ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.03.024
“Rue e’en for ruth”: The Rhetoric of Sympathy and Political Emotion in Shakespeare’s Richard II
Lin Yao
School of Foreign Languages, Henan University of Engineering, Zhengzhou 451191, Henan, China.
*Corresponding author: Lin Yao
The author gratefully acknowledges the support provided by the Major Project of the National Social Science Fund of China: Systematic Collation and Comparative Study on the Origin and Transmission of Shakespeare’s Plays (Grant No. 19ZDA294).
Published: March 31, 2026
Abstract
This study explores the interplay of sympathy and political emotion in Shakespeare’s Richard II. By examining the tension between the monarch’s “two bodies,” it argues that “fellow-feeling” functions as a strategic rhetorical tool to reshape perceptions of sovereignty and tragic failure. Through close analysis of foundational metaphors—including the Gardener scene and symbolic objects like mirrors and buckets—the paper illustrates how Shakespeare meticulously fashions a sympathetic image of the falling king. This emotional manipulation humanizes the monarch while warning against the disruption of divine order. Ultimately, sympathy emerges as a potent political force bridging personal suffering and institutional collapse, offering new insights into early modern character fashioning and tragic sustainability.
Keyword
Shakespeare; Richard II; Political Emotion; Sympathy; Rhetoric
References
Berger, H., Jr. (1989). Imaginary Audition: Shakespeare on Stage and Page. University of California Press.
Bullough, G. (Ed.). (1966). Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (Vol. 3). Routledge.
James, S. (1997). Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. Oxford University Press.
Kantorowicz, E. H. (1957). The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. Princeton University Press.
Liu, B. (2015). A Shakespeare Dictionary for Chinese Students. Henan People’s Publishing House.
Machiavelli, N. (2019). The Prince (P. Handian, Trans.). The Commercial Press. (Original work published 1532)
Oxford English Dictionary. (2023). Historical Thesaurus of the OED: the mind » emotion » compassion » quality of exciting pity » affect with pity. https://oed.com/thesaurus/
Shakespeare, W. (2007). The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works (J. Bate & E. Rasmussen, Eds.). Red Globe Press.
Copyright
© 2026 by the author(s).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not modified or adapted.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
How to cite this paper
“Rue e’en for ruth”: The Rhetoric of Sympathy and Political Emotion in Shakespeare’s Richard II
How to cite this paper: Lin Yao. (2026) “Rue e’en for ruth”: The Rhetoric of Sympathy and Political Emotion in Shakespeare’s Richard II. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, 10(3), 381-385.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.03.024