This spring, in a graduate seminar, I taught a series of the historical tragedies of Shakespeare. I did my best to avoid making comparisons between Donald Trump and the protagonists of Richard the Third, Macbeth, and King Lear, partly because I thought some of my medievalist students might have voted for our national golem. (I hope I'm wrong.) Mainly I avoided the subject because I find such comparisons an insult to Richard the Third, Macbeth, and King Lear.
But when we came to Richard the Second, the parallels were too obvious for any of us to miss.
Richard II, pictured above on the right, is the less famous King Richard. He's the one whose bones weren't discovered in a Leicester parking lot in 2015. He died
