Short answers, pulled from the story.
The earliest recorded performance of Richard II took place privately on the 9th of December 1595 at Canon Row, the house of Sir Edward Hoby. The play was published as a quarto in 1597 and later collected into the First Folio in 1623.
Richard II is written entirely in verse, one of only four Shakespeare plays with no prose, the others being King John and the first and third parts of Henry VI. Shakespeare used the contrasting styles of verse rather than the prose-versus-poetry distinction to differentiate the two rival kings: Richard speaks in elaborate metaphorical language while Bolingbroke uses plain, direct speech.
Supporters of the Earl of Essex paid the Chamberlain's Men forty shillings above their ordinary rate to perform Richard II at the Globe Theatre on the 7th of February 1601, the eve of their planned armed rebellion. Eleven of Essex's supporters attended; the actor Augustine Phillips reported the arrangement at Essex's trial.
The first three quartos of Richard II, printed in 1597 and 1598, lack the deposition scene entirely. The traditional explanation is censorship, possibly by the playhouse or the Master of the Revels Edmund Tylney, since depicting a monarch being stripped of the crown carried political risk during Elizabeth I's reign. A version of the scene first appeared in the 1608 quarto.
Shakespeare's primary source was Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, whose second edition was published in 1587. He also appears to have drawn on Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York, Samuel Daniel's poem on the civil wars, and Jean Froissart's Chroniques translated into English around 1524.
John Gielgud's performances at the Old Vic Theatre in 1929, 1937, and 1953 are widely considered definitive. Paul Scofield, who played the role at the Old Vic in 1952, was regarded as the defining Richard of more modern times in England. The 1973 Royal Shakespeare Theatre production by John Barton, in which Ian Richardson and Richard Pasco alternated the roles of Richard and Bolingbroke, was still cited as a benchmark nearly fifty years later.