Yep, absolutely.

I feel like his decision to intervene in the duel is understandable, he doesn't want bloodshed and prefers peace, but it's at its core somewhat cowardly, indecisive, and it's this decision that dooms him. I love how the Hollow Crown shows him as this naive, boyish king, a bit foppish. Then when he finally makes a decisive action to leave England and lead the war in person, he is punished for it and loses everything.

It’s part of the brilliance of Shakespeare. Two sides nearly always, sometimes I don’t clock it until listening to scholars, Harold Bloom is one of the more famous but there are others. The more you learn the better it gets. It’s a crime we can’t make this interesting for school children.

Um, they are not defending Patrick Stewart, they are defending John of Gaunt, and they are drawing their swords because the director told them to.

@@adolforodolfo6929 lol.

Ah the King who lost his show....should have in fact cut down his rich uncle.....put his cousins in prison....confiscated their lands and he would have prevented alot of problems in years to come....and maybe a plantagenet King/Queen would sit on the English throne today....

jmharrison51 yeah, Richard II was a brilliant work. I need to reread it again.

Yes, it is a great one.

Coriolanus is also underrated.

@@onlynameMrBlank Coriolanus is one of the few Shakespeare plays I've never seen or read, but I shall get round to it. A few years ago now, I bought the boxed set of the BBC "complete Shakespeare" that they did in the late 70s/early 80s. A lot of them aren't very good - studio bound, performed in a "stage" style which doesn't work well on television, and some of them horribly miscast. I'm watching them in the generally accepted chronological order of composition, sometimes leaving months between them, I have two to go before I get to Coriolanus. I shall look forward to it.

@@adolforodolfo6929 Responding to an older post, I know, but I thought Coriolanus is one of the better ones. I haven't watched it in years but I do remember Alan Howard and Irene Worth are both magnificent. If memory serves, it's fairly heavily cut which may not be such a bad thing.

Especially for Sir Ian.

May it not be for many years.

Especially when his own personal passion is theatre and classics such as this series.

I agree with much of what you have written - but maybe the accuracy of Gaunt's, Richard's and Carlisle's prophecies has more to do with the fact that Shakespeare was writing 200 years after the events of the play than with any special awareness on the part of the characters?

i bought the hollow crown series from amazon based on this clip. i agree, richard ii is the best of the series.

So are all kings, apex owners in feudalism. fee simple absolute.

lol, that's what I thought at the moment I first saw Stewart's face

Make it so, you goddamn landlord.

That is comment perfection. Well done Number Two!

Should have been at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross. "THERE ARE THREE LIGHTS!"

Tom Cruise taught Patrick Stewart everything he knows.

Now that’s funny!!

Aptly quoted so!

So you and my favorite Queen Phillipa of Lancaster are related???

@@elsacristina9 At least 3 times. John of Gaunt is, so far, my GG 3 times in my tree, meaning she is at least my Great Aunt 3 x so far. I am working on it bit by bit. I just put Auntie in the Scotland (Stuart) side and she comes out as being my 20th Great Aunt. I did find I already have her pic in my pictures saved so either I have put it in another profile or she might be a GG at somewhere. These royals married each other and my tree looks like an entangled mess at spots. I would love to have a genetics professional count how many times I am my own cousin. 😂😂 Seriously though, it is fascinating and started with a window, through the Halcro's in Orkney, Scotland. It is an honor I do not take likely

@@Paulsmuse John of Gaunt firstborn Philippa of Lancaster it is one of the most beloved Queens we ever had, and She is actually my favorite Queen. Recently I was near her tomb where she rests with her husband our great King João I

@@elsacristina9 That is awesome!

@@Paulsmuse I'm reading a book from Isabel Stilwell called: Philippa of Lancaster, English Princess, Queen of Portugal. The book is in English so you can buy it and read it. it is a romance but it also mix with histórical facts and it is so far awesome. The picture of my profile picture it is actually the monastery where she is buried. it is called Batalha Monestary. search for their tomb it is beautiful.

Richard should have killed henry

@@ulfricstormcloak3507 Instead he "took the grander approach of giving himself up and going to prison... and dying." ^.^ Truth is, Richard had no popular support against Henry IV's usurpation. After the death of his Queen, Anne of Bohemia, who was posthumously credited with being a calming influence on a possibly bipolar Richard II, he just went to pieces and made a string of politically suicidal decisions. By the time Henry IV came back with an army, Richard II was just done. He's basically the real life Joffrey Lannister screaming I AM THE KING but nobody gave a shit about that by that point.

