Shakespeare’s Other Eden: "Richard II" by Ouroboros Theatre Company (2013)

Among Shakespeare’s history plays, Richard II is the least known and performed in Ireland. For a long time, the overthrow and murder of the anointed king was shown to English audiences with the interesting omission of the deposition scene (also known as the ‘Parliament scene’, IV, 1, 151-318), while in Ireland the play was taken for a long time to be a tragic reminder of the Island’s colonial past. It is possibly for this reason that there has been a significant lack of professional productions of Richard II in Ireland, and equally there has been a significant lack of critical attention to its fate on the Irish stage. In recent years, however, some attempts have been made to re-appropriate a canonical text whose plot lends itself to reflections on history and the past. One such instance is a production of Shakespeare’s play presented in 2013 by the Dublin-based Ouroboros, a theatre company that is no longer in operation. This study looks at the way in which Ouroboros creatively use the source text to travel across a century of Irish history, relocating the story of King Richard II in Ireland to reflect up-on the making of the country that it is today.