Sophie Gee

He's John of Gaunt's son.

So Richard II is John of Gaunt's nephew, but Henry IV is John of Gaunt's son, and he's been kicked out of England.

England out of Britain by Richard II, who gets kind of anxious about the status of his monarchical sitch in the middle of his reign.

And he's exiled in France.

And in 1399, the Duke of Orléans, who is kind of running the show in France, decides that he's not really interested in the sort of treaty or political rapprochement between England and France.

So he basically releases Bolingbroke directly

Henry IV, like a kind of greyhound out of the gate.

And Bolingbroke lands with his armies back in England, in Yorkshire, actually.

I don't know why Yorkshire.

It must have something to do with the wind.

And they all swoop down on Richard II and depose him.

So we're now very firmly into Shakespearean territory.

See Shakespeare for details.

Jonti, I love your account of this as this fantastic flowering period for literature.

And again, I just want to read some more bits from the general prologue in a second.

But before we take a break, I'd just really like to say that in those opening lines, we can hear and when you read it aloud, you can feel it in your mouth exactly what you're saying about literature, which is it's this

extraordinary moment of the coming together of all the etymologies and origins of the language that we now recognize as modern English.

So in that Chaucerian opening, you can hear the French, you can hear the Old English and the Norse dialects, you can hear the Latin, you can hear Germanic sounds.

And then you can also hear this sort of emerging, very distinct language that is English.

And all of that is there.