“Forcing.” He committed treason and sparked the Wars of the Roses.

Capt. Picard: Well... I suppose that is the end of Q. -AU CONTRAIRE, MON CAPITAINE! HE'S BACK!

Worf: Die.........

He REALLY was!!! I went into the episode not knowing what to expect and he literally blew me away - he was so GOOD at conveying so many different emotions and also in evoking different emotions from the audience. Truly fantastic and incredibly emotional

oh God no! I beg to differ - Patrick Stewart is the star graduate from the Jacobi finishing school for actorly pretensions and pomposity

Adarcus ? Richard was already the King when he drew the sword.

Helen Trope I know he was the king. But you can be something without really being that thing. Think about it terms of being puppet or figurehead rather than than the leader. Yes he was the king but vain and manipulated. But when he takes up that sword even though he is wrong he is the most in control. I don't know if that makes any sense but that is what I am thinking.

Adarcus Who is manipulating him? Richard was once a boy King and may have been manipulated then but not when he was an adult. He was not a very good King except in his support of the arts and unlike Henry IV who ousted him, he did not persecute heretics, but Shakespeare makes him sympathetic when he loses power.

+Adarcus Where can be any power of king before a dying men?

Adarcus you are completely off base here..I think you have Richard ii Confused with someone else

Penny whistle man to you

This sceptered isle, this....Number One.

Maybe he thought it would be fun.

DragonHeart613 Jean-Luc Picard vs Jean-Baptiste Grenouille

They'll have to get mr T, Malcolm X and V in on this alphabet-I-cast. They also have James bond's "M".

I suppose that if you didn't know the play, it wouldn't bother you. But I agree with you; this is one of a small number of Shakespeare plays, my personal favourites, that I have read/seen so often that I just about know them by heart - and so every time the text is altered or abridged it jars. This production was so good, easily the best Shakespeare I have seen on television, that I still enjoyed it hugely, but some of the cuts I think went too far. Richard II is not a particularly long play and almost nothing in it is superfluous - maybe just the scene where York and his wife plead with Bolingbroke for Aumerle's life, which goes on a bit too long and is essentially a comic interlude which works well enough in the theatre when it's played for laughs, but can't really work on television. The "cuts" which annoyed me most were the cuts to Richard's soliloquy in prison shortly before he is murdered; that soliloquy is crucial to understanding Richards journey and the impact it has made on him, but they cut more than half of it out. I don't think that, in this case anyway, the cuts were made to "dumb down" the text, but simply to compress the action and to shorten the running time. If you go to see Shakespeare in the London theatre, some plays (Hamlet and Richard III for example) are inevitably cut because the full text takes over four hours to perform and people would not otherwise be able to get home after the performance. As for "dumbing down" the text, replacing "difficult" words with a more easily understood alternative, yes, that does happen a little - not very much, just the occasional word here and there, but it's totally unnecessary and for me it jars; but, again, if you don't know the text, you're not going to notice.

@@adolforodolfo6929 now he that made me knows I see thee ill, lll in myself to see and in thee seeing ill. It was just one extra sentence that adds to the poetry. But cutting it out I know it seems Superfluous but it's so necessary in the dance of the words

@@Vpopov81 I completely agree.

i agree, but it's likely production constraints. even abridged, this ran 2 hours and 21 minutes, which is considerable for a "movie," especially one that i assume was meant to air on television as well. for those who are familiar and interested, there will always be plays (which are sometimes abridged as well..) and of course, the text. but i really appreciate this series for making shakespeare more accessible to those who are unfamiliar. this approach is also clear in the decision to not speak in iambic pentameter. i would like to think that the hollow crown helped garner some interest in the bard. :)

Most countries do their own stuff, you just haven't seen it yet maybe. In the 1970's (God, I'm getting old!) , French television did a series called "Les Rois Maudits" (The Accursed Kings) based on a series of historical novels by Maurice Druon, which are about the French kings and queens of the 14th Century. It's not highbrow stuff, sex and violence basically, so perfect television :-) Just about all of the episodes of this series are on KZfaq, including ones with English subtitles, so you can easily watch them if you want to.

Try the KZfaq channel called German Period Drama

@@adolforodolfo6929 les rois maudits was born to be on starz

It's absolutely worth watching. If you only watch the Patrick Stewart parts, you won't see much of it, because his character dies less than a quarter of the way through the play 😁. This is a great play with some marvellous scenes - this is not even the best of them.

Remember, all of Shakespeare's heroes had a 'tragic flaw'. Richard could be no different.

John of Gaunt was dying anyway.

Or a coward.