As I’ve mentioned before, the manuscript for Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock has seen better days. Torn pages and missing words are damaging enough, but perhaps the most devastating loss to the play is its finale: At least one full leaf is missing at the end of the play, taking with it at least 120 lines (based on the number of lines per leaf in the rest of the manuscript). It’s unlikely that we are missing more than one or two leaves, as the play is already rather long at 2,989 lines and is clearly heading towards a conclusion.

The ending of a play, of course, contains the culmination of its plot, theme, and characters. Therefore, in order to discuss or analyze Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, one must hypothesize the nature of its ending. (If Godot shows up, Waiting for Godot looks like a very different play.) And if one is going to perform it, of course, a conclusion of some sort must be written.

It is perhaps unsurprising to discover that the hypothetical ending of the play has become a crucible for the authorship debate: Write the ending one way, and it strengthens the play’s ties to Shakespeare’s Richard II. Write it a different way and the plays become completely incompatible.

CONCLUDING THE PLOT

Much like the authorship debate itself, there are basically two possibilities for the ending of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock:

First, the play could be viewed as a complete conflation of Richard’s reign: The cronies of Richard’s final crisis (Bushy, Bagot, Scroop, and Green) are transplanted into Richard’s first crisis (which historically featured an entirely different set of nobles). Gloucester’s death, which in real life took place between the two crises, is dramatically shifted to the culmination of the first. But instead of being resolved in a series of primarily political maneuvers, this crisis is instead resolved on the field of battle in the fashion of the second crisis.

Theoretically one could argue that this is not a prequel to Shakespeare’s Richard II, but rather supercedes it entirely: All one needs to do is provide an ending in which Richard abdicates his throne in order to complete the play’s masterful blending of every crisis in Richard’s reign into a single, unified narrative.

This theory runs into a rather significant stumbling block, however, when one notices that Henry Bolingbroke — Richard’s replacement and the future Henry IV — is conspicuously missing from the play. While it’s impossible to completely rule out a last minute revelation of the heir apparent (akin to Henry VII in Richard III or Fortinbras in Hamlet), it’s rather difficult to imagine how the play would simultaneously remove Bolingbroke’s father (the Duke of Lancaster), who has also been left rather inconveniently alive.

Thus we are forced to turn to the second possibility, in which Richard’s first deposition is carried out: Stripped of his friends and with their tyrannies revoked, Richard is allowed to keep his throne. Much like the historical record, there is a return to a sort of status quo, allowing for a relatively seamless continuity with the beginning of Richard II.

In addition to Richard’s fate, there’s the question of how the issue of Woodstock’s murder was to be resolved. It has been hypothesized that Lapoole’s entrance as a prisoner at the top of the scene must presage an ultimate revelation of Woodstock’s fate, but this isn’t necessarily true: Lapoole may merely be rounding out the crowd of Richard’s cronies who have been captured during the battle (and destined to be sentenced during the course of the scene). If the play is connected to Richard II, it’s notable that while Gloucester’s death is known at the beginning of that play, even Lancaster and York are left to speculate on the king’s guilt in the matter.

CONCLUDING THE CHARACTERS

Tying off the loose ends of the plot in R2: Woodstock is largely a matter of shuffling historical necessity and guessing which bits the author intended to include. More difficult to guess are the particular conclusions of each character’s arc, since each character — although largely drawn from the historical record — is nevertheless the unique creation of the author’s genius.

Of course, not every character in a drama is necessarily worthy of equal attention. Therefore, one needs to choose which characters are to be given the spotlight’s focus. In the case of R2: Woodstock, my best guess is that this focus belongs to Nimble and Tresilian (who have been the focus of the play’s B-plot), Richard (by necessity of his deposition if nothing else), and the king’s surviving uncles (partly as a continuation of Woodstock’s important legacy within he play).

As for Nimble and Tresilian, the thrust of their arc has already been initiated in Act 5, Scene 5, and is being drawn to a close when the script abruptly cuts off. It’s not difficult, therefore, to round off an ending in which the servant becomes the master (completing a cycle of class inversion found throughout the play) and Tresilian is brought to justice for his tricks in the culmination of a final trick played by Nimble.

