The logic of the theatre – that the audience prefers the better actor and is restless and contemptuous of a lesser performer – is deeply subversive when attached to the issue of monarchy, because it replaces authenticity with facility: it overlays the question of who is the rightful king with the one of who is the better king. Even to ask whether Bolingbroke’s actions in taking the throne might be justified is therefore a politically challenging question, and the play’s even-handedness becomes itself a highly charged political intervention. It’s a political act specific to the circumstances of
...more
