Richard III several approaches

Richard III. and women—peculiar relationshipsAs far as the two major female characters of the play are concerend, Richard’s attitude towards women becomes quite evident. There is Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s wife, and Lady Anne Warwick, Richard’s queen and widow of the Lancastrian Prince of Wales Edward. Both women are inferior to Richard and lose their strength and integrity to him. However, they play a significant role in Richard’s life and take a significant part in the responsibility for his decline.

        Especially the strong-minded and self-determined Elizabeth Woodville, who craves for power and wealth as much as her late husband Edward IV. and Richard himself , regains the might she lost and

knows how to outwit  Richard while he woos her daughter Elizabeth. So Richard’s decline really starts as soon as he falls to be inferior to Elizabeth during that very scene( IV, 4). Although Richard is known to be wicked and skilled while arguing with his adversaries, Elizabeth proves to be the more cunning, though she leaves him with the impression she would woo Elizabeth for him, while in reality she betrays him by having already promised her daughter to Richard’s greatest enemy and later executor Richmond. Her giving Elizabeth to Richmond is actually the most decisive aspect and reason for Richmond’s later succession to the throne, because without young Elizabeth as his queen his kingship would never have been strong. While Richard’s and Elizabeth’s relationship can simply be described as ”violent hate” Anne’s and Richard’s relationship is more peculiar. It is a mixture of love and hate and there are many sadistic traits in it. Anne is truly destroyed by Richard; she loses everything, including the power over herself, to her sadistic husband (1). For her, Richard is the counterpart of her first husband Edward, whom she calls ” angel-husband”(IV, 1, 68). However, she falls for him during his wooing scene, after having given him strong reprimand. For example, her statement
 ”Never hung poison on a fouler toad. Out of my sight!
Thou dost infect mine eyes.”(I,2,151-152),

 

gives the impression that she hates him deadly. However, she fails to execute him when she has the chance given by Richard himself, nor does she command him to commit suicide, as he proposes her to do in order to prove to her how serious his wooing is. ” Arise dissembler; though I wish thy death
                                                                                                                  I will not be thy executioner.”(I,2, 188).

From this moment Richard knows that he has gained the control over her and can enthrall her with his promises and his hypocrisy. In fact he only uses her on his way to power and will get rid of her as soon as he does not need her anymore.Indeed he says after the wooing scene:

  ‘Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?
                                                                      Was ever woman in this humour won?
                                                                      I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long.”(I,2,232-234).

Here Richard first proves that he can manipulate people, even those who belong to his enemies.
        Why Anne agreed upon marrying this dogmatic, aggressive and wicked villain is probably the most incomprehensible aspect of the whole play and might as well be explained as ”tragic force”. However, it is also obvious, that Richard must be a quite charming man, who is, despite of his deformity, able to bewitch women with his words. That makes him attractive to the characters of the play as well as to the audience. Although everything speaks against the possibility of his feeling love for Anne , if we assume that a villain like he is able to feel, he feels deep for her. It is rather a pathological drive to hurt people and destroy their lives. Because he never experienced or felt love or affection himself he wants to destroy the love and trust of others. It is his sadism that forces him to woo the newly widowed Anne and that also makes him dependent on her. Those forces are love in Richard’s conception and he can only express it with violent behavior that follows his ” honey words” Lady Anne” grew captive” to.

Here is also the drama’s connection to our modern times: There are many people who have the same attitude Richard has. Especially husbands. Today many women are abused, mistreat and harassed in marriage or relationships (3). Even rape is not seldom. One theory is, that men, who fail in their job or social life try to prove their power by abusing and mistreatening their wives. Like Anne, most of them are powerless and afraid to act against their tormentor because they fear a public scandal or revenge. Like women today, Anne despairs as a result of the pressure and abuse Richard puts upon her. Even if he had not killed her, she would have committed suicide sooner or later, for she was aware of her soon end. ”Besides he hates me (…), and will no douobt shortly be rid of me.”
                                                              ( IV,1,86).she says to Elizabeth.

