Richard III (25 page)

Lines 1–134:
Margaret has remained concealed in England, watching the “waning” of her enemies. She hears the duchess and Queen Elizabeth approaching, and again withdraws to watch. As the two women mourn the princes, she comments with satisfaction on their grief, seeing it as revenge for her own losses. She comes forward and points out that her curses have come true: Elizabeth is “a most distressed widow,” has lost her sons, and is “queen of sad mischance.” She starts to leave, but Elizabeth begs her to teach her to curse her enemies. Margaret says that the way to do this is to “Compare dead happiness with living woe” and her grief and therefore her words will pierce like Margaret’s. Margaret leaves and Elizabeth and the duchess vow to smother Richard “in the breath of bitter words.”

Lines 135–444:
Richard arrives and the two women launch a bitter attack on him, directly accusing him of killing the princes and Clarence. Reinforcing the attention to disguise, Elizabeth suggests that his “golden crown” conceals a “branded” forehead, a reference to Cain that also emphasizes the accusations of fratricide. Richard calls for trumpets and drums to drown out “these tell-tale women,” saying that he will only listen if they speak courteously. The duchess asserts her right as his mother to speak to Richard, and accuses him of making the earth her “hell.” She curses him, hoping that he will die shamed in battle, and leaves. Elizabeth is about to follow, but Richard detains her. She bitterly comments that she has “no more sons” for Richard to “slaughter,” but he is only interested in her “royal and gracious” daughter. He explains that he wishes to make her his queen and asks how to win her. Queen Elizabeth bitterly suggests that he send her the bleeding hearts of her brothers. Richard attempts to persuade her in a speech that shows his old command over language, but his charming imagery is juxtaposed by the repellent idea of what he is suggesting, which he is either choosing to
ignore or genuinely cannot see. Elizabeth points this out, asking if she should say to her daughter that “her father’s brother / Would be her lord?” Echoing the argument with Anne in Act 1 Scene 2, Elizabeth verbally matches Richard, defeating his every move, but he persists until she apparently gives in, although her final words to Richard are ambiguous. However, he chooses to see her as defeated and describes her as a “Relenting fool.”

Lines 445–555:
Ratcliffe and Catesby report that Richmond’s navy is approaching the coast, with the intention of joining Buckingham and his army. Richard orders Catesby to go to the Duke of Norfolk, and grows angry when he does not leave. Catesby explains that he has not been given any message for Norfolk, the first sign of genuine weakness in Richard. Derby brings confirmation that Richmond intends “to claim the crown.” Angry, Richard questions Derby’s loyalty and, despite Derby’s assurances, holds his son George hostage until he has mustered his forces to join Richard in battle. A series of messengers bring bad news, until Richard strikes one man before he can even speak, suggesting his increasing loss of self-control. The man reports that Buckingham’s army has been dispersed by floods and that Buckingham is missing. The confusion continues as it is reported first that Richmond is returning to France, and then that he has landed at Milford, but Buckingham has been taken prisoner by Richard’s forces. Richard heads for Salisbury to do battle.

Derby sends word to Richmond of his support, but explains that Richard is holding his son hostage. He also reveals that Queen Elizabeth has consented to Richmond marrying her daughter.

Buckingham, under guard, asks to speak to Richard, but is refused. He knows that it is his “doomsday,” and recalls the words of Margaret’s prophecy.

Richmond’s army marches toward Leicester.

The action shifts quickly between events and the opposing camps, building pace and tension.

Lines 1–19:
Richard and followers pitch his tent in Bosworth Field. The mood is somber, but Richard is cheered by news that the “traitors” number only “six or seven thousand,” a third the size of his own army. They go to survey the battleground.

Lines 20–47:
Richmond and followers pitch his tent on the opposite side of the battlefield, a visual representation of their conflict. Richmond is optimistic, seeing the “golden” sunset as a good omen for the following day. The solar imagery returns us to the opening lines of the play and associated ideas of “summer” replacing a “winter of discontent.” Richmond draws up his battle plans and sends Blunt with a “needful note” to Derby.

