Enter King Richard, John of Gaunt with other nobles [including Lord Marshal] and attendants.

RICHARD        Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster,

Hast thou, according to thy oath and bond,

Brought hither Henry Hereford, thy bold son,

Here to make good the boist’rous late appeal,

Which then our leisure would not let us hear,

Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?

GAUNT            I have, my liege.                                             (1.1.1-7)

I suppose I would notice that this is not a million miles from the opening of Romeo and Juliet… In medias res, bang, a conflict, with a back-story, and apparently a moment of crisis. The King will be immediately recognizable, and it’s interesting that he’s beginning ‘his’ play. In this respect it’s unlike the opening of R&J (or Hamlet or Macbeth or Julius Caesar or Lear); these aren’t minor characters doing a bit of expository work to get things underway, but the main players, and perhaps this makes Richard’s status a little precarious? How in control is he? Is it all downhill from here? It’s an entrance, not an ENTRANCE with build-up, although in performance there may well be a ceremonial pre-set that allows him more gravitas. The stage perhaps quite crowded (this is a public scene; there is likely a throne), with more to come – but this opening conversation involves just two participants, the King and his great-uncle, John of Gaunt.

Richard’s capacity for courtly not-quite-outright-insult-but-needling is immediately apparent. Gaunt is indeed old, the brother of Richard’s grandfather, but Richard never misses an opportunity to point this out: Old John of Gaunt – and even time-honoured is another way of saying old (and, implicitly, past it); a very back-handed courtesy. (Compare Polonius and, especially, Nestor in Troilus and Cressida.) There is anger here, superficial, pointed courtesy, through gritted teeth, and then a swift turn to the matter in hand: have you done what you promised to do? what you swore an oath to do? what you are bound to do, both by your word and by your position as my subject? (The many ways of pulling, or losing, rank, here visually reinforced by the position of Richard, enthroned, on a dais, are central to this play.) Have you brought your son, thy bold son (over-reaching, arrogant, getting-above-himself, presumptuous) – your son Henry Hereford who has made a boist’rous late appeal, recently made an outrageous accusation against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray? I didn’t have the time, the leisure to hear it out before (or rather it wasn’t strategically politic to do so), but now is the moment. (Or rather we didn’t have time previously: the royal plural is crucial to Richard’s identity and status as king.) What’s your son got to say for himself? Can he offer proof? No details quite yet as to what that accusation might be… I have, my liege, replies Gaunt, polite, correct, not rising to the bait.

Ah history plays—the litany of geographical names. Henry Hereford isn’t the name by which we’ll come to know him; the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray will be less important to the play than the weight given to his title here might suggest. And a reminder that Gaunt is Lancaster, that the players here are the ancestors of those of the first tetralogy, the Henry VI plays, the Wars of the Roses, Lancaster and York. This play goes back to the origins of those conflicts, the tangled, thorny family tree of Richard, Gaunt and the other descendants of Edward III.