Next we turn to Richard, who is most likely brought onstage as a captive by the Duke of York (who is conspicuously absent at the beginning of the final scene). Is he to be humbled like Tresilian? Perhaps. But if Richard is to end with his crown intact, it may make more sense to draw a contrast between his fate and that of his false judge. Let us instead suppose a Richard who, out of his need to find some strength to rely on, turns to the surety of his divine right to the throne: This harrowing experience can actually serve to strengthen and purify that belief, already found as a subtext throughout R2: Woodstock, into the central tenet of his existence (and thus setting the stage for Richard II).

Finally we come to the dukes of York and Lancaster. Throughout the play they have largely acted in concert as “headstrong uncles to the gentle king” (as Greene describes them in 1.2), but there have also been subtle divisions drawn between their characters: The “relenting Duke of York” (2.1) being contrasted against a Lancaster who is frequently “past all patience” (1.1).

Let’s suppose that in this final scene this division between brothers is brought into the open, perhaps driven by their different responses to Woodstock’s death. Lancaster, who had already sworn to “call King Richard to a strict account” (5.3) can follow their initial inclination to its extreme and depose Richard. York, on the other hand, can learn from Woodstock’s counsel and follow his example of temperance and patience, thus turning Woodstock’s death into a final sacrifice in accordance with Woodstock’s final prayer.

(And this, too, transitions the characters naturally to the beginning of Richard II.)

CONCLUDING THE THEMES

Even moreso than with plot or character, attempting to provide a thematic conclusion for the play bears the risk of stamping it with one’s own interpretation of the drama. Thus I have chosen to walk carefully, preferring to include thematic elements without necessarily seeking to summarize or pass judgment on them.

Occasionally, however, boldness is called for. In particular, I have chosen to take up key themes of Richard II. Many of these themes have already been highlighted in Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, but others which have not previously been present in the play are established as the transformation of one theme into another.

Thus, for example, a king who has been vain turns reflective. And whereas in the aftermath of Anne a Beame’s death Richard says of himself, “My wounds are inward, inward burn my woe.” In the face of fresher losses, we find that his woe has consumed entirely, transforming him into a hollow king.

Have I overstepped scholastic certainty? Of course. But the ending of a play should never be completely predictable. So if we limit ourselves to providing an ending which does nothing that is not already contained in the play as it exists, we would confine ourselves to an artistically and dramatically unfulfilling conclusion. In seeking to push the boundaries of the play beyond the known limitation of its final, broken page, aiming towards Richard II as lodestar provides at least some guidance where we might otherwise find ourselves stumbling blindly in the dark.

THE SCRIPT ADDENDUM

The ASR scripts of the play have been updated to include the ending as it was performed during the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare. If you’re interested in reading the new ending by itself, a separate PDF link has been included below.

Permission to use this additional material in print or production is freely granted as long as the following notice is included on either (a) the title page or cover of the printed publication or (b) the cover of the production’s program, website, and any posters, postcards, or similar advertising:

New Ending Written by Justin Alexander
https://www.thealexandrian.net

Originally Produced by the
American Shakespeare Repertory
http://www.american-shakespeare.com

RICHARD II: THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK – THE NEW ENDING

RICHARD II: THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK – FULL SCRIPT

RICHARD II: THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK – CONFLATED SCRIPT

Originally posted on September 19th, 2010.

Is it by Shakespeare?

It’s the question that dominates any discussion of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock. And it’s not merely a matter of the personal aggrandizement or exceptional excitement which would result from identifying a previously unknown work by Shakespeare: If Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock and Richard II are both cut from a single cloth (like Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV), then it holds profound significance for the interpretation of both plays as one can be used to inform the other.

But the play’s lost cover sheet has taken with it both title and author. Nor is there a reliable, contemporary reference to the play’s performance. Instead, the script seems to emerge almost spontaneously out of the haze of history, serving only to remind us of the slender slips and vast gaps out of which our knowledge of the Elizabethan theater is built.

In the complete absence of hard evidence, therefore, the question of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock‘s authorship must be resolved entirely on the basis of internal evidence. Such evidence is, of course, inherently implicit rather than explicit, and the inferences drawn from it can never been considered fully conclusive.

With that being said, the deep connections between Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock and Shakespeare’s Richard II have been obvious to even casual readers of the players for the better part of at least two centuries. The similarities to history, of course, are expected. But what’s particularly relevant are the similarities between the narratives which contradict the history.

For example, in Act 2, Scene 1 of Richard II, when John of Gaunt describes the dead Thomas of Woodstock as “my brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul” he’s describing “plain Thomas” of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, not the proud, power-seeking Gloucester of history. And, in similar fashion, the characterizations of Richard’s other uncles seem to share a greater continuity with Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock than the historical record.

