IN ONE OF THE MORE COLORFUL EPISODES of last-act Elizabethan history, the performance of Shakespeare’s King Richard II catalyzed the short-lived but highly visible Essex rebellion of 1601. On February 5 of that year, several supporters of the Earl of Essex approached the players to commission a revival of Shakespeare’s history play; two days later, eleven of their cohort attended the public playhouse and witnessed, with the rest of the audience, its shocking—and illegal—onstage enactment of the regicide of a standing monarch. The next morning, the Earl of Essex and his co-conspirators staged an ill-conceived and ill-fated rebellion of their own in the open streets of London. Popular support failed to materialize on those streets, however, and the attempted coup was crushed before the end of the next day. Shakespeare’s history play was not the only—or even the primary—cause of the revolt, of course, but it was sufficiently central to the rebellion’s ignition that one of the players was questioned by the Privy Council in the ensuing investigation, and the conspirators gave testimony concerning the performance. Elizabeth herself recognized the relevance of the play to the current political situation: “I am Richard II; know ye not that?” she asked. “This tragedy was played 40tie times in open streets and houses.” The Essex incident is of special interest to early modernists as part of an ongoing disciplinary debate about the relationship of Elizabethan theater to consolidating state power. But it also raises questions of general interest about the relationship of the stage to the street, and of the stage to the state. Do stories matter?
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