I have read Richard II Acts 1 and 2 in the last two days, and now I remember why reading the history plays is so hard: the names are impossible!
Everybody has a name, say Henry or Richard, and then everybody has a title, like the Duke of Hereford, and to make things even better, it seems like everybody is named Richard or Henry! There's Henry Bolingbroke, later Henry IV, there's Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and then his son, also named Henry Percy, called Hotspur. Confused yet?
All of this means that it takes a little longer to read these plays because you have to pay attention to who is actually talking to whom, and about whom, especially when they only refer to people by their title or relation (my uncle or cousin).
Really, this is worse than Comedy of Errors, at least there the twins are clearly labelled as being from Ephesus or Syracuse.
That's all for now, I'll go back and try to figure out who's at war with who now, and why.
