Shakespeare's King Richard the Third

Introduction

History of the Play.

THIS play was preceded by at least two others on the same subject. The first of these was in Latin, written by Dr. Thomas Legge, Master of Cams College, Cambridge, and is said to have been acted at the University as early as 1579. Sir John Harrington, in his Apology for Poetry, 1591, speaks of this play as one that " would move Phalaris the tyrant, and terrify all tyrannous-minded men." There is no reason for thinking that Shakespeare ever saw it, or had any knowledge of it. The other was an English drama, printed in 1594, and called "The True Tragedy of Richard the Third : Wherein is shown the death of Edward the Fourth, with the smothering of the two young Princes in the Tower." We have no certain knowledge as to when this piece was written ; though no one doubts that the writing was several years previous to 1594. Shakespeare's drama indicates no acquaintance with it except in two or three slight particulars ; and even here the similarity infers no more knowledge than might well enough have been caught in the hearing. Other resemblances there are indeed, but only such as would naturally result from using a common authority. The older piece has little that can be deemed worthy of notice. The workmanship, though crude and clumsy enough, displays honesty of mind, and is comparatively free from inflation and bombast. The piece is written partly in prose and partly in heavy blank- verse, interspersed with pentameter couplets and rhyming stanzas, and with passages of fourteen-syllable lines. It may be well to add, for the curiosity of the thing, that, after Richard is killed, Report enters, and holds a dialogue with a Page, to give information of divers things not exhibited ; after which, two Messengers come in, and unfold what is to be done and who is to reign, all the way from Richard to Queen Elizabeth, the whole winding up with an elaborate panegyric on the latter.

Shakespeare's drama was entered in the Stationers' register on the 20th of October, 1597, and was published the same year, but without the author's name. The play was reprinted in 1598, with "by William Shakespeare" added in the title-page. There was a third issue in 1602, a fourth in 1605, and a fifth in 1613 ; the last three all claiming to be "newly augmented," though in truth merely reprints of the former two. The play reappeared in the folio of 1623, with many slight alterations of text, with some omissions, and with a few additions, the latter extending in one place to fifty-five consecutive lines. Editors differ a good deal as to the comparative merits of the quarto and folio texts ; though all admit that each makes some damaging omissions which the other must be drawn upon to supply. Mr. White leans decidedly to the folio ; while Dyce, in his latest edition, prefers the quarto text, on the whole. For myself, I can hardly speak further than that my preference goes sometimes with the one, sometimes with the other. As the additions in the folio do not amount to a general enlargement of the piece, it does not well appear what ground or pretext the quarto of 1602 may have had for claiming to be "'newly augmented." Perhaps it was but a publisher's trick, to induce a larger sale of the new edition. The play, however,

INTRODUCTION.

has very marked diversities of style and workmanship, some parts relishing strongly of the Poet's earlier, others as strongly of his middle period ; and I suspect the claim aforesaid may have referred, disingenuously indeed, to changes made in the piece before the issue of 1597.

The great popularity of this play is shown in the number of editions called for, wherein it surpasses any other of the Poet's dramas. For, besides the five quarto issues already mentioned, there were also three others in quarto, after the folio appeared ; which proves that there was still a good demand for it in a separate form. It was also honoured beyond any of its fellows by the notice of contemporary writers. It is mentioned by Meres in his Palladis Tamia, 1598. Next, we have a very remarkable allusion to it in a poem published in 16 14, and entitled The Ghost of Richard the Third. The author of the poem gave only his initials, "C. B."; who he was is not positively known; some say Charles Best, others Christopher Brooke: but the strong commendatory verses upon him, which have come down to us from such pens as Ben Jonson, Chapman, and Wither, show him to have been a writer of no little distinction. The Ghost of Richard is made to speak as follows :

To him that imp'd my fame with Clio's quill, Whose magic raised me from Oblivion's den, That writ my story on the Muses' hill, And with my actions dignified his pen ; He that from Helicon sends many a rill, Whose nectar'd veins are drunk by thirsty men ; Crown'd be his style with fame, his head with bays, And none detract, but gratulate his praise.

Fuller, also, in his Church History, and Milton, in one of his political eruptions, refer to the play as well known ■ and Bishop Corbet, writing in 161 7, gives a quaint description of his host at Bosworth, which is highly curious as witnessing both what an impression the play had made on the popular mind, and also how thoroughly the hero's part had become identified with Richard Burbage, the original performer of it :

Mine host was full of ale and history ; And in the niorning, when he brought us nigh Where the two Roses join'd, you would suppose Chaucer ne'er made The Romaunt of the Rose.

