Consider a few of the arguments raised. “The spirit of the people is not broken, sir; the will to win is still there and we have a first-rate army”—which reads painfully like an extract from a leading article in, say, 1918. “When the late King and the Prince of Wales gained such spectacular victories in France they were opposed to a conscript and unwilling army. To-day France…has a well-paid and voluntary army.” “I should lay waste France and kill forty thousand men.” Flow do these remarks chime with the military conditions of Richard’s day? When Edward III first declared war, he got his men by what were called Commissions of Array, orders to each shire to send a contingent, which was partly volunteer and partly conscript: later he hired at very low cost “companies” of professional soldiers, under private leaders who made war a very profitable thing by living on plunder and ransoms. The French relied at first on the feudal array, entirely a voluntary force after the first forty days: when the feudal force went down twice before the English archer, they adopted the English system of hiring the free companies. Whether you had a “first-rate army” or not depended on how many companies you could raise and by no means could it be regarded as a national army. Radcot Bridge was fought between the private armies of Vere and of the Appellants. Similarly the numbers engaged were small; and both armies preferred to take prisoners for whom a ransom was paid than to kill outright. Richard’s remark is only possible if he is thinking of all the consequences in starvation and

The carrion in the bush with throte ycorven A thousand slain and not of qualm ystorven [Chaucer: Knight’s Tale]

in the devastated lands, and even then he has multiplied Chaucer’s estimate by forty. All this of course is open to criticism; a historical play, one might argue, should at least be accurate. The criticism has been met by Bernard Shaw in his preface to St. Joan, a. play which one might conjecture to have had some influence on the style of Gordon Daviot’s play. There is the same racy dialogue and the same modernism in ideas. Joan talks, for instance, of “petting lap-dogs and sucking sugar-sticks,” of actions for “breach of promise,” while a long disquisition on Nationalism is placed in the mouth of one of the characters. Shaw defends all this by saying “the things I represent these…exponents of the drama as saying are the things they would actually have said if they had known what they were really doing.” What he means is that with the wealth of historical research at our disposal we can look objectively at the Middle Ages and see better than they could the underlying value of their thoughts and actions, and what we see is best expressed in terms of our own ideas. Only so can the dramatist bring home to the great bulk of playgoers all for which a drama of a bygone age may stand—in Richard of Bordeaux for the clash of outlook between post-war youth with its insistence on beauty, culture and the arts of peace, and the veterans of the war era with their stereotyped arguments about preparedness, the will to win, trade advantages and so on. When you do bring it home this most pathetic of stories in the history of English kingship ceases to be the dry bones of history but becomes a very real and very human story.

 

_The Play was produced originally by the Arts Theatre Club for two

special performances. It was subsequently presented by Howard Wyndham and

Bronson Albery at the NEW THEATRE, with the following cast:_


_Fair Page, Maudelyn_                                  RICHARD AINLEY

_Dark Page_                                            GORDON GLENNON

_Richard II_                                           JOHN GIELGUD

_Anne of Bohemia, his Queen_                           GWEN FFRANÇON-DAVIES

_Duke of Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock_              ERIC STANLEY

_Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt_                     BEN WEBSTER

_Sir Simon Burley, the King's tutor_                   GEORGE HOWE

_Duke of York_                                         KINSEY PELLE

_Michael de la Pole, Chancellor_                       H. R. HIGNETT

_Earl of Arundel_                                      FREDERICK LLOYD

_Robert de Vert, Earl of Oxford_                       FRANCIS LISTER

_Mary Bohlen, Countess of Derby_                       MARGARET WEBSTER

_Agnes Launcekron_                                     BARBARA DILLON

_Henry, Earl of Derby, Bolingbroke, Son of Lancaster_  HENRY MOLLISON

_Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham_                   DONALD WOLFIT

_Sir John Montague_                                    WALTER HUDD

_John Madelyn, Secretary_                              RICHARD AINLEY

_Edward, Earl of Rutland, Aumerle, Son of York_        CLEMENT MCCALLIN

_A Waiting-woman_                                      MARGOT MACALASTER

_Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury_             REYNER BARTON

_A man in the street_                                  ANDREW CHURCHMAN

_A second_                                             ALFRED HARRIS

_A third_                                              GEORGE HOWE

_Woman with loaves_                                    MARGERY PHIPPS-WALKER

_Woman with vegetables_                                MARGARET WEBSTER

_First Page_                                           GORDON GLENNON

_Second Page_                                          BRYAN COLEMAN

_Lord Derby's Page_                                    KENNETH BALL

                                                        (_By arrangement

                                                        with Miss Italia Conti_)

_Doctor_                                               RALPH TRUMAN



_The Play Produced by JOHN GIELGUD_


CHARACTERS


(_In order of their appearance_)


FAIR PAGE, MAUDELYN

DARK PAGE

RICHARD, KING OF ENGLAND

ANNE, THE QUEEN

THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER

JOHN OF GAUNT, DUKE OF LANCASTER

SIR SIMON BURLEY

EDMUND OF LANGLEY, DUKE OF YORK

MICHAEL DE LA POLE, Chancellor of England

RICHARD, EARL OF ARUNDEL

THOMAS ARUNDEL, Archbishop of Canterbury

ROBERT DE VERE, EARL OF OXFORD

MARY, COUNTESS OF DERBY

AGNES LAUNCEKRON, the Queen's waiting-woman

HENRY, EARL OF DERBY

THOMAS MOWBRAY, EARL OF NOTTINGHAM

MAUDELYN, the King's secretary

SIR JOHN MONTAGUE

EDWARD, EARL OF RUTLAND

A WAITING-WOMAN

DOCTOR

A MAN IN THE STREET

SECOND MAN

THIRD MAN

WOMAN WITH LOAVES

WOMAN WITH VEGETABLES

FIRST PAGE

SECOND PAGE

LORD DERBY'S PAGE

SCENES

ACT I

SCENE I.   A corridor in the Royal Palace of Westminster, February 1385

SCENE II.  The council chamber in the Palace

SCENE III. A room in the Palace, the same night

SCENE IV.  A room in the Royal Palace at Eltham, autumn 1386

SCENE V.   A room in the Tower of London, a month later


ACT II

SCENE I.   A room in the Royal Palace of Sheen, three years later

SCENE II.  The same, two years later

SCENE III. A street in London

SCENE IV.  A gallery overlooking the Great Hall at Westminster, three years later

SCENE V.