In the course of the text, the different characters are introduced according to the role orchestrated for them by Richard, who therefore“fashions”them through his verbal ability and renders them a reflection on the surface of his own mirror,
Thornton-Burnett,Constructing‘Monsters’in Shakespearean Drama and Early Modern Cul-ture, 75.
See Michael Billington, “Benedict Cumberbatch proves a superb villain in The Hollow Crown’sRichard III,”The Guardian, March 21, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/thea treblog/2016/may/21/benedict-cumberbatch-the-hollow-crown-richard-iii (last access November 6, 2016)
Quiring,Shakespeare’s Curse, 119.
a tool connaturated to each one of his actions which encloses their consequen-ces and subjects them to an alienating effect through his reflection. As a matter of fact, he expresses his conspiracy in the following terms:“Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, / That I may see my shadow as I pass”(1.2.267–268).
Buckingham seems literally to become embodied and come from the liminal space of the mirror, a“shadow”that takes form in the moment of Richard’s as-cent to power, when the latter realizes that Buckingham shares his plans and identifies him as his double:“My other self, my counsel’s consistory, / My oracle, my prophet, my dear cousin: / I, as a child, will go by thy direction”(2.3.151–153).
It is as if Richard’s performative tension embodied itself in another character who from this moment onwards takes the initiative and determines his ascent to power in bodily terms which reproduce those used by Richard himself. In 3.1. 199–200, Richard exhorts Buckingham to give form to their complots, and, as a matter of fact, Buckingham“re-shapes”Richard’s body in his discours-es to support his claim to the throne and builds his legitimacy in his report of his speech to the citizens of London:“I did infer your lineaments, / Being the right idea of your father / Both in your form and nobleness of mind”(3.7.12–14). In this way, as Schapp underlines, Richard’s form has been“straightened”in a fashion-ing of thebody politicwhich“fashions”thebody naturalinvesting it of himself.
We can see here the achievement of what Richard had purported in 1.2.260–262, that is,“I’ll be at charges for a looking-glass, / And entertain a score or two of tailors/ To study fashions to adorn my body”(1.2.260–262). Such adornment is realized by Buckingham, who, in particular, inverts the terms of the interpreta-tion of Richard’s body and transposes its characteristics upon the whole country (thus creating also a deep identification between the country and the future king):“The noble isle doth want her proper limbs”(3.7.124), presenting at the same time Richard as the remedy for such lack.⁶³
Although he had previously celebrated his own histrionic qualities, asserting
“I’ll play the orator”(3.5.4), Buckingham does not succeed in his intent, as it is testified by the repeated allusions to the absence of the public vocal legitimation on the part of the population: “The citizens […] say not a word”(3.7.3), “they spake not a word”(3.7.24), which provokes Richard’s impatience:“Would they not speak!”(3.7.42) For the first time, he has to face the failure of his typical pro-cedure through the imposition of a role to the other actors included in his
stag- Charnes points out that Richard uses his bodily distinctiveness to engineer a substitution of his deformed body for the imaginary king’s body:“Gaining the crown will enable him to effect a kind of trade in which he imagines that he exchanges his misshapen half made-up body for the King’s body and its divine perfection”(Linda Charnes,Notorious Identity. Materializing the Sub-ject in Shakespeare(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 32).