        This again shows how close love and violence are related in Richard’s character. He expresses love as well in hate and terror, so that others have the impression he hates them and is not able to show love or affection for anyone or anything except for himself and his power. That of course makes him the evil perpetrator, as such he is characterized in the play. However, the truth is, that Richard, although he is selfish and self-determined, needs the other characters of the play and even depends on them. Because if it was not for the other’s harsh rejection and reprimand Richard would have no reason to prove an evil villain and his existence would be senseless.There is a special correspondence between Richard and the two women Elizabeth and Anne, for their destinies give suspense to the ” tragic force”, intended by Shakespeare and are decisively responsible for Richard’s decline.

Richard – the multi-faced villain

It certainly needs a good actor to play the role of Richard III., because we can call him a genuine hypocrite:
Richard is multi-faced within the drama and shows his different faces considering the situation he finds himself in.
Within the drama the audience is able to recognize more than eight different faces, which Richard exposes:

1.  
   1.  
      1. The devoted brother
      2. The Witty wooer
      3. The Loyal subject
      4. The Pious convert
      5. The Benevolent uncle
      6. The Good protector
      7. The Cornered, sweating rat
      8. The Brave soldier

Richard III. has always a desire for personal power. This means Richard is guided by his goals and does everything to reach them. He does not care if he has to murder for his aims.
That shows that Richard is a very intelligent and clever person and also a good actor, because everybody believes him when he plays one of his roles. That way he finally becomes King of England.

Richard knows that he is a villain because he proves to be one constantly and deliberately, which can be seen from his first monologue:

” And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
 I am determined to prove a villain,
 And hate the idle pleasures of these days.”
 (I.1.28-31)

But Richard is not schizophrenic: he is always aware of his actions and uses them to profit from them.
Maybe this moral deformity is caused by his outward appearance and physical deformity.
As we listed, Richard III. plays the devoted brother in the first scene of the play, when he pretends concern about the Duke of Clarence`s imprisonment and speaks to him:

           “Upon what cause?” (are you imprisoned)
           (I.1.46)

      “Alack my lord, that fault is none of yours:
         He should for that commit your godfather.
         O, belike his Majesty hath some intent
         That you should be new-christened in the Tower.”
After this statement Richard pretends that he wants to help Clarence, so that he will be free:

“Well, your imprisonment shall not be long:
I will deliver you , or else lie for you.”
(I.1.114-115)
The use of dramatic irony certainly gives the reader reasons to think about his different faces, since he does not know whether Richard wants to save him or to execute him. Again he plays the role of the devoted brother when King Edward IV wants the reconciliation within the family.

“Good morrow to my sovereign King and Queen;
And princely peers, a happy time of day.”

(…)

“A blessed labour, my most sovereign lord.
Among this princely heap-if any here
By false intelligence or wrong surmise
Hold me a foe-”
(II.1.47-56)
Another face Richard shows is the role of The Witty Wooer in Act I, Scene 2, 177-179:

“If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive, 
Lo here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword,
which if thou please to hide in this true breast, …”

Richard woos Anne and tells her that he has murdered Anne’s husband and her father-in-law only to get her love. He also plays this role when he talks to Elizabeth, trying to convince her that only he is the right husband for her daughter:

“The King that calls your beauteous daughter wife ,
Familiarly shall call thy Dorset brother;
Again shall you be mother to a king,
And all the ruins of distressful times
Repair’d with double riches of content.”

To gain the support of all noblemen, who decide whether to make him king or not, he pretends to be The pious convert:

“Two props of virtue for a Christian Prince,
To stay him from the fall of vanity;
And see, a book of prayer in his hand-
True ornaments to know a holy man.”
(III.7.95-98)
When Richard welcomes the young Prince he switches into the role of Thebenevolent uncle and calls him:

” Welcome, sweet Prince,…
(…)
God keep you from them, and from such false friends!”
(III.1.1-15)
Richard exposes himself as the only concerned uncle and just wants the best for his “little” Prince.
 

Richard shows a very unusual face when he feels like a Cornered, sweating rat at the end of the drama:

“Give me another horse! Bind up my wounds!
 Have mercy, Jesu! Soft , I did but dream.
 O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me…
 And if I die, no soul will pity me!”
 (V.3.178-202)
This is the first time Richard thinks about the victims of his deeds. He exposes one of his faces he cannot control and which is not shown on purpose, because this part is a soliloquy.
 

