Richard III

 1/ Most of Shakespeare’s plays open with some supporting or background characters, Richard III begins with the main character’s soliloquy: 

“RICHARD Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that loured upon our house 

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried…”

(Act 1 scene 1) 

That’s how you begin a story. 

Imagine the excitement of the first people ever to watch Richard III on the stage. Marlowe’s Barabas, also a Machiavelli character, appears so crude and primitive in comparison. 

A central theme that appears in almost all of Shakespeare’s plays is disguise/ pretence/ acting—people are not what they appear to be—the obsession has been there from the beginning, and Richard is perhaps the best actor of all. 

This for example is a very good speech: 

“RICHARD […] Because I cannot flatter and look fair, 

Smile in men’s faces, smooth, deceive, and cog, 

Duck with French nods and apish courtesy, 

I must be held a rancorous enemy. 

Cannot a plain man live and think no harm

But thus his simple truth must be amused

With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?”

(Act 1 scene 3)  

He puts on different roles and speaks with different voices to different people. In Shakespeare, there are two other characters who are comparable in their ability to adapt, to put on different performances before different people: Hamlet and Hal. The difference is that Richard has no conscience, and does it to manipulate others for his own gains.  

2/ I love the scene where Clarence, in prison, recounts his nightmare: 

“KEEPER Had you such leisure in the time of death

To gaze upon these secrets of the deep? 

CLARENCE Methought I had; and often did I strive 

To yield the ghost, but still the envious flood 

Stopped in my soul and would not let it forth 

To find the empty, vast, and wand’ring air, 

But smothered it within my panting bulk, 

Who almost burst to belch it in the sea.”

(Act 1 scene 4) 

It’s full of striking imagery, but this is particularly interesting: 

“CLARENCE Ah, keeper, keeper, I have done these things

That now give evidence against my soul 

For Edward’s sake, and see how he requites me! 

O God! If my deep pray’rs cannot appease thee, 

But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds,

Yet execute thy wrath in me alone. 

O, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children!

Keeper, I prithee sit by me awhile.

My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.”

(ibid.) 

Himadri of Argumentative Old Git said to me: 

“Till then, dreams were depicted as messages from the gods, or as prophecies of some sort. This is the earliest instance I know of where a dream is depicted as the writhings of a guilty mind. The substance of the dream is what is already in Clarence’s mind.”

Clarence, like other victims of Richard, is not an innocent victim—he too has done evil, he too has blood on his hands. 

Tony Tanner tells me that Richard III is the longest of Shakespeare’s history plays, and the second longest of his plays after Hamlet. It’s interesting to look at the scenes or moments that are not strictly essential to the plot, such as the conversation about conscience between the two murderers hired to kill Clarence. The scene between them and Clarence is also long, and it must be long for a reason. 

This is why I find it particularly useful to read the tetralogy in succession (rather than jump straight to Richard III): we don’t hear of conscience when the powerful men at court plot against each other; we don’t hear of conscience when they plan to frame the Duchess of Gloucester and then kill the Duke; we don’t hear of conscience when Clifford kills Rutland; we don’t hear of conscience when Margaret taunts York with a paper crown and a cloth dyed with his son’s blood; we don’t hear of conscience when King Edward and others kill Margaret’s young son in front of her; we don’t hear of conscience when Richard arranges to have his own brother killed, and so on and so forth. It is only these murderers who have doubt and guilt, and one of them cannot carry on with the act. 

The word “conscience” reappears near the end of the play, when Richard says “Conscience is but a word that cowards use...” (Act 5 scene 3). 

3/ I like this bit, after Kind Edward’s death: 

“FIRST CITIZEN Come, come, we fear the worst. All will be well. 

THIRD CITIZEN When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks; 

When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand; 

When the sun sets, who doth not look for night? 

Untimely storms makes men expect a dearth. 

All may be well; but if God sort it so, 

’Tis more than we deserve or I expect.” 

(Act 2 scene 3) 

Common sense and caution, which we later find lacking in Lord Hastings. 

“HASTINGS O momentary grace of mortal men, 

Which we more hunt for than the grace of God! 

Who builds his hope in air of your good looks 

Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, 

Ready with every nod to tumble down

Into the fatal bowels of the deep.” 

(Act 3 scene 4) 

Interestingly, his metaphor echoes the image in Clarence’s dream, in which he’s struck overboard “into the tumbling billows of the main”, “the slimy bottom of the deep”. 

4/ Richard kills his way to the top: 

“RICHARD […] Uncertain way of gain! But I am in

So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin…”

(Act 4 scene 2) 

Whom does that remind me of? 

