Ben Whishaw, for this performance and this performance alone, even if he hadn't done anything else, he should be granted a place in the pavilion of the best actors that ever lived.
It's a good performance, if this was a modern drama, but not right for the character: far too camp and neurotic! In fact they're all much too obviously modern.
@patrick you are very wrong this is a perfect performance and how Shakespeare wrote Richard as a more camp neurotic character based on true discripsions of the man himself
@@drale75 I think the death of his first wife was where it all went wrong. She had a very strong positive influence on him and helped him a lot. After she died I think he probably didnt care as much.
It's cos monarchy is kinda a bad system. Like if you're gonna tell a ten year old that his word is law, you can't be surprised when he makes a string of fatal mistakes. Especially considering the destabilised political situation he inherited.
Ben plays Richard like a rock star who's just downed a handful of barbiturates, crashed his sports car into a swimming pool, been leveled with five different paternity suits, and is just kind of blaming everyone else for all his horrible choices. It's goddamned amazing.
I giggled when he said "Here, cousin!" Gotta love Ben Whishaw :) I also love Henry's reaction to Richard going down on the floor. He looks like he's thinking, "Really, dude? Really?"
What happens time and again in his writing is his ability to utterly immerse himself into his characters, so that he sees everything from their perspective. He can't help making Richard III a genius, or Richard II sympathetic or Cleopatra glamorous and brilliant. Because he was all those things. Or he could imagine them. He made better versions of themselves than they were. He had a strange and remarkable gift. His works will be performed until the lights go out.
Richard II was by far the best of the Hollow Crown series. Ben Whishaw was terrific, especially in this scene, but the guy who really blew me away was Rory Kinnear, who played Bollingbroke. Enormous personal power, he brought the man to real and impressive life. Fabulous performance!
I saw Kinnear playing hamlet live in the theatre. I was 19 and went on a whim - was walking past the theatre on my way home from work and went in to see if they had any ‘returns’ for that evening. They had one spare seat going and I thought ‘why not’. I’m 29 now and that performance remains the most amazing thing I have ever seen live. Rory Kinnear was utterly spellbinding. At the end there was that moment of sacred silence you sometimes get after an astonishing performance- and then the whole place erupted. I was crying, and so was the lady next to me. I really will remember that night my whole life.
The best thing I have ever seen in a theatre was Adrian Lester as Othello opposite Rory Kinnear as Iago. The man is so good he made me SYMPATHISE WITH IAGO! Unbelievable actor.
0:12 Ooooo ... the disgusted, unsympathetic, disavowing, eye-rolling , “Whatever” shift in the seat by Northumberland was so well done by David Morrissey 😂😂😂😂 ... hilarious
There could be no better depiction of the farewell speech to the crown by a king himself- there is a peculiar, morbid pathos to it. And Ben Whishaw could do no more justice to it... others that would try might fall short of both, performance and pathos.
Richard II's crown would have been part of the crown jewels which Oliver Cromwell melted down. This recreated version looks as though it's based on a very similar crown (a queen's) from the same period which Richard II had at the time and which survives now in Europe. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_of_Princess_Blanche
@Alan Mundy I never wrote triage. That was Patricia. As someone who finds Benedict pretty overrated most of the time, here I was surprised by his great performance. I enjoyed it immensely. Best Richard I've seen, that's for sure. Otherwise, yeah, the Henry VI plays were slightly dull and uninventive, but I'm thinking (not having seen any other interpretations of Henry VI) it may just be the fault of the play. It feels like it was made for a dumber audience, or the writer/Shakespeare seemed to think so. Generally though I thought it was as good as the first season. Better production too.
05:30: "With mine own hands, I give away my crown / With mine own tongue deny my sacred state ..."" - RICHARD KNEW fulwell, that these are not his to bequeathe! HE KNEW, that he was forsaking the (still embryonic!) Yorkist cause. HE KNEW that he was betaking himself into sinfulness. HE KNEW that he was betraying the Office of Kings. He bowed only to the desperation of existentialty, a sort of earthly hopelessness (the false hope, that his queen in an earlier scene had already thematised). Human life is innately sacramental and here, the undisownable sacrament is consciously being disowned. This aggravated usurpation of truth is being practised to this day: Millions and unbelievable millions will pay with their lives.