Hear him : See you yon wood? there Richard lay

With his whole army. Look the other way, And, lo / where Richmond in a bed of gorse Encamp 'd himself all ?iight, and all his force :

Upon this hill they met. Why, he could tell

The inch where Richmond stood, where Richard fell.

Besides what of his knowledge he could say,

He had authentic notice from the play ;

Which I might guess by's mustering up the ghosts,

And policies not incident to hosts ;

But chiefly by that one perspicuous thing

Where he mistook a player for a king :

For, when he would have said, King Richard died,

And call'd, A horse, a horse ! he Burbage cried !

Time of the "Writing.

As regards the date of the composition, the entry at the Stationers' is the only clear item of external evidence that we have. The internal evidence makes strongly for as early a date as 1592 or 1593. The general style, though showing a decided advance on that of the Second and Third Parts of King Henry the Sixth, is strictly continuous with it, while the history and characterization of the three plays so knit in together as to make them -all of one piece and texture. And it is all but certain that the Poet's King Henry the Sixth was finished as early as 1592. In Clarence's account of his dream and in Tyrrel's description of the murder of the young Princes, _ Shakespeare is out in his plenitude of poetical wealth ; and the delineation of Richard is indeed a marvel of sustained vigour and versatile aptness : nevertheless the play, as a whole, evinces somewhat less maturity of power than King Richard the Second : in several cases there is great insubordination of the details to the general plan : the points of tragic stress are more frequent, and the dramatic motives more on the surface and more obvious, not to say obtrusive, than may well consist with the reason and law of Art : there is also too much piling-up of curses, or too much ringing of changes in imprecation ; and in Richard's wooing of Lady Anne and of Queen Elizabeth there is an excess of dialogical epigram and antiphrastic point, with challenge and retort alternating through a prolonged series of stichometrical speeches : all which shows indeed a prodigious fertility of thought, but betrays withal a sort of mental incontinence, or a want of that self-restraining judgment which, in the Poet's later dramas, tempers all the parts and elements into artistic harmony and proportion. Then too the ethical idea or sense, instead of being duly poised or interfused with the dramatic current, comes too near overriding and displacing it ; the pressure of a special purpose marring the organic symmetry of the work.

The close connection between this play and the Third Part of King Henry the Sixth is so evident as to leave no occasion for tracing it out in detail. At the opening of the one we have Richard flouting in soliloquy at the "stately triumphs " and " mirthful comic shows " with which, at the close of the other, King Edward had proposed to celebrate the final and full establishment of his cause. It was indeed fitting that, on Richard's first appearance as a dramatic hero, we should overhear him at his old practice of ruminating aloud, and thus familiarizing his thoughts with the villainies which he has it in purpose to enact. Everybody may well be presumed to know how Colley Cibber, being seized with a fit of progress, took upon him to reform Shakespeare's King Richard the Third into fitness for the stage. As the original play was too long for representation, his mode of retrenching it to the proper compass was, in part, by transporting into it a scene or two from the foregoing play. I notice the fact, now, merely as showing that he saw the perfect continuity of the two pieces ; though, as would seem, he did not perceive the absurdity of thus setting the catastrophe of one at the opening of the other.

Date and Period, of the Action.

Historically considered, the play in hand embraces a period of something over fourteen years, namely, from the death of Henry, in May, 1471, to the fall of Richard, in August, 1485. Half of this period, however, is dispatched in the first Act ; the funeral of Henry, the marriage of Richard with Lady Anne, and the death of Clarence being represented as occurring all about the same time ; whereas in fact they were separated by considerable intervals, the latter not taking place till February, 1478. And there is a similar abridgment, or rather suppression of time between the first Act and the second ; as the latter opens with the sickness of King Edward, his seeming reconciliation of the peers, and his death ; all which occurred in April, 1483. Thenceforward the events of the drama are mainly disposed in the order of their actual occurrence ; the drama being perhaps as true to the history as were practicable or desirable in a work so different in its nature and use.

This drawing together and massing of the scattered events is eminently judicious ; for the plan of the drama required them to be used only as subservient to the hero's character ; and it does not appear how the Poet could have ordered them better for developing, in the most forcible manner, his idea of that extraordinary man. So that the selection and grouping of the secondary incidents are regulated by the paramount law of the work ; and they are certainly made to tell with masterly effect in furtherance of the author's purpose.

Relation of the Play to History.

