Themes

DEFORMITY AND ISOLATION

In the opening soliloquy of Richard III, Shakespeare foregrounds Richard’s body as a direct motivation for his shrewd political bloodiness:

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
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.

Act 1, Scene 1

In fact, most characters in the play cannot seem to criticise Richard’s actions without aligning them to his physical form. His deformity and unnatural ‘breech’ entrance into the world are constantly mentioned throughout the tetralogy. He is labeled a “foul indigested lump” (Act 5, Scene 1, Henry IV Part 2), an “abortive, rooting hog”, a “bottled spider” and even a “slander of thy mother’s heavy womb” (Act 1, Scene 3).

Many theorists have claimed that Richard utlilises his body as a performative prop, as both an excuse and a distraction: it prevents him from looking fair, thus excusing him from social graces and allowing him to explain away past ills. Just as much as his mother curses the teeth he was born with, so does he put them to good use, saying that he will “play the dog” and “snarl and bite” (Henry IV, Part 3, Act 5, Scene 6). In her studies on the rhetoric of disability in Shakespeare’s works, Katherine Williams believes that by presenting Richard’s body along a “continuum of ability, in which his physical difference becomes more or less apparent depending upon how he emphasizes it, Richard's use of his physical frame, a body that he initially decries, actually works to challenge the binary between able/disabled bodies”. In other words, Richard acknowledges his disability and its limitations, yet then makes the disabled body full of infinite, able potential.

Critics continue to claim that Shakespeare’s exaggeration of Richard III’s disabilities (most notably adding the limp and/or hunchback) is a result of a playwright either appeasing the monarchy or a sign that he himself fell under the spell of the Tudor myth. Richard had to be made as ‘ugly’ as possible, in form and nature, because he is the last of a family reign responsible for the corruption of state. Academic Coppelia Kahn states that Richard is the symbolic “lump of chaos born of England’s Chaos” and lliterary critic Stephen Greenblatt argues that "Richard's deformity is less the cause of his evil nature than its sign." So is Richard, and his deformity, a symbol of evil and the corrupt state, or does he actively cause peril and corruption because of the treatment his deformity receives?

Richard’s physical appearance may be symbolic in many ways, but it is also very real and present, and he engages with it constantly. In Henry VI Part 3, Richard describes his own deformity: “Like to a chaos, or an unlick’d bear whelp that carries no impression like the dam. And am I then a man to be beloved” (Act 3, Scene 2). Prior to the death of his father, the Duke of York, Richard shows great passion for his father’s right to the throne, yet as the play continues, he begins to distance himself and question all family allegiance and relationships. Whether this stems from a feeling that he doesn’t resemble his kin, from a general lack of love, or from feeling that he actually cannot be loved, is up for debate. At several points throughout Richard’s journey in the tetralogy, he addresses his own feelings or want for isolation: whether it be enforced as a result of his appearance or a self-inflicted, chosen state is under continuous contention. In Henry VI Part 3, in his famous final soliloquy, Richard renounces all kin, connection and understanding of love:

I had no father, I am like no father;
I have no brother, I am like no brother;
And this word ‘love’, which greybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another
and not in me - I am myself alone.

Act 5, Scene 7

In Richard III, after the visitation of the ghosts before the Battle of Bosworth Field, Richard notes his own fear and isolation as one and the same thing: “What do I fear? My selfe? There’s none else by” (Act 5, Scene 5). So, does he fear isolation itself, his own self, or the fact that the isolation he so avidly sought has made him confront his ‘true self’?

If Richard doesn’t have any relationships with the characters on stage, he certainly has a close connection with the audience. He declares and shares his amorality and private ruses with the audience right from the opening lines of the play. In fact, almost every scene in Act 1 is bookended with one of Richard’s soliloquies and he continues to do this throughout the play. So much so, that the audience are carefully placed as complicit co-conspirators. They are forced to be privy to Richard’s plans and must sit by, silently, as he carries them out. Considering this, does Richard merely use us in order to glorify his own narcissism? As Richard loses control and favor with the state and its citizens, his interactions with the audience notably lessen, and the last time we have private counsel with him he bids us farewell by questioning his own self-love – “Richard loves Richard... O, no! Alas I rather hate myself” (Act 5, Scene 3). Perhaps the only true relationship he ever had was with himself, and this too is lost.

WOMEN AND CURSES

There is no doubt that the women of Richard III suffer inequality, great tragedy and deep suspicion. They are at best desired, but more often than not they are manipulated, scorned, resented, exploited, and mocked. Richard is a clear misogynist. He doesn’t take women seriously, is deeply disconnected from them, and views them as mere pawns in his political game. He only attributes power to them in order to transfer blame, for example when convincing Clarence of Queen Elizabeth’s betrayal: “Why, this it is when men are rul’d by women” (Act 1, Scene 1).

Women are reduced to stereotypes such as, “strumpets” (Act 3, Scene 4), practising “witchcraft” (Act 3, Scene 4), who are “shallow, changing” (Act 4, Scene 4), “lunatic” and “frantic” (Act 1, Scene 3). The women in Richard III move from states of power to powerlessness and pity, and then off stage altogether. Unlike the Henry VI trilogy, the women now have no control or business in the state, they are reduced to the role of cursing and mourning. Margaret, who was once a great political and military leader who proclaimed “Great Lords, wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms” (Henry VI Part 3, Act 5, Scene 4), is now a mouthpiece of cursing and lamentation.

Despite this, Shakespeare has ensured that these women and their children are central and essential to the play. The words ‘mother’ and ‘children’ occur in Richard III more than in any other Shakespeare play. The nobility and church are either silent or driven by self-interest; it is the women that unite and offer the only real resistance to Richard prior to Richmond’s invasion. Although not devoid of her own moral failings, Margaret’s outbursts are honest, and as if a prophetess, she sets up and predicts what will prove the downfall of Richard’s reign. Her initial curse on Richard in Act 1, Scene 3 works much like a prologue predicting his fate:

If heaven have any grievous plague in store
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation
On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace!
The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul!
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be whilst some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!

Act 1, Scene 3

Lady Anne, who is initially beguiled by Richard’s dissimulation, comes to realisation through her own instinctual fear and willingness to place morality above personal gain – “I would to God that the inclusive verge of metal that must round my brow were red-hot steel to sear me to the brain” (Act 4, Scene 1). She would rather give up her crown, than wear it as Richard’s wife and companion. The now experienced Queen Elizabeth manages not to be swayed by Richard’s wooing of her daughter (as she herself was by Edward) and postpones his proposal.

Act 4, Scene 4, when the women unite, is often viewed as the emotional heart of the play. Their combined loss and grief inspire great empathy and Margaret teaches her younger counterparts how to curse:

Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were
And that he that slew them fouler than he is:
Bettering thy loss makes the bad-causer worse
Revolving this will teach you how to curse.

Act 4, Scene 4

It is here that tears and lamentations finally become fiery ammunition, and the women can theoretically take back power; ‘Thy woes will make them sharp and pierce like mine’ (Act 4, Scene 4).