The Imploding I

Shakespeare's Richard III is the principal source of a figure still current in drama and cinema -- the witty devil we love to hate. Fusing the role of the (aspiring) King with that of the Vice (the tempter in morality plays, who as a player of tricks and user of disguises was always more theatrically aware than his innocent victims), Shakespeare produced a role that from his first, mesmerising soliloquy, beginning the play, commands both amused and horrified attention. As witty as he is ruthless, and as witting about himself as about others, Richard dominates the stage whenever he is on it, and all his tricks come off marvellously -- until they don't.

I've just transcribed the Folio text of the play it calls The Tragedy of Richard the Third : with the Landing of Earle Richmond, and the Battell at Bosworth Field -- the link is to Amazon.com but it's available in all territories -- and I was struck by how potently verse and punctuation record Richard's force and his final implosion. Here's that famous opening soliloquy:

Enter Richard Duke of Gloster, solus.

Now is the Winter of our Discontent,
Made glorious Summer by this Son of Yorke :
And all the clouds that lowr’d vpon our house
In the deepe bosome of the Ocean buried.
Now are our browes bound with Victorious Wreathes,
Our bruised armes hung vp for Monuments ;
Our sterne Alarums chang’d to merry Meetings ;
Our dreadfull Marches, to delightfull Measures.
Grim-visag’d Warre, hath smooth’d his wrinkled Front :
And now, in stead of mounting Barbed Steeds,
To fright the Soules of fearfull Aduersaries,
He capers nimbly in a Ladies Chamber,
To the lasciuious pleasing of a Lute.
But I, that am not shap’d for sportiue trickes,
Nor made to court an amorous Looking-glasse :
I, that am Rudely stampt, and want loues Maiesty,
To strut before a wonton ambling Nymph :
I, that am curtail’d of this faire Proportion,
Cheated of Feature by dissembling Nature,
Deform’d, vn-finish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing World, scarse halfe made vp,
And that so lamely and vnfashionable,
That dogges barke at me, as I halt by them.
Why I (in this weake piping time of Peace)
Haue no delight to passe away the time,
Vnlesse to see my Shadow in the Sunne,
And descant on mine owne Deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot proue a Louer,
To entertaine these faire well spoken dayes,
I am determined to proue a Villaine,
And hate the idle pleasures of these dayes.
Plots haue I laide, Inductions dangerous,
By drunken Prophesies, Libels, and Dreames,
To set my Brother Clarence and the King
In deadly hate, the one against the other :
And if King Edward be as true and iust,
As I am Subtle, False, and Treacherous,
The day should Clarence closely be mew’d vp :
About a Prophesie, which sayes that G,
Of Edwards heyres the murtherer shall be.
Diue thoughts downe to my soule, here Clarence comes.

Everything here serves to present Richard's complete control, and it's an excellent example of the Ciceronian style and balance that characterises much of Shakespeare's most fluent and speakable verse. For all its dynamism the language is exceptionally balanced and structured, bracing opposites within lines ("Our sterne Alarums chang’d to merry Meetings", "That dogges barke at me, as I halt by them") ; within couplets ("Now is the Winter of our Discontent, / Made glorious Summer by this Son of Yorke", "Vnlesse to see my Shadow in the Sunne, / And descant on mine owne Deformity") ; and within the quatrains that dominate the grammatical structure ("And now, in stead of mounting Barbed Steeds, / To fright the Soules of fearfull Aduersaries, / He capers nimbly in a Ladies Chamber, / To the lasciuious pleasing of a Lute"). The whole flows as trippingly as commandingly from the tongue, as generations of great actors have found, and the language is so strong and clear that it can bear very different styles of presentation. The two best Richards I've had the luck to see on stage, Anthony Sher and Ian McKellen, could not have tackled the role more differently -- Sher was seriously hunched and scuttling on calipers that became weapons, feelers, probes at will ; McKellen was a restrained and clipped army officer whose only visible deformity was a hand kept always in his pocket -- but both could draw equal strength and suasion from the magnificent verse Shakespeare provided.

