I think this is my favourite of the Shakespeare plays I've read so far. It's certainly a lot more focused than some of the other histories, and I really appreciate that - for once! - the truly incompetent, selfish, grasping arse that is the king is booted from his throne by his nobles, and has to walk through a crowd of jeering commoners, all of whom he's done his best to grind into poverty for what seems largely to be reasons of pure self-aggrandisement.

I felt satisfied that Richard II got his, is what I'm saying. Granted, my knowledge of English history is sketchy at best so his successor could be worse for all I know, but for the moment I'm basking in justice done.

I think what I like best about this is the characterisation of Richard. I've read arguments that after he gets deposed he becomes more sympathetic, and my library copy has a pencil note in the margins of the deposition scene (written by someone else, I'm not a vandal!), that when Richard is being urged to read a list of his sins says "Actually feel quite sorry for him - for a moment". Well that moment is more than I give him, because the genius of his characterisation is that while it can be interpreted as him becoming more sympathetic, it can also be said (and this is my argument) that he's just as monstrously self-centred as ever. Sure, the tenor of his me-me-me changes from a crippling sense of entitlement to a hysterical desire to be as pitiful as possible, but in the end the subject is always the same. I mean, he's telling his wife to leave him and spend the rest of her life telling old people "the lamentable tale of me" which says it all, really. Whether as king or as the most unfortunate wretch to ever exist he's got to be the centre of people's attention - as if poor Isabel didn't have better things to do once this millstone was removed from her neck. There's no concern for anyone else, ever. No empathy at all - you'd think someone with even the tiniest capacity for reflection would wonder, even if only for a microsecond, if the commoners had a genuine beef when he experiences them cheering Henry and chucking rubbish at him.

I have never seen such a sustained lack of self-awareness in fiction. It is both astonishing and fascinating.