Richard II

There are a number of latent ‘twos’ in Richard II. Most significant perhaps is the academic conceit of the King’s two bodies – the body politic, and the body natural. Of lesser but notable import: the play covers the last two years of Richard’s life; it spans the reign of two kings, first Richard and at the end, Henry Bolingbroke; Richard’s indecisive nature gives every situation the potential of a dual outcome, and most trivially, he is Richard the Second. Moreover, throughout the play, Richard seems at times more concerned with the symbols of his power (e.g. his crown), than he is with actual governance. It seemed appropriate then, if somewhat abstract, to show a pair of crowns for this play. Also, I’m not going to lie – this was the last play for which I shot a photo and I found myself feeling a bit tapped for imagery – I’d already used chess pieces, playing cards, toy soldiers, ceramic fingers, plastic animals, painted wooden blocks, letters, numbers, birds, gold foil leaves, bottle caps, and pencil sharpeners. With a feeling of defeat I trudged up the street to one of the embarrassingly frequent bead emporiums in my neighbourhood and got these little crown things. Then I super-glued them to a purple ribbon. Still, I’m not going to deny that I like how it looks.