But it is of course a set-up, and Richard III is an immensely powerful piece of propaganda for the 'Tudor Myth' -- roughly speaking, that the Tudor dynasty founded by the Earl of Richmond as Henry VII brought divinely blessed peace after the long shambles of Plantagenet civil wars and usurpations. Richmond was Queen Elizabeth I's grandfather, and as he ends the play by not only deposing but killing a seated king, it was necessary that that king be very bad indeed. Never one to do things by halves, Shakespeare has the ghosts of no less than eleven of Richard's victims (Prince Edward, Henry VI, Clarence, Rivers, Gray, Vaughan, Hastings, the Princes in the Tower, Anne, Buckingham) visit him and Richmond on the eve of Bosworth Field, laying blessings on the one and cursings on the other ; and then this happens:


Richard starts out of his dreame.

Richard Giue me another Horse, bind vp my Wounds :
Haue mercy Iesu. Soft, I did but dreame.
O coward Conscience ! how dost thou afflict me ?
The Lights burne blew. It is not dead midnight.
Cold fearefull drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What ? do I feare my Selfe ? There’s none else by,
Richard loues Richard, that is, I am I.
Is there a Murtherer heere ? No ; Yes, I am :
Then flye ; What from my Selfe ? Great reason : why ?
Lest I Reuenge. What ? my Selfe vpon my Selfe ?
Alacke, I loue my Selfe. Wherefore ? For any good
That I my Selfe, haue done vnto my Selfe ?
O no. Alas, I rather hate my Selfe,
For hatefull Deeds committed by my Selfe.
I am a Villaine : yet I Lye, I am not.
Foole, of thy Selfe speake well : Foole, do not flatter.
My Conscience hath a thousand seuerall Tongues,
And euery Tongue brings in a seuerall Tale,
And euerie Tale condemnes me for a Villaine ;
Periurie, in the high’st Degree,
Murther, sterne murther, in the dyr’st degree,
All seuerall sinnes, all vs’d in each degree,
Throng all to th’Barre, crying all, Guilty, Guilty.
I shall dispaire, there is no Creature loues me ;
And if I die, no soule shall pittie me.
Nay, wherefore should they ? Since that I my Selfe,
Finde in my Selfe, no pittie to my Selfe.
Me thought, the Soules of all that I had murther’d
Came to my Tent, and euery one did threat
To morrowes vengeance on the head of Richard.

That "rock-hard I" (in Anne Barton's phrase) that is so clear in the opening soliloquy implodes and shatters into a jangling division of selves. This is not a good-angel--bad-angel debate, conflicting impulses externalised as whispering advisers, one at each ear, but rending internal doubts and fears, brilliantly concatenated. The only undivided line in the first half of the speech is "Cold fearefull drops stand on my trembling flesh." -- everything else is broken-backed, gasped questions and self-contradictions ; and when the balanced drive returns it is in rising rhetorical condemnation to which in the end all Richard's shattered selves assent. The hammering repetitions of the persistently capitalised "Selfe" are joined by others in the grimmest sequence of autorhymes (Degree / degree / degree / Guilty, Guilty / me / me / Selfe / Selfe), and that dynamic, Ciceronian balance that is so striking in the opening soliloquy becomes a dire stutter of self-loathing that goes nowhere.

Hollywood understands the witty villain well enough, and the kind of pure, performing egotism that makes the early Richard so compelling is still echoed over and over again in its output ; but the imploding and wildly disturbed self-consciousness which he exhibits here seems largely beyond its understanding. Shakespeare, however, had a superb grasp of what we now call psychology, as well as the poetic and dramatic skills to present it ; and though even the dullest modernisation cannot wholly destroy the contrast between these two speeches in the Folio, the Folio's punctuation (including italics and medial capitals) makes it a great deal stronger and more potent.