Richard III - Comedic Devil

Richard III: Comedic Devil

            Shakespeare’s Richard III is an evil, deformed, super Machiavell.  He has no conscience.  He kills off two entire family line, his own and the Lancastrians.  He is a brother killer, child killer, and devil.  Peter Saccio calls him “a criminal so appalling that his own death was not a further crime requiring still more retribution, but a purgation of all England” (157-8).  There is nothing good to be said about Richard III, except that he has been the favorite of audiences and actors for many years.  What makes Richard III appealing is his wit and comedy. Watching Richard is like watching a Punch and Judy show according to John J. McLaughlin.  He writes, “Our delight at the sudden audacity and directness of Richard’s answer is equal to a child’s joy at watching Punch’s victim lose his blockhead” (384).

            Causing people to “lose their blockheads” is Richard’s major crime throughout the play.  By using his wit and comedy, Richard makes the crime seem like he is actually doing his victims a favor.  Grant B. Mindle writes in his essay, “Shakespeare’s Demonic Prince, “Robbed of their dignity, their deaths are no tragedy.  ‘Richard’s victims are first made into fools and then into corpses’ to the delight of his audience” (206).  By taking away his victims dignity, the murder seems less of a tragedy.  By turning the victims into fools by the victims’ admissions of guilt, Richard ceases to be a murder and becomes a deliver of justice.

George, Duke of Clarence is Richard’s victim during Richard III. He is also Richard’s brother. Clarence, when faced in the tower by Richard’s murders, admits his own guilt of perjury and murder.  He says,

Alas!  For whose sake I did that ill deed?

For Edward, for my brother, for his sake.

He sends you not to murder me for this,

For in that sin he is as deep as I.

If God will be avenged for the deed,

O’ know you not he doth it publicly!

Take not the quarrel from his powerful arm.

He needs no indirect or lawless course

To cut off those who have offended him (I. iv. 214-222).

  Clarence feels that he deserves this punishment of death.  He tells the murderers that he is so deep in sin that if they were not to kill him at that moment, he would still be killed though lawful courses.  The audience cannot feel sadness at Clarence’s murder because he deserves it and it will have happened anyway, with or without Richard’s help. 

Lady Anne makes herself the fool without too much of Richard’s help.  She becomes the recipient of her own curse.  When at the gravesite to bury King Henry, Richard stops the funeral procession to talk to Anne.  Anne replies to his advances by cursing him and his future wife.  She says of Richard, “If ever he have child, abortive be it/ … If ever he have wife, let her be made/ more miserable by the life of him/ Than I am by my young lord and thee! (I. ii. 21, 26-28).  This curse does not sway Richard from his evil plot.  He continues to woo the Lady Anne until she submits to him.  When she eventually does become Richard’s wife, Anne is the recipient of the terrible curses she herself laid in place.  She realizes at her death that she brought it upon herself through this curse therefore making Anne the actual murder and Richard simply the deliverer.

Hastings is made a fool of when he orders his own death without knowing he has done so. 

Richard.  I pray you all, tell me what they deserve

That do conspire my death with devilish plots

Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevailed

Upon my body with their hellish charms?

            Hastings. The tender love I bear your Grace, my  lord,

Makes me most forward in this princely presence

To doom th’ offenders, whosoe’er they be:

I say, my lord, they have deserved death.

                                                            (III. iv. 59-66)

            Richard then shows his shriveled arm as ‘proof’ that he has been bewitched.  Hastings replies to the display be saying, “If they have done this deed my noble lord—“ (III. iv. 73).  Richard rises up and says “If?  Thou protector of this damned strumpet,/ Talk’st of “ifs”?  Thou art a traitor./  Off with his head” (III. iv. 74-76).  All that Hastings can do is stand there with his mouth gaping and wonder what just happened while Richard calmly goes off to have dinner.  Hastings is a fool who just signed his own death certificate.

Clarence, Anne, Hastings, and even Buckingham, Rivers, Grey, and Vaughn all die cursing themselves for their fate.  The audience feels that the slain are just getting what they deserve.  The fact that Richard plotted each death for selfish means and not just to send these sinners to heaven or deliver justice is completely forgotten.  His guilt is lost in his ability to make others look like fools, the ability of a great comedian. 

