To speak in the usual terms of Shakespeare's plays - in terms, that is, of the way they are standardly classified into comedies, tragedies and histories - is shown by Richard II to be potentially misleading; for Richard II is as much a tragedy as a history, and the most striking thing about it is the way the character of Richard himself metamorphoses under the pressure of defeat and disappointment into heroism. Misadvised he certainly was; it is left deliberately open by Shakespeare whether by himself or those in his immediate entourage; but the result is that his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford and heir to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, comes half-reluctantly and almost by accident to be king in his place. 
      Mark Rylance's Richard is a complex, intelligent, feeling man, who becomes when stripped of power, titles and friends a formidable satirist of his own condition, but to the infinite discomfiture of those who, tired of his profligacies and damaged by them - Bolingbroke is the prime victim of Richard's wastrel policies - have taken the crown from him. The play discusses kingship on the premise of its divine right, and entitlement to that right on the basis of good stewardship. There is the dilemma for the loyal but angry Bolingbroke: Richard is his King, but has unjustly deprived him. Richard resigns the crown, but with little option; he gives it to his cousin, but the bitter humour with which he embarrasses Bolingbroke in the very act of doing so is emblematic of the problem of power and its uses and abuses which the play turns upon. 
      Rylance is an actor and director of genius. There is no question about that. But it is interesting, and alarming, to note what is happening to him as he grows more secure in his enviable position as Artistic Director of the Globe, with the world of Shakespeare at his feet and its every role at his disposal. His pauses are becoming just that little bit too long; he holds the stage just that little bit too far beyond the needs of the drama. That way lies the country of Ham, and good actors are usually restrained from venturing too far towards it by good directors (until they get too big, too famous, too independent: and then there is no stopping them. Let Rylance look to Lawrence Olivier for a warning.) The subtlety and insight, the power and nuance of Rylance's performances lie, as they must, just a membrane's thinness away from that border, and it would be a loss if he stumbled across it. 
      The other great role in this play, wonderfully performed by Liam Brennan, is Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV to be. A transition is required here too, from the principled peer to the newly though equivocally enfranchised king; and Brennan finely manages the task of expressing the mixture of good judgement, half-restrained ambition, and high leadership qualities of an astute man of honour. Sympathies lie with Bolingbroke in the first half of the play, and then come to be divided in its second half between him and Richard as the latter's status as a tragic figure begins to emerge. Rylance and Brennan perform the ballet of character beautifully well between them. On this pivot the play turns. 
      This is an excellent Richard II, played by an excellent cast. There are always some in the audience who titter when they see that men are playing the women's parts, and of course Rylance's company does not achieve Shakespearean authenticity by doing so because Rylance's women are men not boys. But the result is perfect - only witness Peter Shorey's incomparable Duchess of York. 
      The weather must assuredly have been kinder in Elizabethan and Jacobean times; one of Shakespeare's sonnets puts May in summer, but a May evening at the great Sam Wanamaker's reconstructed Globe is nowadays a wintry affair. Still: Shakespeare and Rylance together go a long way to making their audiences not mind.
AC Grayling