Richard III as Described by Shakespeare

Richard is mentioned in Bloom’s Shakespeare the Invention of the Human as an early history play, but Bloom does not see the play as an accurate description of the hunchback king. He believes Shakespeare was going for a more mythical cartoonish figure of Richard, giving birth to an inhumane butcher with no morals what so ever, complementing only Niccolo Mchiavelli’s the Prince. I personally care little about what the real king was like, but I am very curious about what Shakespeare was attempting to a gain by writing this play and describing Richard the way he did. I believe that in writing Richard III, Shakespeare was trying to achieve the impossible, not only was he going to create a wonderful villain, but also he was determined on making the audience identify with the monster.

In order to succeed, he must depict his hero as a villainous murderer, who’s acts and rationalizations are cold and self serving, but he must find a way to allow the audience to bond with this fiend. As horrific as Richard comes across in the play, he is also of great charisma, a fact that makes him an even more frightening player, because he is able not only to work his way across all obstacles in the play, but also to make the audience identify with his motives. Bloom agrees: “Shakespeare…shocks more profoundly by rendering us incapable of resisting Richard’s terrifying charms”(71). Throughout the play, Shakespeare’s attempts to balance our loathing of Richard with our pity for him and our hopes that he succeeds in his evil game of chess.

At the very beginning of the play Richard is the messenger bringing good news about York’s victory and our joint profit from the outcome of the war. This declaration cannot provoke content for the speaker. As he continues he proceeds to explain why he cannot partake in the joy, being a deformed man, one is maid to have pity and sympathize with him. As he continues, he changes tune and in line 30 he says:” I am determined to prove a villain.” At this point it is too late to start developing contempt for this man because the reader has formed a first impression of Richard based on victory, joy, and pity. Shakespeare knows well the effect of first impressions, and so lets us in on Richards shocking plans after we have a short while to believe we understand whom we are dealing with. The monologue is addresses the audience, a fact that simulates a feeling of actually being in the cripple’s presence and under his spell.

According to Bloom, ‘Shakespeare’s greatest originality is the intimate relationship of Richard with the audience. (70) This relationship is used to make sure that as far as he walks down the dark and bloody road he has chosen, one cannot part with him and side with the other characters. In walking his path one becomes an accomplice to his sins and must unconsciously justify the deeds done. “That is the secret of his outrageous charm; his great power over the audience and the other figures in his drama is a compound of charm and terror, hardly to be distinguished in his sadomasochistic seduction of the Lady Anna, whose husband and father in law alike he has slaughtered. His sadistic pleasure in manipulating Anna is related to his extreme version of skeptical naturalism…Richard’s skepticism excludes piety, his naturalism makes us all beasts”(Bloom 65). In Sir Ian McKellen’s version of the play, Richard’s monolog is a victory speech to the loyal subjects of York. This intensifies the deceit by living little room for the audience to decide what he is actually saying, and what side he is on. The overturn is much greater as he walks to the bathroom and changes the timbre of his voice as he now addresses us with his true intentions while urinating.

After the monolog revels Richard’s intention to be a villain, one at all times sure of his evil nature, and the only other instance in which one may wonder whether Richard’s conscience may have been finally awaken from its deep slumber is during his nightmare monolog.

“…Have mercy Jesu-Soft! I did but dream. O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me…Richard loves Richard; that is, I and I. Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? Alack, I love myself wherefore? For any good. That I myself have done unto myself? O no, alas, I rather hate myself for hateful deeds committed by myself. I am a villain. Yet I lie: I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter…every tale condemns me a villain…I shell despair. There is no creature loves me; and if I die, no soul will pity me. And wherefore should they, since that I myself find in myself no pity to myself?”
(Richard III, act V scene 3)

Even in this ambiguous monologue, Shakespeare is able to make Richard cold-blooded but yet human. One will easily pity over the loneliness that Richard is feeling, admire his honesty to himself, determined to be what he is, and his objective view of his deeds although he is still a villain.

Both Al Pachino’s and Sir Ian McKellen versions of Richard III convey the two elements Shakespeare was trying to portray in Richard. In both one hates and fears him but also is charmed and identifies with him. Pachino’s version shows a more human Richard, not by having him perform different deeds than in the other version, but by allowing one to more easily feel mercy for him and understand him as he is less frightening a person. A scene I well remember is the final one in which Richard is chased by archers and is hunted down as a wild animal, he even dies with a wired expression on his face that resembles that of a scared beast.

This is no person to fear, but one to feel sorry for. McKellen’s Richard puts much more emphasis on his villainous nature. This Richard is well over the top in that he is much more powerful than the other characters in the movie. The scene is anachronistically placed in the 1930’s, which is a less romantic setting for the story, making it clearer that Richard is not a glorious conqueror but a cold blooded killer. Bloom picks up on the excess evil, “The best stage Richard I’ve seen, Ian McKellen, was perhaps too powerful in the part, rendering the comic villain as though he had been transformed into a blend of Iago and MacBeth“(66). McKellen was no doubt influenced by the reoccurring motif of Richard as a demonic entity.

The innuendos of this idea are scattered in the play and led McKellen’s version to end the villain’s life in a bizarre satanic fall into the flames of hell, while smiling and majestically waving to the audience to a happy tune. The fact that Pachino’s Richard is killed on the battlefield and McKellen’s decides to commit suicide, and laugh while doing so makes the differences in the amount of hatred vs. the amount of sympathy that the director was interpreting out of Shakespeare’s play.