Playing the King on stage: Shakespeare’s Richard II in the shadow of Napoleon

Abstract

This article examines Edmund Kean’s 1815 production of William Shakespeare's Richard II at Drury Lane as a case study in the playful dynamics of nineteenth-century theatrical historicism. It argues that the textual adaptation by Richard Wroughton combined documentary realism with emotional and interpretive freedom, allowing audiences to ‘play’ with the past while reflecting on contemporary political anxieties in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. At a time when the figure of Napoleon circulated in British culture as both tyrannical usurper and charismatic, heroic liberator, the production invited similarly dual readings of kingship and legitimacy. Through close attention to staging, textual alteration, reception, and the wider culture of performance and spectacle, the article demonstrates how theatre functions as a performative mode of historical interpretation in which sovereignty, identity, and power are continually rehearsed, contested, and emotionally re-experienced on stage.