As to the moral complexion of Shakespeare's Richard, the incidents whereby his character in this respect transpires are nearly all taken from the historians, with only such heightening as it is the prerogative of poetry to lend, even when most tied to actual events. In the Poet's time, the prevailing ideas of Richard were derived from the history of his life and reign written by Sir Thomas More. More's character as a man is above all suspicion of malice or unfairness or rash judgment ; while his clear legal mind and his thorough training in the law rendered him a master in the art of sifting and weighing evidence. His early life was passed in the household of Cardinal Morton, who figures as Bishop of Ely in the play ; so that he had ready access to the best sources of information : and this, together with his " monumental probity" and his approved goodness of heart, stamps his work with as much credibility as can well attach to any record of contemporary events. His book was written in 15 13, when he was thirty-three years old; and, in speaking of those concerned in the murder of the Princes, he says, " Dighton yet walketh on alive, in good possibility to be handed ere lie die." The character of Richard as

IO KING RICHARD THE THIRD.

drawn by him, and as received in the Poet's time, is well shown in Bacon's History of Henry the Seventh :

'•' The body of Richard, after many indignities and reproaches, the diriges and obsequies of the common people towards tyrants, was obscurely buried ; no man thinking any ignominy or contumely unworthy of him that had been the executioner of King Henry the Sixth, that innocent prince, with his own hands ; the contriver of the death of the Duke of Clarence, his brother ; the murderer of his two nephews, one of them his lawful king ; and vehemently suspected to have been the impoisoner of his wife, thereby to make vacant his bed for a marriage within the degrees forbidden. And although he were a prince in military virtue approved, jealous of the honour of the English nation, and likewise a good law-maker, for the ease and solace of the common people ; yet his cruelties and parricides, in the opinion of all men, weighed down his virtues and merits ; and, in the opinion of wise men, even those virtues themselves were conceived to be rather feigned and affected things, to serve his ambition, than true qualities ingenerate in his judgment and nature."

Nevertheless much has since been written to explode the current history of Richard, and to lessen, if not remove, the abhorrence in which his memory had come to be held. The Poet has not been left without his share of criticism and censure for the alleged blackening of his dramatic hero. This attempt at reforming public opinion was led off by Sir George Buck, whose History of Richard the Third was published in 1646. The general drift of his book is well indicated by Fuller in his Church History, who is himself high authority on the matters in question : " He eveneth Richard's shoulders, smoothed his back, planeth his teeth,

INTRODUCTION. II

and maketh him. in all points a comely and beautiful person. Nor stoppeth he here ; but, proceeding from his naturals to his morals, maketh him as virtuous as handsome ; concealing most, denying some, defending others, of his foulest facts, wherewith in all ages since he standeth charged on record. For mine own part, I confess it is no heresy to maintain a paradox in history ; nor am I such an enemy to wit as not to allow it leave harmlessly to disport itself for its own content, and the delight of others. But when men do it cordially, in sober sadness, to pervert people's judgments, and therein go against all received records, I say that singularity is the least fault that can be laid to such men's charges."

Something more than a century later, the work was resumed and carried on with much acuteness by Horace Walpole in his Historic Doubts. And several other writers have since put their hands to the same task. Still the old judgment seems likely to stand, the main substance thereof not having been much shaken yet. Dr. Lingard has carried to the subject his usual candour and research ; and, after dispatching the strong points urged on the other side, winds up his account of Richard thus : " Writers have indeed in modern, times attempted to prove his innocence; but their arguments are rather ingenious than conclusive, and dwindle into groundless conjectures when confronted with the evidence which may be arrayed against them." The killing of the two Princes formed the backbone of the guilt laid at Richard's door. That they did actually disappear, is tolerably certain ; that upon him fell whatever advantage could grow from their death, is equally so ; and it is for those who deny the cause uniformly assigned at the time, and long after, for their disappearance, to tell us how and by whom they were put out of the way. And Sharon Turner, who may be justly ranked among the severest sifters of historic fictions and fables, is constrained to admit Richard's murder of his nephews ; and, so long as this blood-stain remains, the scouring of others, however it may diminish his crimes, will hardly lighten his criminality.