By saying this last line of the drama

                                “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”
                                 (V.4.7)
he notices the hazardous situation, though he wants to prove a brave soldier. Richard becomes aware of his weakness. He fears the souls of the people he murdered and additionally realizes the enormous force and power of his enemies.

The connection between physical and psychological deformity

From the point of view of modern psychology one can say that Richard’s physical deformity also influences his psyche , but actually Shakespeare wanted to show that Richard was not forced by nature to be evil , but he himself decides to be evil. From his body, deformity spreads all over his character. In the first scene of Richard III , Richard says:

” I am determined to prove a villain “

( I. 1 . 30)

This shows that it is Richard’s own will to be a villain , and that his motive to take revenge on nature is only an excuse.

                        “Then since the heavens have shap’d my body
                        Let hell make crook’d my mind to answer it.”

                        (3 Henry VI, V, 6, 78-79)

Even in the Elizabethan age, which expected the god- given harmony of body and soul, the reason that Richard does not have any other choice than to be evil, was not accepted. In fact, Richard represents evil, the unnatural, and sin. One may come to the conclusion that God chose Richard to revenge on the whole human race, with the exception of the young princes all the other characters in the play are guilty. Marjorie Garber says:

“Richard’s deformed body is a mirror for the self confessed ugliness in his soul.” [2, p.81]

He could also be someone with a sound moral attitude and he shows that he can also be kind and gentle. One can see this from the way the little prince talks about Richard.

 ”Grandam, we can : for my good uncle Gloucester
[...]
And when my uncle told me so he wept,
And pitied me, and kindly kiss’ d my cheek;
Bade me rely on him as on my father,
And he would love me dearly as a child”

         ( II. 2. 20-26)

Actually, it could be Richard’s vocation to get real freedom with the help of his sharp and strong mind. He has this mind power to overthrow nature, because he is able to make the impossible possible, as one can see when he flatters Anne and makes her admire him.Even Hastings is convinced about Richard’s theatrical abilities when he says:

“I think there’s never a man in Christendom
Can lesser hide his love or hate than he,
For by his face straight shall you know his heart”

            ( III.4 .51-53)

Richard plays the devil but he is not forced to be one. He could also play a saint and does so to achieve his devilish aims. Richard is just controlled by his drive to gain power.
However, the question is why he has this enormous drive.

“Deformed Persons, and Eunuches and Old Men,and Bastards, are Envious;
For he that cannot possibly mend his owne case, will doe what he can to
impaire on others.”

        [3, p. 105]

These are important words one has to keep in mind when discussing Richard’s psyche.
Richard was a premature baby and his being handicapped might be seen as a result. According to the Elizabethan world picture society cannot not accept him because of his deformity. Even his mother, the Duchess of York, despises him, which one can see when she says:

                                                    “And I, for comfort, have but one false glass,
                                                       That grieves me when I see my shame in him.”

        ( II.2 53-54)

The Duchess says so about her own son , which clearly shows that she does not love him at all. Another example , which is a symbol of the whole society is:

” Thou elvish – mark’d, abortive, rooting hog
Thou what wust sealid in thy nativity
The slave of Nature , and the son of hell;

 
        ( I.3. 228 -230)

Everybody mocks him and thinks that he is not able to achieve anything, but Richard wants to show that he, though being handicapped, can reach power , the highest power, i.e. to be king .In this context one can refer to Unterstenhöfer [4], who says that Richard does not want power to build up, he wants power to destroy. The psychologist Adler suggests a solution : persons try to compensate psychologically for a physical disability and its attendant feeling of inferiority [1]. He also writes that the overcompensation of inferiority feelings can take the form of an egocentric strive for power and self-aggrandizing behavior at others’ expense [1]. That is exactly what Richard does; he overcompensates his inferiority.
Richard is directly influenced by a society that does not respect him, and so he does not respect himself and, consequently, society.Sigmund Freud took Richard’s deformity as an example to characterize patients who think of themselves as “exceptions” to normal rules. Freud says:

“Such patients, claim that have reounced enough and suffered enough, and have a claim to be spared any further exactions; they will submit no longer to disagreeble necessity for they are exceptions and intend to remain so too.” [1]