Lines 48–82:
Richard also sends a message to Derby, instructing him to “bring his power / Before sun-rising” or his son will die. He then commands that his horse, “white Surrey,” is saddled for the next day, but complains that he lacks “cheer of mind.” He writes, then sleeps.

Lines 83–121
: Derby secretly visits Richmond to assure him of his loyalty, but tells him that he “may not be too forward” because Richard has his son. He leaves, and Richmond prays before sleeping.

Lines 122–224:
As both men sleep, a series of Ghosts appears on stage, all victims of Richard. In turn, they approach Richard and curse him for his role in their deaths, repeating that he will “despair and die.” Each Ghost also addresses Richmond, blessing him and wishing him victory. When the last Ghost, that of Buckingham, has spoken, Richard awakes suddenly, crying out: “Give me another horse! Bind up my wounds!” His self-doubt is evident in marked con
trast to his earlier confidence and his confusion is clear as he asserts “I am I,” then argues “I am not.”

Lines 225–272:
Richmond wakes from “the sweetest sleep.” He reports his “fairest-boding” dream and then addresses his soldiers. His patriotic speech reminds them that “God” and their “good cause” are on their side. He condemns Richard’s tyranny.

Lines 273–354:
Richard, observing that the sun “disdains to shine,” issues orders that Derby and his men are to be summoned. He addresses his troops, focusing on the weaknesses of the enemy and describing Richmond as “a paltry fellow.” A messenger informs Richard that Derby has defected, but he has no time to kill his son: the battle has begun.

Lines 355–408:
Catesby reports that Richard is fighting on foot, having lost his horse, and is determined to kill Richmond. Richard enters, calling for a horse, but will not withdraw when Catesby asks him to, focusing only on Richmond and sustaining his single-minded desire to retain power until the last. Richmond appears. They fight, and Richard is killed. Richmond declares that “the bloody dog is dead” and claims the throne. He announces his intention to marry Princess Elizabeth, ths uniting “divided York and Lancaster.” As Henry VII, he will restore peace to the long-fractured kingdom.

The best way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or ideally to participate in it. By examining a range of productions, we may gain a sense of the extraordinary variety of approaches and interpretations that are possible—a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made “our contemporary” four centuries after his death.

We begin with a brief overview of the play’s theatrical and cinematic life, offering historical perspectives on how it has been performed. We then analyze in more detail a series of productions staged over the last half-century by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The sense of dialogue between productions that can only occur when a company is dedicated to the revival and investigation of the Shakespeare canon over a long period, together with the uniquely comprehensive archival resource of promptbooks, program notes, reviews, and interviews held on behalf of the RSC at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, allows an “RSC stage history” to become a crucible in which the chemistry of the play can be explored.

Finally, we hear the voices of an array of practitioners via interviews with a distinguished actor who has played Richard, the director of a highly successful production, and a designer of a complete cycle of Shakespeare’s history plays. After the interviews, there is a brief essay by Richard Eyre on the experience of directing the play and touring it in Eastern Europe.

To judge by the number of contemporary references to the play and reprints of the 1597 Quarto,
Richard III
was an immediate popular
success from its first performances in the early 1590s—it did much to make the names of both Shakespeare as playwright and Richard Burbage as leading actor. In his commonplace book,
Palladis Tamia
(1598), Francis Meres cites it as an example of Shakespeare’s excellence as a writer of tragedies. The success of Burbage’s performance is evidenced in a well-known anecdote recorded in the diary of a law student, John Manningham:

Apart from the light cast upon the relationship between Shakespeare and Burbage, the story, if true, attests to the success of Richard’s seductive onstage persona.

A performance at court was recorded in November 1633 after the birth of Queen Henrietta Maria’s son, the Duke of York (later James II), suggesting that the play remained in the repertoire of the King’s Men until the closure of the theaters when the country collapsed into civil war in 1642.