@@callumtostevin-hall2044 You will "the heck" be aware that Henry Bolingbroke was effectively the founder of Lancaster within the House of Plantagenet. His misdeeds it was, that the Duke of York sought two generations later to correct. But Richard's statehood was the statehood which the Yorkist side consistently represented. Lancastrian statehood was another. That's why I say he is (embryonically) Yorkist, though Mortimer and Bolingbroke are equally his cousins.
@@1258-Eckhart Yorkist and Lancastrian statehood was little different, your interpretation seems to stem from a rather outdated constitutional whiggish position. Richard II was overthrown because he ruled poorly just like Edward II half a century before him. As for Lancastrian legitimacy it is true that the Mortimer line was probably the better claim than the line of John of Gaunt but to put it simply that mattered little. Not to mention that Mortimer was a boy at the time and would have made a poor choice when put up against Bolingbroke. No one questioned Lancastrian legitimacy for two generations chiefly because Henry IV and Henry V ruled wisely and well. The Wars of the Roses had little to do with avenging the deposition of Richard II or 'righting the wrongs of the past' as you put it. They happened rather simply because Henry VI was a poor king and they needed some means to justify replacing him.
@@callumtostevin-hall2044 If we're into (rather breathtaking) anachronisms, my position is not whiggish but entirely tory. Richard was usurped and no parliament has the Divine Right to "legitimise" that. That arbiter could have been the Pope (the English correctly held to Boniface in Rome). As far as I know, the avenue wasn't explored. BTW Shakespeare made a far better job of R II than his horrifically tendentious R III.
@@1258-Eckhart I believe you mistake what I mean by the word whiggish. I refer not to the political part but the style of viewing history. In that regard there is no 'tory history'. The Divine Right of Kings is anachronistic for this period, being an early modern rather than a medieval concept. Medieval Kings especially of the English were simply the first among equals and were very aware that they were like to be overthrown come bad rulership.
Didn't he have blue eyes, a pale complexion, a freckled face and a (typically Plantagenet) "big mop of red hair that used to get in the way everywhere"?? ...this guy looks more like Jeesus getting ready to be crucified! :) Still! - an excellent performance by the actor. PS. I could never understand why the British historiography has always been so critical towards him - probably one of the greatest Kings England ever had.
I believe they were going for a Christ like look especially when his coffin is brought before king Henry iv & he opens the lid the camera pans out & Richards body is posed like Jesus on the cross & he was a terrible king that's a fact you can't get around that as he made terrible choices like snatching lands money's that by law he had no right to but he snatched the wrong persons & we got Henry IV because of his ill ideas
Similar. It took place in Westminster Hall, the last section of Old Westminster Palace still standing. It was remodeled by the Tudors and restored again after the fire that destroyed the rest of the palace. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Westminster#Westminster_Hall
@@andrewvictor1865 That's interesting about 'clerk'. I did not know that (I do know you're not right about lieutenant: it was pronounced 'leftenant' in US right up to the First World War). But why is he using an old-fashioned pronunciation for that word in particular? Why didn't he make it rhotic as it would be in Shakespeare's time?
Someone please tell me that I wasn't the only one who thought that was Benadryl Coughsyrup at first? (Idk his name can be recognised even though if you spell it incorrectly 😂)
toby099 This was based on Shakespeare's play, wherein he is described as very beautiful, extremely graceful, and delicate-looking. He had a loftiness and theatricality about him, so this portrayal is accurate.
@@betsiehall9731 everything when a king was to be seen as a warrior strong & noble there was no room for mincing limp wristed wussies if he had those tendencies he should have been discreet like others before & since him...
Yes, I wondered how he managed to slay two of the villains sent to kill him towards the end. My sister could have pushed him over, and I don't even have a sister.
