The Practicalities of the Absolute: Justice and Kingship in Shakespeare’s Richard II

Richard II is a king who falls because he failed to be just. His deposition is motivated not by protomodern desires for the reform of kingship, but by dissatisfaction with Richard as king. He is a parody of the just king, of the king who intervenes in the name of justice when a mechanical application of the law would be unjust. His tyranny exploits the freedom from the law that the medieval commonwealth acknowledges in order to make room for the unpredictability of justice. Shakespeare’s play can be read as a disquisition on the absoluteness, unpredictability and ambiguity of justice.