Richard seems to be ridiculous; even Anne , his future wife, calls him a “hedgehog” ( I.2.104) and wishes that God damns him for his deeds ( I.2.105).
One can see that he is very intelligent in planning his evil deeds, and his only weakness seems to be his deformity. In this context Marga Unterstenhöfer writes:

“Im psychologischen Sinn wurzelt die Machtgier nicht in der Stärke sondern in der Schwäche.(…). Die Folge ist eine “fiktive Leitlinie” des Lebensplanes verbunden mit Isolation, Selbstentfremdung und innerer Spaltung.”
(Psychologically, the for power is rooted not in strength, but in weakness.) [5, p.111]

This isolation leads to Richard’s inability to love . He has never loved and has never been loved. Even his mother and his wife do not love him, where else should he have learnt it?

To sum up: According to modern psychological theories, Richard III is not capable to act in a different way because of his physical deformity and the Elizabethan society, although it certainly does not mean that a physical deformity necessarily causes a psychological deformity. In Richard’s case, on the other hand, we have to take this into account.

Richard III – a modern dictator ?

Of course Richard III can be seen as a ‘history’ describing events of a  time long forgotten.  But does Richard III not closely resemble some modern dictators?  Are not his ruling techniques revolutionary and modern?

In 1956 Friedrich and Brzezinski suggested in their work” Totalitarian Dictatorship” a list of criteria to evaluate dictatorship, indicating as crucial elements the existence of a single mass party led by a charismatic leader  who uses terror, propaganda, mass-media , armed forces, modern science and technology to suppress and control the country and its people by using an official ideology to legitimize and maintain the regime.

Is Shakespeare’s Richard III a totalitarian dictator?

If one watches the movie “Richard III” directed by Richard Longcraine, who definitely sees Richard III as a modern dictator  one might find his view convincing. If one is familiar with the play, however, one will easily notice some differences. The elements of propaganda, mass-media, modern science and technology are not, as suggested in the film,  relevant for Richard’s dictatorship. Printing, of course, had not been invented before the first half of the fifteenth century by Johannes Gutenberg, and Caxton had not started to print English books before 1476. Mass-media, modern science and technology did not exist in those days, therefore it was impossible for Richard to use them for his advantage. But on the other hand he used terror and the armed forces shamelessly. Obsessed by power Richard did not hesitate to kill members of his own family just to gain more power and establish his kingdom. Everybody who disagreed with Richard’s opinion or argued with him, went directly into prison or had to die. In his function as  king  Richard also had the absolute power of the armed forces using them to fight against all his enemies. So one might argue that there are parallels between Richard’s rule as seen by Shakespeare and modern dictatorships. We chose particularly two modern dictators we thought would be very interesting to compare to Richard: Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein.

Let us take Hussein, for instance:
The most obvious parallel between Hussein and Shakespeare’s Richard III is their absolute willingness to kill everybody who stands in their way. They both came to power in a pseudo-legal way. Before they gained power, both made sure that everyone who could possibly be a threat to their future position would get eliminated. The gain of power itself seemed to be legal and therefore hard to dispute by the opposition, though actually it was a fraud . Like Richard, Hussein is a the single leader of a country as well ( in this case he is the leader of the radical Iraqui Baath party) and rules the country in unscrupulously as well, using terror and violence. For example, he once executed somebody for spilling coffee on his newspaper photo. Invisible for the ordinary citizen, several secret police agencies acting on his order observe the people and denounce everybody getting in Saddam’s way. To maximize his power, Hussein even executed his uncle and mentor, at whose house he had lived from his tenth to twentieth year, as did Richard, who did not hesitate to murder his own family. Like Richard, Hussein is the leader of the army, which he uses to erase whole towns, including the population and buildings. However, Richard did not have the advantage of modern technology like chemical weapons to fulfill his goals.
There are actually several hidden chemical laboratories in the country producing poison gas and other mass destruction items. As a matter of fact, Shakespeare’s Richard III had to use more conventional weapons as swords, but did so very effectively.

