“The Bay Trees … Are All Withered”: Ecological Trauerspiel in Richard II

Abstract:This article places Richard II at the historical conjuncture of feudal dissolution and the ecological transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age. I suggest that Richard II exemplifies a particular genre of ecological Trauerspiel in its Benjaminian view of history, tragedy, and time. Although Richard Halpern and Zenon Luis-Martinez have made the case for reading Richard II as Trauerspiel, I argue that the play’s dual sense of history and tragedy is ultimately indebted to the political and ecological terrain—the literal earth—on which it is enacted.