The plays also seem to share a rich verbal landscape with each other. Generations of scholars have produced hundreds of examples, but for the purposes of example let’s consider one of the most compelling: According to Macd. P. Jackson, the phrase “pelting farm” appears only twice in the entirety of English dramatic literature – Shakespeare’s Richard II and Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock. This is not a phrase drawn from the historical sources, and yet it nevertheless appears in nearly identical circumstances in each play.

From Richard II:

This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:

And from Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock:

And we his son to ease our wanton youth
Become a landlord to this warlike realm,
Rent out our kingdom, like a pelting farm,
That erst was held as fair as Babylon,
The maiden conqueress of all the world.

All of these are merely examples drawn from the rich scholarship carried out by Frijlicnk (1929), Rossiter (1946), Jackson (2001), Corbin and Sedge (2002), and Egan (2005) – each of whom draws different conclusions regarding the authorship of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, while nevertheless uniformly confirming its deep connection to Shakespeare’s Richard II.

Such examples begin to weave the two plays together into a common tapestry. But Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock has also been shown to have deep and almost self-evident connections to many other works by Shakespeare as well: In Nimble we see a rough sketch of Dogberry. In Tresilian there are the outlines of Falstaff. Woodstock’s murder echs that of Clarence in Richard III. We could easily pluck the name of “Osric” from Hamlet and give it to the fop courtier who summons Woodstock to court. Woodstock’s conversation with that same courtier’s horse is drawn from the same comedic vein as Launce and his dog.

The examples are almost endless. And, as with Richard II, these large areas of common ground with Shakespeare’s other plays are also matched by countless textual parallels. Michael Egan cites more than a thousand of them in A Newly Authenticated Play by William Shakespeare, and while many of his selections may be dismissed as common poetics, he is not the first to connect the dots.

But if a connection cannot be denied, an important question remains: Which came first?

If Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock came first, then it served as the model for Shakespeare’s plays. And given the breadth and multitude of similarities, we must either suppose that Shakespeare is the author or conclude that Shakespeare spent his entire career plagiarizing this anonymous playwright.

On the other hand, if Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock came second, then the common ground can be easily explained by its author drawing inspiration from Shakespeare.

If we had a firm date for the composition or playing of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, of course, this question could be trivially resolved. But we don’t. And, unfortunately, this is not a problem which internal evidence seems capable of resolving: While we can demonstrate that one play seems indebted to the other, how could we determine which is the lender and which the debtor?

Peter Ure, in the Arden edition of Richard II, claims that the relationship can be deduced from analyzing the pattern of word usage. Specifically, he postulates that it’s more likely that multiple uses of a term in one work will conflate to a single, borrowed use in another work than that a single use of a term will be borrowed multiple times for another work.

In the case of the two Richard II plays, for example, Ure focuses on the description of King Richard as a “landlord”. This occurs once in Shakespeare’s Richard II (Act 2, Scene 1):

Landlord of England art thou now, not king.
They state of law is bondslave to the law.

Ure cites an example of the same from Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, and goes on to say:

In four other places in Woodstock Richard is described as a landlord, twice by himself, once by Greene, and once by the Ghost of Edward III. There is no parallel in Holinshed or elsewhere to this five-times-repeated reproach. It is of course more likely that Shakespeare remembered the word because it is repeated so often than that the author of Woodstock expanded the single reference in Richard II into so abundant a treatment in his own work.

It certainly sounds like a plausible theory. But is it?

Consider the modern example of Robert E. Howard’s stories starring Conan the Barbarian. These proved so popular that dozens of authors have been hired to write new stories starring the same character. The result? Phrases, descriptors, and verbal tics unique in Howard’s body of work were repeated dozens of times, frequently multiple times within a single work, in endless variation.

It’s not too difficult to draw a hypothetical parallel to an anonymous Jacobean playwright seeking to capture the “authentic” feel of Shakespeare’s Richard; nor to imagine how a particularly memorable snatch of text could become lodged in the mind of an imitator.

Unfortunately, this moves us no nearer to answering our question: Just because Ure isn’t necessarily right dsn’t mean that he’s necessarily wrong: If a single evocative image can be regurgitated, I find it no less believable to suppose that a pervasive theme can be accidentally or deliberately recalled.