But one cannot only compare Richard to Hussein but also to Adolf Hitler. Hitler perfectly fits the definition of a modern dictator. He was the head of a mass party  (NSDAP) which soon was the only party in Germany during Hitler’s reign. In contrast to Richard III, he was able to use propaganda and mass-media to achieve his goals. For example, Hitler’s speeches were spread on the radio so that everybody could (and sometimes had to, e.g. in public places) listen to him all the time; other radio-stations were not allowed to be on the air. With Goebbels, he had his own secretary of propaganda managing that most people thought of  him being the greatest leader and therefore they did everything to please him. Due to the fact that Hitler had the power of the armed forces, every man, even boys, had to fight during World War II. Richard did not have the opportunities to use modern science and technology as Hitler did, but his psychology is no less suggestive (as can be seen when Richard lets himself be ‘persuaded’ to accept the crown). Both based their reign on violence and terror. Needless to say that both did not shrink from murder and terror: Their willingness to kill everybody who stands in their way makes them comparable with each other. Although Richard did not have the chance to use the modern devices Hitler used, it is quite probable that Richard would not have hesitated to use them.

After a careful analysis and closer comparison of Richard’s actions to those of other dictators it becomes evident that Richard’s ruling techniques definitely contain elements of  modern dictatorship. In conclusion one can see that even modern dictators copy the political structures  and ruling techniques of kings and sovereigns of former times.

Richard the Machiavellian villain ?

Niccolo Machiavelli , an Italian statesman and famous author issued in 1513 his book il principe where he describes the characteristics of a sovereign of a country. In Shakespeare’s time Machiavelli’s il principe was thoroughly known by just a few English people but Shakespeare probably knew the content rather well.
Regarding the definition of machiavellinism , one will say that Shakespeare’s Richard III. definitely fits that category due to the fact that machiavellinism describes the subordination of ethics to political power.
The character of Richard III. pretty much shows that. Having killed almost all of the members of his family and nobles , the subjection of moral to the desire of power becomes clear.Granted, so far everything fits just fine the definition of machiavellinism, however, regarding the book Il Principe by Machiavelli, one will say that Richard III is not really a machiavellian king.
Machiavelli argues in the 8^th chapter that a prince should commit all acts of violence that need to be done at once, because otherwise he will have to be prepared for violence throughout his reign leading to mistrust and anxiety towards the prince and thus he might become the victim of conspiracy. According to Shakespeare’s play  Richard III, that is exactly what happens. Richard does not kill all his enemies at once, but rather one after another, even during his reign. Finally there is no one who can help him in the final battle of Bosworth, because everybody who could do so is dead. To some extent Richard resembles a machiavellian villain. Machiavelli claims in his book that a sovereign should rather be feared than be loved by the people. No doubt this proves the resemblance to a machiavellian sovereign, however, in the same chapter Machiavelli argues that a prince should not be hated by the people. Talking of that one has to admit that Richard is hated by almost everybody in the play.
Moreover Machiavelli claims that a prince has to be deceitful if it is necessary and suits his purpose. However, there are basically five virtues he has to represent to the people while being deceitful: honesty, uprightness, religiousness, mercy and humanity.
By representing those a prince’s reign will be free of trouble.
Actually Richard is a deceitful person, however he does not represent these five virtues.
Having in mind that Shakespeare most likely knew about the content of Machiavelli’s book, one actually gets the impression that to some extent Richard represents a machiavellian prince, but to a greater extent his opponent ,the earl of Richmond, has the characteristics of a machiavellian prince, due to the fact that Machiavelli claims in the 6^th chapter that if a righteous man, who gains power of a country, defeating the sovereign of that country, will not lose any power later on and will be happy and beloved by the people.
Having written the play ” Richard III” for a Tudor Queen, Shakespeare most aptly characterizes the earl of Richmond as England’ s savior and thus he legitimates Elisabeth as the Queen of England
Machiavelli’s theory is not an evil theory, but rather an advice of how to become a capable sovereign of a country. No doubt that Richard is a villain, but he is not a real machiavellian villain.

Shakespeare: odd-job man for the Tudors?_

The Elizabethan era named by the Tudor Queen Elisabeth (1558-1603) is known as one of the most attractive epochs in English history. This time combined the exotic way of figures, costumes, habits and a refreshing sensuality connected with both the individual and the collective view of community. That epoch did not only exist as historical reality but moreover as a myth- containing first of all the imagination of the Tudor dynasty. “Merry Old England”- Harmony and peace below a Queen, a land full of life-spirit, , celebrating and playing: England as such.

