‘Why I should welcome such a guest as grief [?]’: Lodging and dislodging in Shakespeare's Richard II

Abstract

This article discusses the early modern cultural debate surrounding hospitality and inhospitality in the light of contemporaneous responses to history and the history play. The dominant focus of this discussion is Shakespeare's Richard II and the ways in which it seeks to interrogate and to critique early modern expectations of welcoming by inverting them repeatedly as the dramatic intrigue unfolds. Throughout this article, reference is made to cultural debate on the subject of (in)hospitality in the contemporary, post-World War II period.