Perhaps the unique phrase “pelting farm” could give us some guidance? In the manuscript for Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, the passage containing the phrase has actually been struck out, most likely by the original scribe. This means that it would never have been spoke on the stage, making it highly unlikely that Shakespeare could have encountered the phrase and re-used it in Richard II.

Unfortunately, this dsn’t actually provide any clarity. The manuscript for Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock is a scribal copy which may have been prepared for a revival many years after the play was originally written, leaving open (and perhaps even making likely) the possibility that the words “pelting farm” may have been said onstage during an earlier production of the play. Furthermore, if Shakespeare were the author of both plays, he would hardly need to hear the words spoken on stage to know what he had originally written.

In the end, we are left suspended between two possibilities by a subtle enigma which, as Tresilian says, “Janus-like may with a double face salute them both”.

Go to Part 2

Originally posted September 13th, 2010.

Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock only survives in a well-thumbed manuscript. Literally well-thumbed: The edges of its pages, worn thin by apparently decades of use as a playhouse prompt script, are disintegrating.

But that’s not all: The manuscript’s cover sheet has been lost, taking with it the original name of the play and the author’s name. The last few pages are also missing, taking with them the end of the play.

Despite being battered and beaten, the play has survived. And it brings with it a host of mysteries and enigmas.

First, and perhaps foremost, is the play’s anonymity. Take any half-decent, anonymous play from Elizabethan England and it won’t be long before the question, “Who wrote this?” starts attracting answers of, “William Shakespeare”.

Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, on the other hand, is a very good play from Elizabethan England, so it shouldn’t be too surprising to discover that the name “William Shakespeare” has been periodically dogging its heels for at least the last couple of centuries. But the heat really cranked up in 2005 when Michael Egan picked up the torch. Egan didn’t just content himself with writing a mammoth tome making his case that Shakespeare was the author of “Richard II, Part 1” (as he called it): He wrote four. And then he followed it up with a blitzkrieg of publicity.

Which, to make a long story short, is how the play finds its way into the apocryphal cycle of the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare. And thus poses its own problems for me to solve.

THE TITLE

First, let’s talk about the title. Egan makes the compelling case that the identity of the play itself serves a proxy fight for the authorship debate: The earliest critics of the play referred to it as simply Richard II (because it was fairly standard practice for Elizabethan history plays to be named after their reigning monarch). But this created obvious confusion between this play and the better known play of the same title by Shakespeare.

At this point, the play’s identity splits: Those who believe that the play is written by Shakespeare (along with a few who don’t) start referring to it as Richard II, Part 1. But those who don’t ascribe to Shakespeare’s authorship (and want to distance the play as much as possible from Shakespeare’s work), strip Richard’s name off the play entirely and refer to it as either Thomas of Woodstock (or simply Woodstock).

On the gripping hand, I find either approach to be fraught with problems. On the one hand, titling the play Richard II, Part 1 is deliberately provocative. It thrusts the authorship question front-and-center while simultaneously demanding an opinion before one has even had a chance to experience the play (let alone the evidence). It’s presumptuous in its assumption.

On the other hand, titling the play Thomas of Woodstock is to promote the character of Woodstock to the role of sole protagonist in a way that I, personally, feel significantly distorts the narrative of the play.

So I split the difference: As a title, Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock is (a) clear; (b) assumes nothing; and (c) distinguishes it from the other, more famous, Richard II.

DEBT TO FRIJLINCK

In an age of pervasive googling, I was actually surprised to discover that a photographic facsimile of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock wasn’t available online. Of course, even if it were, it wouldn’t do me much good: While I’ve become intimately familiar with the idiosyncrasies of Elizabethan printing, I’m afraid Elizabethan handwriting is a skill I’m far from mastering.

That’s why our script owes a great debt to Wilhelmina Frijlinck. Frijlinck prepared the 1929 Malone Society Reprint edition of the play (published as The First Part of the Reign of King Richard the Second, or Thomas of Woodstock). This edition faithfully reproduced in modern type and layout everything which could be found on the page of the original manuscript.

While in some ways it can be frustrating to be dependent on Frijlinck’s observations instead of being able to study the primary text directly, there’s no question that Frijlinck’s edition is almost as good as the real thing.

THE TEXT

It’s particularly exciting to be able to offer this version of the script to the public because no other decent edition of the play has been made available on the internet.