The real Tudor age started with Henry Tudor, a Lancastrian , who defeated King Richard III in the battle of Bosworth. As a consequence the Wars of the Roses came to an end..

Historically the mystery about the Tudor myth firstly was “founded” by chronicle writers. This aspect expresses the sight of many different critics, e.g.: Thomas More, Holinshed or Vergil. They all described King Richard as a brutally, cruel person full of villainy. The very famous playwright William Shakespeare was also fascinated by this person’s wicked character, so that he wrote a brilliant play about him and his social surrounding. However, such considerations only modify a dramatic traditions from which emerges Shakespeare’s paradoxical villain-his Richard III is at ones evil and comical, hypocritical and candid, demonic and human . In brief , Shakespeare’s Richard is a complex literary character, not intended to represent the actual King Richard III. He himself, as king of England and the myth surrounding him had already become separated in the minds of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. His drama releases the spectators after Richmond’s final speech into the mystery of this new beginning era. The author put a special emphasis on this theme he even endowed the audience with a vitality which seemed to be quiet astonishing. One will never be able to solve the “problem” whether Shakespeare really wanted to justify the Tudor dynasty. As a fact in the medieval age aristocrats usually hired playwrights for their private amusement therefore a critic of Shakespeare’s drama could have claimed that he in a way was forced to try to justify this predominant myth. His intention and his decision was at least a result of social and financial acceptance in England. Consequently, the Queen’s favor or the support of the Tudors might have been reasons for Shakespeare’s choice. There is no doubt that Elizabethan history plays, including Shakespeare Richard III , were never intended as strictly historical documents. Most importantly, it was made clear that Shakespeare’s so-called history-plays undoubtedly represent a genre of dramatic literature. A drama leaves a more intensive effect for the posterity than facts which base on historical reality. Shakespeare was a creative dramatist but never an historian but the question of historical accuracy in Richard III persists. Some even had the Ricardian love-hate attitude towards the play “as very good Shakespeare, but very bad history.”

 

http://library.thinkquest.org/26314/psychenf.htm

Some opinion on Richard III and Looking for Richard

Richard III and the Film Looking for Richard

May 18, 2006 by

Amy Madore  

Amy Madore

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The movie Looking For Richard is not a complete film based on Richard III by William Shakespeare, but rather a documentary organized by Al Pacino documenting his passion and struggle to make Shakespeare more available to the general public. Pacino feels that our current society is not well enough exposed to Shakespeare, and that what they are exposed to does not particularly interest them. 

I found however, that this reason that Pacino gave in the beginning of the film was only one of many factors that motivated him to create this film. What eventually became apparent during the film was what Shakespeare meant to the actors, how their personal struggle to perform the play was evident. It is said in the film that there is an idea that American actors are intimidated by performing Shakespeare and that the general consensus was that only the English could perform it successfully. 

Pacino and his crew interviewed actor, scholars, visited the birthplace of Shakespeare, and even visited the globe theatre in order to get a complete understanding of how to truly perform the play. Pacino seemed to be getting frustrated with all of the complications within Richard III that could not be answered by scholars. Pacino truly wants to show how important Shakespeare is to him, and you can feel his passion when he is performing some of the scenes from the play. 

The documentary portrayed 4 of the major scenes in Richard III, along with a few shorter minor connecting scenes to help the flow of his thought and also the flow of the story. One of the most powerful scenes for me was when the entire family, minus King Edward, is together and Richard is accusing Elizabeth of being the cause for the downfall his brother Clarence. The room seems tense and Richard’s tone is getting heated with Elizabeth, and meanwhile Margaret appears to be a
prophetic/apocalyptic voice in the room. 

I felt that this was one of the most powerful scenes in the film because it was a direct enactment of what I envisioned in my mind as I read the play. Pacino is true to the story and also true to Richard, by clearly and accurately displaying his evilness and hatred towards the world as well as everyone around him. He shows Richard manipulating his entire family, when it is truly he who has caused Clarence to die. 

