Richard: Villain or Victim

Here is my four page working draft. It is still pretty rough, but I'm excited to be able to expand many sections of it. I need to work on citations, as well as a strong conclusion. I feel like I've taken so long setting up my ideas I ran out of room to fully develop why Richard is socially victimized. But I will definitely explore that theme as the paper expands. I'm also still trying to garner more social proof and excitement, but in the quick thesis change I haven't had time to address those avenues. I have posted on quora, with Twitter next up.

Shakespeare’s Richard III is a curious character compared with his other creations: Richard III is the only one who has a deformity. The Bard supposedly based this off historical information from Thomas More’s “A History of King Richard III,” however, this source turns out to be full of errors and misreporting, sometimes drastically so. Shakespeare must have acknowledged More’s egregious exaggeration of Richard. Despite this, Shakespeare chose to include the deformity anyway, but for a specific purpose. His purpose in tying all of Richard's evil actions to his deformity emphasizes the importance of being socially acceptable in Renaissance society. Shakespeare’s Richard III reveals Shakespeare’s villain as a victim of the social constructs within Renaissance society.

            While Thomas More is at fault for Richard’s dramatic transformation from regular ruler to deformed dictator, Shakespeare was aware of this historical inaccuracy but proceeded to portray Richard III as wrongly deformed. Apparently More, jibed from an offensive remark from Richard, chose to portray the monarch in an overly exaggerated but evil light. His motivations behind concocting such a history are unclear, however, it is understood he never had serious literary plans for his tome, seeing as he never published either of the two versions he wrote. Nevertheless, his writings were eventually published after his death, and the deformed, malicious king characterization stuck. Richard Marius, a biographer of Thomas More’s life, suggested that perhaps the “real villain in this story is Thomas More, who slandered Richard and made him a caricature of tyranny” (98). Thomas More’s untruths are the beginning of Richard’s misrepresentation.

            Whether Shakespeare understood this is contested, as Charles Boyce's Encyclopedia of Shakespeare notes that "a hunched back is nowhere evident in contemporary portraits or accounts of the man. It appears to be a malicious fiction, although Shakespeare surely believed it to be true . . . historical Richard was a very different man, innocent of most, if not all, of the crimes imputed to him" (#). Boyce’s argument that Shakespeare unwittingly assigned Richard demonic qualities because he believed More’s work to be true is simply unbelievable. Although Shakespeare indeed looked to More as a source, surely he would have seen through what Dan Breen researched:

Scholars who work primarily on More’s biography have begun to challenge the construction of this stasis by reading the History as a deeply unstable text. There are, for example, frequent narrative disruptions; noticeable inconsistencies in More’s descriptions of his characters; a fluctuating attitude toward textual sources; and a chronology that is almost never correct.  (466)

Shakespeare was aware More’s history was flawed; his purpose in equipping Richard with deformities served the deeper purpose of focusing in on the frailties of Renaissance social class. This has failed to translate throughout Richard’s performance history.

            Performances of Richard III indicate the perpetuation of Richard’s deformities as malignant. Instead of viewing Richard as a victim, he transcends his limits and stereotypes and becomes a threatening presence, something to be feared and a manipulative tyrant. Laurence Olivier first played Richard III in a movie in 1955, a performance that inspired Professor Richard Harrison to remark that “it's hard to find a more malodorous fellow than Richard III . . . most of us who think of that king at all instantly see the slit-eyed, snaky, deformed embodiment of evil” (#).  This landmark film forever set the standards by which Richard should be played: as a man with evil qualities intrinsically tied to his deformity.

            All performances emphasize his villainy without accounting for his deformities. Interpretations of Richard III attempt to supplant the cripple with an enormous evil persona. Superimposing a villain on top of the hunchbacked man leaves no room to interpret his deformities as anything other than evil. In the Grassroots Shakespeare performance of Richard III, the ending fight scene between Richmond and Richard is somewhat pathetic because Richard is only fighting one handedly. His other arm, hanging limp throughout the entire play doesn’t serve him, and he stays in the same spot due to his leg brace. Richmond possesses full use of all limbs, and almost spars with Richard just because it is written in the script. Richmond towers over the “villain” in a role-reversal of David and Goliath. Suddenly this fearsome villain should be pitied instead of dreaded. The audience doesn’t sense this, however, and cheers Richmond on towards the fatal jab, a similar reaction the Renaissance audience would have given.   

            The long history of Richard’s cruel treatment centers on Shakespeare’s choice to link his downfall with his deformity. At the onset, Richard explains in his opening speech that “Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time . . . And therefore,--since I cannot prove a lover . . . I am determined to prove a villain” (Act I, Scene I, 20, 28, 30). Richard muses over his disfigured form and decides that due to his broken body and failure to ultimately become a spouse, his only option left is villainy. In truth, he has been socially destroyed. He is useless in battle, a physically underwhelming monarch, with no social standing among women. Seemingly all values that Renaissance people held as important, Richard failed. Elizabeth Comber further illuminates Richard’s position as Renaissance society held him: "It is quite likely that medieval people made no distinction between physical impairment and social disability” (184). Richard’s physical impairment immediately equates with social disability; however, throughout the course of the play Richard disproves this supposed social impairment. He successfully woos the grieving Lady Anne, contradicting his earlier assessment of his inability to prove a lover. The incredulous Richard realizes his actions as superhuman, declaring “Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won?” (Act 1, Scene 2, 227-8). No indeed, Richard is not socially crippled as he appears, but can achieve social heights previously denied him. It is important to note, though, that only after Richard has given up a good life in favor of a bad one does he successfully woo Anne. Nothing has changed, however, except for Richard’s view of himself. He gives up a potential good future because he automatically sees himself as socially bankrupt, and seeks after evil pursuits as a way to compensate.

            The only other deformed character in all of Shakespeare’s works in Caliban, the embittered slave in The Tempest. Interestingly, Shakespeare never describes Caliban as deformed, saving it only in descriptions of Richard. Nor does Shakespeare specifically enumerate what exactly is wrong with Richard, other than he has a limp, is half-finished, and deformed. Other characters remind him of his foulness, or that he is a bunch-backed toad, but other than these occurrences Shakespeare fails to elaborate, causing Richard’s defects to be left up to the imagination.