But even if Shakespeare's delineation were proved to be essentially untrue to Richard as he was in himself, this would not touch the standing of his work as a dramatic reproduction of historical matter. For the Poet's vindication on this score, it suffices that his Richard, so far at least as regards the moral complexion of the man, is substantially the Richard of the chroniclers, and of all the historical authorities received and studied in his time. Besides, to satisfy the nice scruples and queries of historic doubters and dialecticians, is not a poet's business : his concern is with Truth in her operative form, not in her abstract essence ; and to pursue the latter were to anatomize history, instead of representing it. Whether, then, Richard was in fact guilty of such and such crimes, matters little ; it being enough that he was generally believed to be so, and that this belief was the mother-principle of those national events whereon the drama turns. That Richard was a prince of abundant head ; that his government was in the main wise and just ; that he was sober in counsel, brave in the field, and far-sighted in both ; — all this only renders it the harder to account for that general desertion which left him almost naked to his foes, but by such a deep and wide-spread conviction of his wickedness as no puttings-forth of intellect could overcome. Thus his fall, so sudden and complete, was mainly in virtue of what he was thought to be. And forasmuch as the character generally set upon him at the time, if not the essential truth regarding him, was the stuff out of which were spun his overthrow, and the consequent opening of a new social and political era ; such therefore was the only character that would cohere with the circumstances, so as to be capable of dramatic development.

Source of the Historic Matter.

More's history, as it is commonly called, was adopted by both Hall and Holinshed into their Chronicles. In that noble composition, the main features of the man are digested and drawn together as follows :

"Richard, the third son, was in wit and courage equal with either of them ; little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard-favoured of visage ; malicious, wrathful, envious, and from afore his birth ever froward. Free he was called of dispense, and somewhat above his power liberal : with large gifts he gat him unsteadfast friendship, for which he was fain to pill and spoil in other places, and gat him steadfast hatred. He was close and secret, a deep dissembler, lowly of countenance, arrogant of heart ; outwardly companionable where he inwardly hated, not letting to kiss whom he thought to kill ; despiteous and cruel, not for evil will always, but oftener for ambition, and for the surety or increase of his estate. His face was small, but such, that at the first aspect a man would judge it to savour of malice, fraud, and deceit. When he stood musing, he would bite and chaw his nether lip ; as who said that his fierce nature in his cruel body always chafed, stirred, and was ever unquiet : besides that the dagger which he wore he would, when he studied, with his hand pluck up and down in the sheath to the midst, never drawing it fully out." Again the same writer notes him as being inordinately fond of splendid and showy dress ; thus evincing an intense craving to be " looked on in the world," and to fascinate the eyes of men.

Shakespeare's Richard, morally speaking, is little else than this descriptive analysis reduced to dramatic life and expression ; except, perhaps, that More regards him as a hypocrite by nature, and cruel from policy, whereas the Poet rather makes his cruelty innate, and his hypocrisy a politic art used in furtherance of his ambition.

Growth of Richard's Character.

In the present play, we have the working-out of the hero's character as already formed ; the processes of its formation being set forth in the preceding plays of King Henry the Sixth ; which is sufficient cause for adverting to a few points there delivered. And in this case, as in sundry others, the Poet suggests, at the very outset, the pivot on which the character mainly turns. When we first meet with Richard, Clifford taunts him :

Hence, heap of wrath, foul indigested lump, As crooked in thy manners as thy shape !

And again in the same scene he is called "foul stigmatic " ; because the stigma set on his person is both to others the handiest theme of reproach, and also to himself the most annoying ; like a huge boil on a man's face, which, for its unsightliness, his enemies see- most, and, for its soreness, strike first. And Richard's personal deformity is regarded not only as the proper outshaping and physiognomy of a certain original malignity of soul, but also as aggravating that malignity in turn ; his shape having grown ugly because his spirit was bad, and his spirit growing worse because of his ugly shape. For his ill-looks invite reproach, and reproach quickens his malice ; and because men hate to look on him, therefore he craves all the more to be looked on ; and, for the gaining of his wish in this point, he covets nothing so much as the being able through fear to compel that which inclination denies. Thus experience generates in him a most inordinate lust of power; while the circumstantial impossibility of coming at this save by crime puts him upon such a course of intellectual training and practice as may enable him to commit crimes, and still bar off the natural consequences.

Moreover his extreme vanity results in a morbid sensitiveness to any signs of neglect or scorn ; and these being especially offensive to himself, he therefore has the greater delight in venting them on others : as taunts and scoffs are a form of power which he feels most keenly, he thence grows fond of using them as an apt form whereby to make his power felt. For even so bad men naturally covet to be wielding upon others the causes and instruments of their own sufferings. Hence the bitterly-sarcastic humour which Richard indulges so freely, and with such prodigious effect. Of course his sensitiveness is keenest touching the very particular wherein his vanity is most thwarted and wounded : he thinks of nothing so much as the ugliness that balks his desire, and resents nothing so sharply as the opinion or feeling it arrays against him. Accordingly his first and heaviest shots of sarcasm are at those who twit him on that score. So, in the scene where the Lancastrian Prince of Wales is killed, Richard seems unmoved till the Prince hits him in that eye, when his wrath takes fire at once, and bursts out in the reply, " By Heaven, brat, I'll plague you for that word."