To date, the only version of the script we’ve been able to find online was the text provided by the Hampshire Shakespeare Company. Unfortunately, this text proved to be so utterly corrupt and purposefully inaccurate that it was completely worthless even as a base text which could be corrected. Its most heinous flaw lies in the decision to expand every contraction (so that “it’s” in the original text, for example, becomes “it is” in the Hampshire edition), thus completely destroying the verse structure of the play. This by itself would utterly discredit the script, but it’s helped along by an essentially schizophrenic approach to punctuation: In some cases spraying excess punctuation in order to further damage the flow and sense of the text, while in other cases failing to provide (or even removing) necessary punctuation required for the text to make any sense.

I think you’ll find that our own script is far from perfect, but it does bear the honor of making an undamaged version of the play publicly available online for the first time.

RICHARD II: THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK – FULL SCRIPT

RICHARD II: THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK – CONFLATED SCRIPT

1. All emendations have been indicated to with [square brackets].
2. Scribal deletions struck thru.
3. Scribal deletions retained in <diamond brackets>.
4. Non-scribal additions underlined.
5. Non-scribal addition not retained underlined and struck thru.
6. Speech headings have been silently regularlized.
7. Names which appear in ALL CAPITALS in stage directions have also been regularized.
8. Spelling has been modernized.
9. Punctuation has been silently emended. (Although only in a minimalist fashion, as described above.)
10. A new ending has been added to the play, written by Justin Alexander. See Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock – The End of the Story.

THE NEW ENDING

Because the play is incomplete, a new ending was written for the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare. The ASR scripts of the play have been updated to include the ending as it was performed. For more details on the ending, check out Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock – The End of the Story. If you’re interested in reading the new ending by itself, a separate PDF link has been included below.

Permission to use this additional material in print or production is freely granted as long as the following notice is included on either (a) the title page or cover of the printed publication or (b) the cover of the production’s program, website, and any posters, postcards, or similar advertising:

New Ending Written by Justin Alexander
https://www.thealexandrian.net

Originally Produced by the
American Shakespeare Repertory
http://www.american-shakespeare.com

RICHARD II: THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK – THE NEW ENDING

Originally posted September 10th, 2014.

Tonight at the Gremlin Theater in Minneapolis, MN, the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare continue with Richard II:

SEPTEMBER 29th, 2010
7:30 PM
Tickets: Pay What You Can!

Gremlin Theater
2400 University Avenue West
St. Paul, MN
Directions to the Theater

Richard II is the second part of a September Saga which reunites two plays starring Richard II which haven’t appeared on the same stage and starring the same acting company since the reign of King James I. It started two weeks ago with the little-known Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock.

Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock only survives in a well-thumbed manuscript. Literally well-thumbed: The edges of its pages, worn thin by apparently decades of use as a playhouse prompt script, are disintegrating.

But that’s not all: The manuscript’s cover sheet has been lost, taking with it the original name of the play and the author’s name. The last few pages are also missing, taking with them the end of the play.

Despite being battered and beaten, the play has survived. And it brings with it a host of mysteries of enigmas.

First, and perhaps foremost, is the play’s anonymity. Take any half-decent, anonymous play from Elizabethan England and it won’t be long before the question, “Who wrote this?” starts attracting answers of, “William Shakespeare”.

Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, on the other hand, is a very good play from Elizabethan England, so it shouldn’t be too surprising to discover that the name “William Shakespeare” has been periodically dogging its heels for at least the last couple of centuries. But the heat really cranked up in 2005 when Michael Egan picked up the torch. Egan didn’t just content himself with writing a mammoth tome making his case that Shakespeare was the author of “Richard II, Part 1″ (as he called it): He wrote four. And then he followed it up with a blitzkrieg of publicity.

Which, to make a long story short, is how the play finds its way into the apocryphal cycle of the Complete Readings of William Shakespeare.

PIECING OUT CONCLUSIONS

Putting together a script for Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock was a complicated project, and you can read more about the general problems I face in this essay. But what I want to particularly focus on right now is the most devastating loss suffered by the manuscript: Its finale.

At least one full leaf is missing at the end of the play, taking with it at least 120 lines (based on the number of lines per leaf in the rest of the manuscript). It’s unlikely that we are missing more than one or two leaves, as the play is already rather long at 2,989 lines and is clearly heading towards a conclusion.