After the reopening of the theaters with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660,
Richard III
was assigned to Thomas Killigrew’s company and revived briefly with a new prologue. Thomas Betterton, the best-known actor in the period, played Richard, not in Shakespeare’s play, but in an adaptation by John Caryll,
The English Princess
(1666). This was based on events leading up to the Wars of the Roses and Lady Elizabeth’s choice of Richmond over Richard. When Shakespeare’s play was revived, Betterton played King Edward IV and Richard was played by Samuel Sandford, who specialized in villains. It was with Sandford in mind that Colley Cibber wrote his own immensely successful adaptation, first performed at Drury Lane in 1699.

Cibber’s play is little more than half the length of Shakespeare’s, with Richard’s part even more dominant: the number of his soliloquies is increased whereas the roles of characters such as Buckingham are cut. Hastings, Clarence, Edward, and Margaret are eliminated altogether. There is a concomitant simplification of other characters: Derby (Stanley) and the queen are less ambiguous and Henry Richmond is idealized and given lines from Shakespeare’s
Henry V
. Supposing the audience to have a less intimate knowledge of English history and the identity of the various characters than the original Shakespearean playgoers, Cibber invents scenes with Henry VI at the beginning to clarify the politics and history and to demonstrate Richard’s past evil-doings. Cibber stages the murder of the princes, although this short scene is unique to the edition of 1700 and it is generally believed that it was cut in performance. In the printed version Shakespeare’s lines are in italics while Cibber’s are in Roman type. In his introduction Cibber relates how he was obliged to cut the first act in performance on the grounds that the plight of King Henry VI might remind people of the banished James II. The overall effect of Cibber’s revisions is twofold: to simplify the plot to make the play more easily understood and to enhance the role of Richard. Cibber’s play dominated the stage until 1821 and was, as the critic Stanley Wells points out, “for a couple of centuries probably the most popular play on the English stage.”
²
Innovations such as the inclusion of Richard’s self-revelatory soliloquy from
3 Henry VI
and the adapted line “Off with his head! So much for Buckingham” continued to be used even in the Laurence Olivier film version of 1955.

Sandford withdrew and Cibber, more comedian than villain, took the part of Richard himself, giving a performance which was almost universally derided. The eighteenth-century theater historian Thomas Davies records how finally “the public grew out of patience and fairly hissed him off the stage.”
³
It was David Garrick making his acting debut as Richard in the “illegitimate” theater in Goodman’s Fields in 1741 who made the role his own. Garrick’s performance and “naturalistic” acting style drew instant acclaim. Recognizing the significance of his performance, fellow actor James Quin commented “if the young fellow was right, he and the rest of the players
had all been wrong.”
⁴
In his biography of Garrick, Davies describes the effect of his first performance:

John Philip Kemble played the part but it hardly suited his scholarly, dignified persona, whereas the eccentric George Frederick Cooke at Covent Garden at the beginning of the nineteenth century won considerable acclaim. In her study of the play in performance, Julie Hankey says that “Cooke’s Richard was neither subtle and protean like Garrick’s, nor lofty like Kemble’s; it seems to have been joyfully, gloatingly horrible.”
⁶
The Romantics admired the individualism, if not the villainy of Richard. Of Edmund Kean’s performance, William Hazlitt said: “If Mr. Kean does not completely succeed in concentrating all the lines of the character, as drawn by Shakespear [sic], he gives an animation, vigor, and relief to the part which we have never seen surpassed. He is more refined than Cooke; more bold, varied and original than Kemble in the same character.”
⁷
Junius Brutus Booth modeled his performance on Kean’s and achieved some success, despite the efforts of Kean’s supporters to drown him out. Booth later emigrated to America and became a successful actor-manager there. His performance as Richard was noted for its physicality, especially in the concluding battle scenes, as were those of his American successor in the role, Edwin Forrest. The Cibber text was still being used in these performances, though the play was billed as Shakespeare’s.