Shakespeare's Carved Saints

The popular account of Thomas Becket's murder as a likely influence on Shakespeare's Richard II, as well as on the entire second Henriad, is compelling in view of the substantial changes the playwright makes in Richard's death and the events subsequent to it so that they reflect similar events surrounding the martyr's death. The history of Shakespeare's hometown parish, its reverence for the martyr, and the life of its founder, John of Stratford, himself an Archbishop of Canterbury, both inform the ennobling that Richard's character undergoes in the play and illuminate the political tension the story provoked regarding the Tudor throne.