The ending of a play, of course, contains the culmination of its plot, theme, and characters. Therefore, in order to discuss or analyze Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, one must hypothesize the nature of its ending. (If Godot shows up, Waiting for Godot looks like a very different play.) And if one is going to perform it, of course, a conclusion of some sort must be written.

It is perhaps unsurprising to discover that the hypothetical ending of the play has become a crucible for the authorship debate: Write the ending one way, and it strengthens the play’s ties to Shakespeare’s Richard II. Write it a different way and the plays become completely incompatible.

(If you’d like to, you can read the full play and/or the new ending before delving into the discussion of what I did and why I did it.)

CONCLUDING THE PLOT

Much like the authorship debate itself, there are basically two possibilities for the ending of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock:

First, the play could be viewed as a complete conflation of Richard’s reign: The cronies of Richard’s final crisis (Bushy, Bagot, Scroop, and Green) are transplanted into Richard’s first crisis (which historically featured an entirely different set of nobles). Gloucester’s death, which in real life took place between the two crises, is dramatically shifted to the culmination of the first. But instead of being resolved in a series of primarily political maneuvers, this crisis is instead resolved on the field of battle in the fashion of the second crisis.

Theoretically one could argue that this is not a prequel to Shakespeare’s Richard II, but rather supercedes it entirely: All one needs to do is provide an ending in which Richard abdicates his throne in order to complete the play’s masterful blending of every crisis in Richard’s reign into a single, unified narrative.

This theory runs into a rather significant stumbling block, however, when one notices that Henry Bolingbroke – Richard’s replacement and the future Henry IV – is conspicuously missing from the play. While it’s impossible to completely rule out a last minute revelation of the heir apparent (akin to Henry VII in Richard III or Fortinbras in Hamlet), it’s rather difficult to imagine how the play would simultaneously remove Bolingbroke’s father (the Duke of Lancaster), who has also been left rather inconveniently alive.

Thus we are forced to turn to the second possibility, in which Richard’s first deposition is carried out: Stripped of his friends and with their tyrannies revoked, Richard is allowed to keep his throne. Much like the historical record, there is a return to a sort of status quo, allowing for a relatively seamless continuity with the beginning of Richard II.

In addition to Richard’s fate, there’s the question of how the issue of Woodstock’s murder was to be resolved. It has been hypothesized that Lapoole’s entrance as a prisoner at the top of the scene must presage an ultimate revelation of Woodstock’s fate, but this isn’t necessarily true: Lapoole may merely be rounding out the crowd of Richard’s cronies who have been captured during the battle (and destined to be sentenced during the course of the scene). If the play is connected to Richard II, it’s notable that while Gloucester’s death is known at the beginning of that play, even Lancaster and York are left to speculate on the king’s guilt in the matter.

CONCLUDING THE CHARACTERS

Tying off the loose ends of the plot in R2: Woodstock is largely a matter of shuffling historical necessity and guessing which bits the author intended to include. More difficult to guess are the particular conclusions of each character’s arc, since each character – although largely drawn from the historical record – is nevertheless the unique creation of the author’s genius.

Of course, not every character in a drama is necessarily worthy of equal attention. Therefore, one needs to choose which characters are to be given the spotlight’s focus. In the case of R2: Woodstock, my best guess is that this focus belongs to Nimble and Tresilian (who have been the focus of the play’s B-plot), Richard (by necessity of his deposition if nothing else), and the king’s surviving uncles (partly as a continuation of Woodstock’s important legacy within he play).

As for Nimble and Tresilian, the thrust of their arc has already been initiated in Act 5, Scene 5, and is being drawn to a close when the script abruptly cuts off. It’s not difficult, therefore, to round off an ending in which the servant becomes the master (completing a cycle of class inversion found throughout the play) and Tresilian is brought to justice for his tricks in the culmination of a final trick played by Nimble.

Next we turn to Richard, who is most likely brought onstage as a captive by the Duke of York (who is conspicuously absent at the beginning of the final scene). Is he to be humbled like Tresilian? Perhaps. But if Richard is to end with his crown intact, it may make more sense to draw a contrast between his fate and that of his false judge. Let us instead suppose a Richard who, out of his need to find some strength to rely on, turns to the surety of his divine right to the throne: This harrowing experience can actually serve to strengthen and purify that belief, already found as a subtext throughout R2: Woodstock, into the central tenet of his existence (and thus setting the stage for Richard II).