ing of the events. The audience does not respond to Buckingham’s rhetorical prompts and he has therefore to transfigure their reactions and transform a min-imal expression of assent into a“general applause and cheerful shout”(3.7.39), only to exit then the scene to avoid a possible continuation of the verbal ex-change and lose the weak result he managed to obtain. In the imminence of the Mayor’s arrival for the sanctioning of the succession, Buckingham organizes a secondmise en scène, that is, the representation of thebody politic, the meta-physical and religious dimension of the divinity that embodies itself in Richard
“look you get a prayer book in your hand, / And stand between two churchmen, good my lord”(3.7.46–47); in this occasion Buckingham indicates his total iden-tification with Richard when he defines his intentions in the following terms“I’ll build a holy descant” (3.7.48). From“descant on my own deformity,”we pass therefore to a“descant”which takes into consideration the rituality connaturat-ed to royal succession in order to distort its metaphysical dimension and render it instrumental for its own purposes. Richard is therefore framed in a role in which his rhetorical abilities cannot emerge, as instead do his attributes of “vir-tuous Prince”,“holy and devout religious m[a]n”(3.7.77, 91). The tableaux which is presented by Buckingham in metatheatrical terms posits the two religious men as“Two props of virtue for a Christian Prince / To stay him from the fall of van-ity; / And see, a book a prayer in his hand–/ True ornaments to know a holy man. Famous Plantagenet, most gracious Prince, / Lend favourable ear to our requests […] take to your royal self / This proffer’d benefit of dignity”(3.7.95–
100, 194–195). With these terms, Buckingham seems to bring to completion the ceremony of royal succession through the transfer of thedignitas connaturat-ed to the role of the sovereign, which had been interruptconnaturat-ed through the interrup-tion of the funeral progress of king Henry IV in 1.2. Actually, the stage instruc-tions recite“Enter Richard aloft”: the vertical architectural plane of the stage symbolizes the hierarchical order of tradition⁶⁴which is now visually endorsed by Richard in Buckingham’s staging.
It is always Buckingham who sanctions Richard’s role through a performa-tive speech act by acclaiming him in the following terms “Then I salute you with this royal title: / Long live Richard, England’s worthy King!” (3.7.238– 239). Immediately afterwards, Buckingham proceeds to organize the coronation for the next day; however, such ceremony is not performed on stage, but trans-figured and performed only by Richard and Buckingham. Richard’s role-playing seems to implode the very same moment in which it should have been most
un- See Watt,Shakespeare’s Acts of Will, 40.
derlined, that is, the coronation moment⁶⁵, the sanctioning of the investiture of thebody politic.Richard transcends the metaphysical sacrality of the moment, through amise en scèneof his own ascent to the throne through the help (real and metaphorical) of the sole Buckingham.
Enter Richard, in pomp, crowned; […]
Richard“Stand all apart. Cousin of Buckingham […] Give me thy hand”
Here he ascendeth the throne. […]
“Thus high, by thy advice / And thy assistance is King Richard seated.”(4.2.1–4)⁶⁶
The moment he becomes king, Richard seems to lose his rhetorical ability and his control on the events, thus proving that“an artifice is created, not a solid political reality” and he proves himself “not able to extend this web as a means of embracing the power of the kingdom”.⁶⁷ As he asserts in 4.2.60–61:
“I must be married to my brother’s daughter, / Or else my kingdom stands on brittleglass”(emphasis added), that is, he has to try and give a concrete support to his construction reflected in the mirror. Such an attempt is enacted upon the news of Richmond’s attack: Richard reacts by making appeal to the parapherna-lia of his position and to thedignitasconnected to his royal lineage:“Is the chair empty? Is the sword unsway’d? / Is the King dead? The empire unpossess’d? / What heir of York is there alive but we? / And who is England’s King but great York’s heir? […]”(4.4.469–472). However, in a context in which the value of ritual has been disrupted by the vacancy of Richard’s creative logos, such an attempt remains vane and the previous strategies become a counterpoint to his intentions. Even later he will make appeal to the dignity of his status:“the King’s name is a tower of strength / Which they upon the adverse faction want”(5.3.12–13).
The disorder created in the state reflects itself in his personality; as he ad-mits:“My mind is chang’d” (4.4.456). Such situation reaches a climax in the scene which precedes the battle of Bosworth, in which Richard’s interior and ex-terior dimension intertwine and finally coexist. They materialize themselves in
Actually, Richard’s coronation was historically significant as it was the first double corona-tion (with Queen Anne) since 1308. It is reported that he assembled an army of soldiers outside the gates of London, in order to avoid possible rebellions.
