This Is Shakespeare

by Emma Smith

What would contemporary audiences have thought? An official Elizabethan sermon inveighed against rebellion, arguing that Lucifer was the ‘founder of rebellion’, that earthly kings were ‘ordained of God’ and that even rebellion against a wicked ruler was not to be sanctioned: ‘a rebel is worse than the worst prince, and rebellion worse than the worst government of the worst prince that hath hitherto been.’ This might suggest that orthodox contemporary sympathies ought to be with Richard (although it’s always worth recalling that the messages that an institution most actively promulgates are often, by definition, ones to which not all its members automatically subscribe – otherwise why the need to keep telling them?).