“MACBETH [...] I am in blood

Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o’er…” 

(Macbeth, Act 3 scene 4) 

There’s no need to talk about the differences between them—we all can see. But this makes me want to reread Macbeth. 

5/ There are many good passages about grief, but I want to draw your attention to this one from wife of York and mother of Richard: 

“DUCHESS OF YORK Dead life, blind sight, poor mortal living ghost, 

Woe’s scene, world’s shame, grave’s due by life usurped, 

Brief abstract and record of tedious days, 

Rest thy unrest on England’s lawful earth, 

[Sits down]

Unlawfully made drunk with innocent blood!” 

(Act 4 scene 4) 

That image has appeared in the previous play:

“RICHARD Ah, Warwick, why hast thou withdrawn thyself?

Thy brother’s blood the thirsty earth hath drunk, 

[…] 

WARWICK Then let the earth be drunken with our blood!...” 

(Henry VI, Part 3, Act 2 scene 3)

In the same scene, Queen Elizabeth (wife of King Edward IV) compares her children to “gentle lambs” thrown “in the entrails of the wolf”—the metaphor of lambs and wolves has appeared multiple times in the Henry VI plays. 

Now this is a new metaphor: 

“QUEEN MARGARET […] From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept

A hellhound that doth hunt us all to death. 

That dog that had his teeth before his eyes

To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood,

That foul defacer of God’s handiwork,

That excellent grand tyrant of the earth

That reigns in gallèd eyes of weeping souls, 

Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves…” 

(Act 4 scene 4) 

I can’t help feeling that Shakespeare had a blast writing Margaret—he gave her many long speeches—she’s striking and almost always dominates the scene when she appears. In this play, she’s pushed to the margins because the play is dominated by Richard, but she still has a strong presence whenever she appears. 

“QUEEN MARGARET […] Richard yet lives, hell’s black intelligencer, 

Only reserved their factor to buy souls 

And send them thither. But at hand, at hand, 

Ensues his piteous and unpitied end.

Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray, 

To have him suddenly conveyed from hence. 

Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray, 

That I may live and say “The dog is dead”.” 

(ibid.)

And we hear that at the end of the play. 

“RICHMOND […] The day is ours; the bloody dog is dead.” 

(Act 5 scene 5) 

An image that recurs more often is the boar. The first time the image appears is when Lord Hastings hears from a messenger that Lord Stanley had a nightmare in which “the boar had razed his helm” (Act 3 scene 2). Lord Hastings sees no danger, foolishly thinking “To fly the boar before the boar pursues/ Were to incense the boar to follow us/ And make pursuit where he did mean no chase” (ibid.). 

Naturally before he dies, he recalls the dream about the boar. 

Lord Stanley later on also uses the boar image: 

“STANLEY Sir Christopher, tell Richmond this from me: 

That in the sty of the most deadly boar

My son George Stanley is franked up in hold; 

If I revolt, off goes young George’s head…” 

(Act 4 scene 5) 

And Richmond (the future king), having got the image from Stanley, expands the metaphor: 

“RICHMOND […] The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar,

That spoiled your summer fields and fruitful vines, 

Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough

In your emboweled bosoms, this foul swine 

Is now even in the center of this isle,

Near to the town of Leicester, as we learn…” 

(Act 5 scene 2) 

6/ Tony Tanner’s essay is very good, especially the part where he writes about the rise and fall of Richard. On the way to the throne, he’s utterly cool and in control—a chameleon, a Machiavelli—he never falters. But the moment he’s on the throne: 

“RICHARD […] But shall we wear these glories for a day?

Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?” 

(Act 4 scene 2) 

Tony Tanner says: 

“This is something new, and potentially fatal, in Richard—anxiety, loss of nerve. He immediately, and utterly pointlessly, decides to test Buckingham, the one man above all others who helped him to the throne. […] He has gratuitously alienated his most loyal accomplice.” (Introduction) 

As Richard murders his way to the top and continues killing people around him, he becomes more and more isolated. He doubts everyone, and slowly loses confidence in himself. By the end, he’s in a state of mental disintegration:  

“RICHARD […] What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by. 

Richard loves Richard: that is, I am I. 

Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. 

Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why! 

Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? 

Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good 

That I myself have done unto myself? 

O no! Alas, I rather hate myself 

For hateful deeds committed by myself. 

I am a villain. Yet I lie, I am not…” 

(Act 5 scene 3) 

In terms of poetry, this is of course not on the level of Hamlet or Macbeth. But in terms of characterisation and psychology, this is excellent. 

Tony Tanner says: 

“… this is the self in complete tatters and fragments. Richard, himself alone, the supreme impresario of evil, is ending in gibberish.” (Introduction)