When Shakespeare has Richard II call for the telling of “sad stories” he is not merely alluding to a tradition of medieval de casibus tragedy, but rather engaging with a well-known vision of historical teleology, popularized in Shakespeare’s time by narrative historical tragedies. Shakespeare’s audience, largely ignorant of the basic facts of English history, were familiar with this tragic form of history. Richard is a “self-authored subject” who finally brings his represented self into continuity with the de casibus vision.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Budra, P., (2025), "Writing the Tragic Self: Richard II's Sad Stories", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Budra, Paul. "Writing the Tragic Self: Richard II's Sad Stories." Renaissance and Reformation 30 (4): 2010. 5-15. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v30i4.11518. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.