InThe Hollow Crown, the interpolated coronation scene shows the protagonist enthroned and silent, looking straight at the camera, therefore at us, the audience, with a gaze full of irony, sneering upon the whole coronation pomp which underlines his own rhetorical success.
Richard P. Wheeler,“History, Character and Conscience inRichard III,”Comparative Drama 5.4 (1971–72): 301–321, 310–311. Richard therefore is a forerunner of Prospero, a demiurge, who gives‘form’to himself and the world through words.
the scene of the appearance of the ghosts, psychological prompts that literally become embodied in an“in-between world that is the world of the stage.”⁶⁸In Richard’s last performance, “the looking-glass is finally turned inward”⁶⁹ and we witness the realization of the curse that Richard had pronounced upon him-self in 4.4.399:“Myself myself confound!”As a matter of fact, in this final scene he seems to disgregate into the multiplicities of his roles:“What do I fear? My-self? There’s none else by; / Richard loves Richard, that is, I and I. / Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am! / Then fly. What, from myself? […] / I am a villain– yet I lie, I am not! / Fool, of thyself speak well! Fool, do not flatter […]”(5.3.183–
193).
The morning of the battle we assist to a last powerful attempt at “enge-dering through a narcissistic embrace of self”⁷⁰, once more striving towards self-affirmation. Richard seems to return to his old role and encourages the troops demonstrating his military valour and encouraging his army in terms which re-call the military images of the opening of the tragedy:“A thousand hearts are great within my bosom”(5.4.348). His last performance sees him as an embodi-ment of the hybris, as he manages to“enac[t] more wonders than a man, / Dar-ing an opposite to every danger.”(5.4.2) However, he is defeated by his oppo-nent’s different theatrical strategy, who enacts a parody of his royal role by investing five knights with his royal insigna: as Richard observes in his last lines,“I think there be six Richmonds in the field: / Five have I slain today in-stead of him. / A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”(5.5.9–13).
To Richmond remains to sanction his role through the symbolic transfer of the crown after Richard’s death, which takes place on the battlefield through the words of Stanely:“Lo, here, this long-usurped royalty / From the dead tem-ples of this bloody wretch / Have I pluck’d off to grace thy brows withal”
(5.5.4–6). Once again, a distortion of the coronation ceremony. Richmond’s first speech as a king sanctions Richard’s deposition (“the bloody dog is dead”, 5.5.2), thus bringing to completion the curse started by Margaret and passed through the Duchess and Elisabeth and climaxed in Richard’s self-curse. Richard’s body is carried off scene, reduced to an empty signifier, and seems to recede and return to the liminal space of the theatrical dimension:
Garber,Shakespeare After All, 156.
Garber,Shakespeare After All, 157.
John Jowett,“Introduction”to William Shakespeare,Richard III, ed. John Jowett (Oxford: Ox-ford University Press, 2000), 1–132, 69.
“The historical figure who ruled England dissolves into the theatrical figure who ruled the English stage.”⁷¹
However, Richard’s opponent is a rather flat character, arex ex machina, so to speak.⁷² The play presents the events and the contest for the crown exclusively from Richard’s point of view, therefore, Richmond appears as a conqueror, an invader, bringing about yet another usurpation. Richmond’s closing words (“Now civil wounds are stopped, peace lives again”, 5.5.40) echo Richard’s open-ing lines (“Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York”, 1.1.1–2). As Hertel observes, the circle closes, and although Richard is deposed, his initiatory speech, which has turned out to be mere rhetoric, is ech-oed by his successor’s one.⁷³
The filmic rendering of Richard III in the seriesThe Hollow Crownperfectly conveys this final ambiguity, by presenting Henry VII enthroned after the solemn ceremony of his coronation, but closing on the battlefields, where the new body politic has been constituted. The final image from above showing the corpses of the dead soldiers spectrally reveals the components of Henry VII’s body politic, the bodies which have brought it to life. Henry VII’s royal dignity is undermined by an ominous shadow upon the final scene of peace, which ominously recalls
“my shadow in the sun.”