The play and the documentary both convey the same idea, that one of the most interesting pieces of literature, Richard III, is something that everyone can relate to and should be able to enjoy and understand. Richard, in both the play and the film, is a cynical dark man who is power hungry, making him easily relatable to the majority of at least the American culture. Richard is interesting and complex, and this is apparent in the play, and is also one of the key factors to why I believe that Pacino’s adaptation was a successful one. Pacino showed Richard truly and honestly, and he had the passion and confidence to play the part wholeheartedly which is apparent in the film as well.

The Women of Richard III

http://www.cyberpat.com/shirlsite/essays/rich3.html

The Women of Richard III

The character of King Richard III of England is perhaps Shakespeare’s most evil creation. A machiavellian who delights in governing through fear and force, his evil is only offset by his ready and cutting wit. Yet Shakespeare does provide a contrast to Richard’s villainy. The women of this play function as voices of protest and morality. They often see through his intrigues and predict dire consequences from his acts. Shakespeare uses the women to point out moral truths and emphasize general principles of the Elizabethan world view of moral and political order. Anne, Elizabeth, the Duchess and Margaret each contribute in furthering Shakespeare’s moral themes in three ways: through their roles as victims which is expressed in their intense lamentations, in their cries for revenge through divine retribution, and in alluding to a higher moral order that transcends men’s actions. In all these ways, the women of Richard III help illustrate how destruction comes about when order is violated, either through the weakness of a king or through the machinations of those who cause civil war by wanting to take the king’s place. Such chaos devastates the individual, the family, and the nation, resulting in moral decay, treachery, anarchy, and profound suffering.

The world that Shakespeare shows us in Richard III is a man’s world. The women are presented as being on the sidelines to grieve, complain, or bury the dead. Richard views women as tools, as shown by his various asides to the audience when he announces his plots, where the marrying of Anne or Elizabeth are only moves in his elaborate games of intrigue and power. Overwhelmingly, the women are victims of such political machinations, and though their vulnerability allows their manipulation, the eloquent expressions of their grief shows not only that Richard’s schemes are played out on people whose agony of body and spirit can be intensely real, but also shows that the state of civil turmoil, disorder, and treachery that has prevailed since the War of the Roses began leaves no one untouched by suffering. Anne, the first woman we are introduced to is grief stricken by her husband’s death in combat. Shakespeare expands this theme in scenes such as Act II, sc.ii when both Elizabeth and the Duchess also lament and enumerate similar losses of loved ones. Act IV, sc. i contains some of the play’s most touching lines when Elizabeth looks back on the Tower, suspecting she may never see her imprisoned sons again. In this scene, the Duchess sums up the state of despair all the women find themselves in when she says, “I to my grave, where peace and rest lie with me. Eighty odd years of sorrow have I seen, and each hour’s joy wrack’d with a week of ten,” (Act IV, sc. i). Though one can call the Duchess and the former Queen Margaret monotones of complaint, the point is made that this individual devastation is the result of the disaster that has befallen the nation as a whole. Everyone is tainted, even the women are not entirely guiltless in the struggle between the warring houses. Through their passive acceptance, as in Anne’s acceptance of Richard’s proposal, to Margaret’s very active part as a soldier in the battlefield, the blood and barbarities of civil strife have reduced everyone, but especially the women, to helpless creatures who can only recite psalms of grief, guilt, and sorrow. Finally, in Act IV, sc iv, ‘the wailing queens,’ Margaret, the Duchess, and Elizabeth unite in their mournings. Again, Shakespeare uses the women to emphasize the woeful state of the nation when Elizabeth asks Margaret to teach her how to curse, cursing being the only outlet for these women, powerful in title but impotent in reality, incapable of stemming the tide of sorrow and suffering the disorder of the times has wrought.

Perhaps because of their helpless suffering, the women of Richard III also come to function as the national voice for retributive justice. In Act I, sc. ii, Anne prays for vengeance. Revenge is cried upon Richard by the wailing queens. But it is Margaret who dominates with her litany of revenge. Serving a dual role as a spokeswoman of historical facts, she graphically outlines the violence and treachery that has been the ruling characteristic of the country since the accession of Henry VI. Here we learn that everyone is guilty: the moral abdication of Henry VI led to the dominance of Margaret, the Yorkists provoked civil war, Edward IV, as well as Clarence, broke their oaths…they are a generation nurtured in violence and individual repentances cannot heal the cancer of usurpation, civil disorder, and self-seeking individualism. Richard is the culmination of this strife, a monstrous incarnation of evil that springs from a context of decayed public morality. Anne and Margaret call him the scourge, and he is variously referred to as the devil himself.

