s departure for Spain in 1386. By placing her opening scene in 1385, Gordon Daviot gives us a picture of the Council at work, honest according to their lights and equally divided between the King’s party on the one hand and the baronial magnates on the other. Once John was out of the way, the road was clear for the blustering bully, Thomas of Gloucester. Richard more and more was claiming the prerogative (“The responsibility of everything that happens is laid on my shoulders, and, that being so, I must be free to direct it as I think fit.” Act I, Scene IV) and more and more are Gloucester and his friends determined to hang on to their own power. The old cry of royal extravagance was raised and one day Gloucester and Arundel came to Eltham to demand on behalf of the Commons the dismissal of the Chancellor Michael de la Pole. Then occurred the famous scene in which Gloucester reminded Richard of the fate of Edward II, substantially as Gordon Daviot gives it in Scene IV. The old remedy—there is nothing original about these men—of a Commission to rule the country from November 1386 to November 1387, was accepted by the king. During the following year Richard enrolled men under his badge of the White Hart, extracted opinions from the Judges favourable to his own claims and called no Parliament. Scenting their danger as the Commission’s year came to an end, five peers, Gloucester, Warwick, Arundel, Derby, and Mowbray (Nottingham) “appealed” the King’s friends of treason. Richard fixed February for the hearing of the “appeal” but the Appellants’—as they are called forces were too strong; Michael de la Pole fled abroad, Vere raised an army in Cheshire as narrated in the play and a Parliament known as the “Merciless Parliament,” acting under the influence of the Appellants, condemned to execution such of the royal party as they could lay hands on. Vere was overwhelmed at Radcot Bridge and fled abroad.