For this reason I would interpret Richard III as a notorious case, in the sense defined by Richard Sherwin, in his theorization of the relationship between law and the media. Actually, sixteenth-century theatres were the nearest equivalent to the modern mass media, and contributed to create a public opinion about po-litical issues.⁷⁴Notorious cases reveal deep social and cultural conflicts: they are
Bernard Spivak,Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil(New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 395.
Hertel,Staging England in the Elizabethan History Play, 109. Hertel also underlines the Un-bestimmtheit of Richmond, whose character appeals to the audience’s imagination in order to be brought to completion as a metaphor of the future Tudor dynasty. However, both characters’
speeches to their armies were performed in the theatre, very probably addressing the audience.
In this way, the power of Richard’s speech would have affected their perceptions and thereby re-enacted the political confusion of the Wars of the Roses (ibidem, 112). Actually, theatrical stag-ings of historical events had the effect of bringing the audience into the inner part of the mystery of state thus demystifying it. (See Margot Heinemann,“Political Drama,”in theCambridge Com-panion to English Renaissance Drama, eds. Braunmüller, Hattaway: 161–205, 177.) People were led to think about the staged political ideas and given aural images (at the same time pictorial and auditive) to think with.
Hertel,Staging England in the Elizabethan History Play, 114.
See Heinemann,“Political Drama,”167: As the author observes,“The opening up of secular political discussion and debate to anyone who could put a penny in the box was something quite new, and helped to transform the nature of politics.”
“social dramas that take place on a field of embattled discourse where contested stories, metaphors, and character types vie for dominance in the culture at large.”⁷⁵ This attunes also with the etymology of the word “tragedy,” which comes from the Greek tragoidia or goat-play, and it implies the recognition that “the tragic hero is essentially another version of the sacrifice offered throughout known human history to appease an angry god– in other words, both to acknowledge and repress a contradiction in the culture’s agreed way of perceiving reality.”⁷⁶Richard’s case can be seen to embody a political anxiety about royal succession and is based in the collective legal imagination; his para-ble stages a competing world view to the official one, a competing nomos, which is at the basis of his personal legal framework. Richard has to be contained as it signifies the“outbreak of the uncanny in everyday life,”⁷⁷but this perspective finally invests Richmond himself, as it has been argued above.
Recently, Richard has been restored his royal dignity through the belated burial of his body natural which took place on March 25 2015 at Leicester Cathe-dral. Through the solemn ceremony, Richard’s body politic was finally restored in the temporal royal sequence, thus countering the play’s effect of a suspension of time. As a matter of fact, according to some critics,“In the political discourse of Richard III, a straight‘lineal’progression of time awaits beyond the chronolog-ical unfolding of the play’s narrative action, and premature births and untimely deaths are rhetorically figured as bodies moving at a different paces from the rest of the world.”⁷⁸The words of the officiating bishop,“Here, in a Cathedral, his-tory meets the present, here eternity breaks into time”sanction the restoration of Richard into the linear development of English history, through the symbols of his royal position: the white rose of York and his name engraved in the coffin.
The ceremony saw the participation of Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester and descendant of the king, who manages an association devoted to preserve his memory, and Benedict Cumberbatch, his second cousin, 16 times removed, who also played in the role of Richard III in the seriesThe Hollow Crown. In this stratification of history, the ceremony was concluded with the reading of a poem by Carol Ann Duffy. Once again, we have to imagine Richard appealing to the audience’s hearing, and performatively asserting his identity:
Richard K. Sherwin,When Law Goes Pop. The Vanishing Line between Law and Popular Cul-ture(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 74.
See Robert N. Watson, “Tragedy,” in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama, eds. Braumüller, Hattaway, 301–351, 307.
Sherwin,When Law Goes Pop, 76.
Jonathan Hsy,“Disability,”inThe Cambridge Companion to the Body in Literature, eds. David Hillman, Ulrika Maude (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015): 24–40, 37.
My bones, scripted in light, upon cold soil A human Braille. My skull, scarred by a crown,
Emptied of history. […]
Grant me the carving of my name.