When the women are not grieving, they are often venting their hate. The expressions of Margaret’s thirst for revenge are her curses and she levels them generously at all who contributed to her personal losses: Clarence, Richard, Hastings, King Edward, and Dorcet while she also evokes the mechanical aspect of justice when she prophesies their destruction. All of the women join Margaret in cursing Richard, the most concentrated representation of the evil and illness that pervades the country, but it is interesting to note how often the curse reverses on the curser. Anne acknowledges this (Act IV, sc.i), thus admitting to her own duplicity in the mess everyone finds themselves in. All the scenes of female lamentation are riddled with curses, calling for justice when all are guilty. Shakespeare uses the women to illustrate how England itself is under a curse of civil dissension and moral ill. The ring of curses and the cries for justice directly reflect how deep the morass of blood, treachery, and disorder has become, and how urgently rightful order needs to be restored.

But does vengeance belong to man or God? Shakespeare uses the tension created with Margaret’s curses and cries for personal revenge to answer this question in the person of Richmond. Throughout the play a sense of moral order that transcends men’s actions is alluded to but never given full expression until the last Act. It is to this moral order, this immutable form of divine justice, that all the women are appealing when they cry to the heavens for their wrongs to be righted, especially poignant in the ‘wailing queens’ scene. In this scene, Margaret points out to Elizabeth how temporal life is: “For happy wife, a most distressed widow; For joyful mother, one that wails the name; … Thus hath the course of justice whirl’d about And left thee but a very prey to time” (Act IV, sc. iv). However, though Margaret uses this allusion to temporality to emphasize the maxim ‘what goes around comes around’, she confuses the fulfillment of her wishes with divine justice. Her curses come true because they should have, not because she wants them to. She, like the other women, tend to be morally myopic in their cries for justice, unable, or unwilling, to recognize their own guilt. Shakespeare makes Margaret the incarnation of the wrong sort of justice, derived from the Old Testament style of retributive justice, but he contrasts her with Richmond who submits himself to a higher order and incorporates forgiveness into his idea of justice. The fact that Shakespeare portrays Richmond as the nation’s savior, not bringing him into the play until the last scene and making plain that Richmond alone is untainted by the treachery that has gone before, endorses the fact that Shakespeare himself felt that vengeance belonged to God, made plain when Richmond submits himself to this higher order.

In the last scene when Richard and Richmond present their soliloquies, the contrast between submission to order and extreme individualism is very clearly the contrast between good and evil. Here Shakespeare makes it clear that there is an existence beyond the realm of men that nevertheless has a profound effect on human life and experience. Margaret and the other women of the play serve to bring about this realization, through their lamentations and cries for revenge, that something over and above the world of men is needed to right the state of the country. They cry to this higher order and bring the need for its intervention to our attention, and this is their greatest contribution. Only their own participation in furthering the state of disorder prevents them from benefiting significantly from order’s restoration in the form of Richmond’s victory.

Cicero said, “Justice is the essential virtue and moral right is the basis of action.” In Richard III, Shakespeare shows how the existing order of England has been violated and presents the conflict and turmoil that results on both the individual and national levels. Order is restored only by the eradication of the forces that originally violated it and Shakespeare shows that these forces were essentially immoral in nature. The female characters are the major vehicles of this view, by voicing the sorrow that results from the disruption of moral order, through their cries for retributive justice, and through their appeals for this justice from a divine realm. They are the essential contrast to Richard’s evil, and through their struggles against his dominance they serve not only to illustrate the necessity of the restoration of order, but to bring about that restoration. In moral terms, the women of the play thus serve to mitigate the natural destructiveness inherent in a male dominated world.

© 1992 Shirley Galloway

Shakespeare-Richard III (1983 TV)-Lady Anne mourns, pt 1/2

Module A Exploring Connections. Explore the langage and the values conveyed through this scene.

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