In his article “Richard III as Punch,” McLaughlin writes, “The sardonic jest of doing his enemies a favor by sending them to their reward in heaven is a favorite one with Richard and he uses it in one of the most audacious scenes ever written into a play – his wooing of lady Anne” (385).  To woo Lady Anne, Richard uses his comedy against himself.  He seems to be less of a villain by making himself the fool. 

Richard takes on a task that should be impossible to complete, making Lady Anne his wife.  He tries to win her affection at the funeral of a man he has killed, her father-in-law.  Richard has also killed her husband, Edward.  Anne has just finished cursing Richard, his future children, and his future wife.  The wooing scene is a battle of wits between Richard and Anne, but Anne does not have the heavy artillery that Richard does. 

Anne.  Thou mayst be damned for that wicked deed!

  O’he was gentle, mild and virtuous!

Richard.  The better for the king of heaven, that hath

          him.

Anne.  He is in heaven, where thou shalt never come.

Richard.  Let him thank me, that holp to send him

thither,

For he was fitter for that place than earth.

            Anne.  And thou unfit for any place but hell.

            Richard.  Yes, one place else, if you will hear me

name it.

            Anne.  Some dungeon.

            Richard.  Your bedchamber.

(I.                             ii. 105-114)

We cannot help but laugh at Richard’s cleverness.  Anne has no hope to win this contest because she does not have the playing chip of sex.  Richard is not lusting after Anne, nor is he in love with her.  He simply recognizes the tactical significance a marriage to Anne.  Anne also cannot resort to flattery to get Richard to cease his pursuance.  As Mindle writes, “Richard is impervious to flattery, because he is consumed by self contempt.  The reason he ‘cannot be a lover’ (I.i.28) is not his physical deformity (he is not unloved), but his conviction that anyone who loves him is a fool” (208). 

Richard’s determination and self-confidence finally win him Anne’s submission.  The audience also knows that Anne will not be his wife for long.  However, this tragedy still does not seem like Richard’s fault, but Anne’s.  Anne has been made a fool twice in one scene.  She has become a fool by loving Richard as Mindle suggested.  She also becomes the recipient of the curse she put just a few lines earlier on Richard’s wife.  The audience admires Richard for his comedic wit and his ability to make others to blame for his evil actions.

“If Richard the wooer is high comedy then Richard being wooed is pure farce” (McLaughlin 386).  Richard has spent the entire play bumping people off and making everyone look like fools in the process.  Now comes his moment of glory.  He is going to be offered the crown of England.  Instead of grabbing the crown with a maniacal laugh, Richard feigns reluctance.  He plays yet another role as comedian, that of the pious man who, by accepting the crown, is simply doing the mayor a favor.  

Once Richard has obtained the crown the comedy is over.  There is no more reason to employ his wit and comedy.  There are no more roles to play except that of King.  For the remainder of the play Richard does not have the support of the audience.  We no longer cheer when he ‘knocks someone’s blockhead off’ because there is no one left with a blockhead.  The only reason Richard had the audience’s support before was because of his sharp with and his clown-like antics.  When he is not being a comedic devil, Richard is just a devil.  He becomes Saccio’s “lurid king, hunchbacked, clad in blood-spattered black velvet, forever knowing his nether lip and grasping for his dagger” (158).  His conscience conjuring up ghosts of each of his victims makes gaiety and laughter impossible.  By the end of the play when Richard himself is murdered the audience has given its support to Richmond.

Richard, taken for face value, is “the demon-Prince, the cacodemon born of hell, the misshapen toad, etc. (all things ugly and ill)” (Rossiter 184).  However, through his talent as a comedian, he is able to make the deformed and evil funny and laughable.  He makes his evil plotting seem to be part of a game.  The audience does not take him seriously.  The other characters in the play do also not take him seriously, and that is exactly what gets them killed.  “Just what the devil-clown relies on” (Rossiter 184).