Finally we come to the dukes of York and Lancaster. Throughout the play they have largely acted in concert as “headstrong uncles to the gentle king” (as Greene describes them in 1.2), but there have also been subtle divisions drawn between their characters: The “relenting Duke of York” (2.1) being contrasted against a Lancaster who is frequently “past all patience” (1.1).

Let’s suppose that in this final scene this division between brothers is brought into the open, perhaps driven by their different responses to Woodstock’s death. Lancaster, who had already sworn to “call King Richard to a strict account” (5.3) can follow their initial inclination to its extreme and depose Richard. York, on the other hand, can learn from Woodstock’s counsel and follow his example of temperance and patience, thus turning Woodstock’s death into a final sacrifice in accordance with Woodstock’s final prayer.

(And this, too, transitions the characters naturally to the beginning of Richard II.)

CONCLUDING THE THEMES

Even moreso than with plot or character, attempting to provide a thematic conclusion for the play bears the risk of stamping it with one’s own interpretation of the drama. Thus I have chosen to walk carefully, preferring to include thematic elements without necessarily seeking to summarize or pass judgment on them.

Occasionally, however, boldness is called for. In particular, I have chosen to take up key themes of Richard II. Many of these themes have already been highlighted in Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock, but others which have not previously been present in the play are established as the transformation of one theme into another.

Thus, for example, a king who has been vain turns reflective. And whereas in the aftermath of Anne a Beame’s death Richard says of himself, “My wounds are inward, inward burn my woe.” In the face of fresher losses, we find that his woe has consumed entirely, transforming him into a hollow king.

Have I overstepped scholastic certainty? Of course. But the ending of a play should never be completely predictable. So if we limit ourselves to providing an ending which does nothing that is not already contained in the play as it exists, we would confine ourselves to an artistically and dramatically unfulfilling conclusion. In seeking to push the boundaries of the play beyond the known limitation of its final, broken page, aiming towards Richard II as lodestar provides at least some guidance where we might otherwise find ourselves stumbling blindly in the dark.

THE SCRIPT

Here are links to PDF copies of the new ending and the full script of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock. You can find more about the play at the American Shakespeare Repertory.

RICHARD II: THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK – THE NEW ENDING

RICHARD II: THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK – FULL SCRIPT

Permission to use this additional material in print or production is freely granted as long as the following notice is included on either (a) the title page or cover of the printed publication or (b) the cover of the production’s program, website, and any posters, postcards, or similar advertising:

New Ending Written by Justin Alexander
https://www.thealexandrian.net

Originally Produced by the
American Shakespeare Repertory
http://www.american-shakespeare.com

As You Like Its
Bolingbroke vs. Richard II
Elizabethan Theater and Scholarship
Contested Will: False Common Sense
Whorehouse Nunneries and Vagina Nothings
The Shakespeare Wars: Thus Diest Common Sense
The Shakespeare Wars: Shakespeare Myopia
The Shakespeare Wars: Shylock vs. Godwin
Hamilton’s Cardenio
Authorship of Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock
Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock – The End of the Story
Richard and His Uncles: Discovering the Public Soliloquy
Aye, No; No, Aye: Mortal and Immortal Conflict
Cymbeline: Geeking About “Geek”
Hamlet: Disasters in the Sun
Hamlet Writes: Never Trust an Editor
Hamlet: Of Acts and Scenes
In a Web of Tragic Flaws: Hamlet the Anti-Tragic Hero
Merchant of Venice: The Three Sallies
Merchant of Venice: Elizabethans and the Jews
Merchant of Venice: The Pound of Flesh
Merchant of Venice: The Great Conversion
Merchant of Venice: The Soul of Shylock
Rape of Lucrece: Shakespeare’s Lucrece
Rape of Lucrece: Lucrece’s Ordeal
Taming of the Shrew: Through an Elizabethan Lens and a Modern Eye

AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE REPERTORY – SCRIPTS

Introduction to the Scripts

Cymbeline
Hamlet
Macbeth
Merchant of Venice
Richard II
Richard II: Thomas of Woodstock*

* Apocrypha

SHAKESPEARE MISCELLANEA

As You Like It(s)
I Talk About Shakespeare
The Shakespeare Wars: Thus Diest Common Sense
The Shakespeare Wars: Shakespeare Myopia
The Shakespeare Wars: Shylock vs. Godwin
Contested Will: False Common Sense
Whorehouse Nunneries and Vagina Nothings