All which explains the cause of Richard's being so prone

T6 KING RICHARD THE THIRD.

to " descant on his own deformity." His thoughts brood upon this, because it is the sorest spot in his condition ; and he becomes intent on making it the source of a dearer gratification than any it deprives him of, — the consciousness of such mental powers as can bear him onward and upward in spite of those disadvantages. Thus his sense of personal disgrace begets a most hateful and malignant form of pride, — the pride of intellectual force and mastery. Hence he comes to glory in the matter of his shame, to exaggerate it, and hang over it, as serving to approve, to set off, and magnify his strength and fertility of wit ; as who would say, Nature indeed made me the ^reproach and scorn of men, nevertheless I have made myself their wonder and applause ; and though my body be such that men could not bear the sight of me, yet I have managed to charm their eyes.

In this way the man's galling wakefulness to his own unsightly shape festers and malignities into a kind of selfpleasing virulence. Nor is this ail. For, on much the same principle, he nurses to the highest pitch his consciousness also of moral deformities. So far from palliating his wickedness to himself, or skulking behind any subterfuges, or trying in any way to dodge the sense of it, he rather makes love to it, and exults in spreading it out and turning it round before his inward eye, and even stimulates his vision of it ; as if he were so charmed with the sight that he could not bear to lose any moment of it. To succeed by wrong, to rise by crime, to grow great by inverting the moral order of things, is in his view the highest proof of genius and skill. So he cooks both his moral and personal ugliness into food of intellectual pride. The worse he sees himself to be, the higher he stands in his own esteem, because this argues in him the greater superiority to other men in force of mind.

INTRODUCTION. \J

This aspect of the man is indeed startling, but I think it is fully borne out by his soliloquies in the Third Part of King Henry the Sixth ; especially that in Act hi., scene 2 :

Well, say there is no kingdom, then, for Richard ;

What other pleasure can the world afford ?

I'll make my heaven in a lady's lap,

And deck my body in gay ornaments,

And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks.

miserable thought ! and more unlikely Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns !

Why, Love forswore me in my mother's womb : And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,

She did corrupt frail Nature with some bribe, To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub ; To make an envious mountain on my back, Where sits deformity to mock my body ; To shape my legs of an unequal size ; To disproportion me in every part.

Then, since this Earth affords no joy to me, But to command, to check, to o'erbear such As are of better person than myself, I'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown, And, whiles I live, t' account this world but Hell, Until my head, that this mis-shaped trunk bears, Be round impaled with a glorious crown.

Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile ; And cry Content to that which grieves my heart ; And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, And frame my face to all occasions :

1 can add colours to the chameleon ; Change shapes with Proteus for advantages ; And set the murderous Machiavel to school.

So much for the Poet's Richard as his character is seen growing and taking shape. His innate malice has had fitting exercise and nurture amidst the rancours and fierceness of civil slaughter : by his immunities of rank and station, his native strength of will has been pampered into a towering audacity of thought and purpose : the constant presence and ever-shifting forms of danger have trained him to a most protean hypocrisy : he is a consummate master alike in the arts of dissembling and of simulation ; can counterfeit brusqueness, meekness, innocence, humility, sorrow, anger, indignation, artlessness, and piety ; and can play the blusterer, the wag, the boon companion, the penitent, the lover, the devotee, the hot partisan, the hearty friend, the cool adviser, and the passionate avenger; each in turn, or several of them together, as the occasion prompts, or the end requires. But, whatever sentiment he is feigning, or whatever part he is playing, his biting, malicious wit is ever in action, as if this were an original impulse with him, and the natural pastime of his faculties. Many strong instances of this occur in the plays where he is growing, but nothing to what we have from the full-grown Richard in the play that bears his name. Any quotations in this kind would use up too much space ; so I must rest with noting that we have a good sample in Act i., scene 3, where, coming abruptly into the presence of the Queen and her friends, he counterfeits passion as the language of grieved and injured virtue ; and a still better one in Act iv., scene 2, where he plays off his caustic banter on "the deep-revolving witty Buckingham." In his pride of intellectual superiority, he looks with intense scorn on all in any sort touched with honesty ; they are game to him ; and his supreme delight is in mocking at such " simple gulls " as Clarence, Hastings, Stanley, Buckingham ; and it is by his dry, stinging pungency of speech that he engineers his contempt of them to the spot. Those whom it is not in his power or his policy to kill he loves at least to torment with wounding flouts.