Richard III essay

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Richard III

Ostensibly a play based on English history, Shakespeare’s Richard III evades the occasional predictability of historically based dramas by investing his play with a number of supernatural elements, as well as a pervasive sense of the occult, the demonic, and the idea of evil as a cosmic force alive and at work in the universe. Such conceptions were awe-inspiring, but not uncommon to the Elizabethans, who maintained a view of the supernatural as a threatening but quite familiar component of daily life. By combining the concept of supernatural forces with historical record, Shakespeare’s supernatural world is not merely symbolic or allegorical, but meant to represent or intimate actual forces at work in human history, forces which are “‘instruments of darkness' or limbs of Satan, though lifted by his imagination to a loftier plane” (Stoll 228).

This “loftier plane” involves a simultaneously sophisticated and superstitious view of the supernatural. Such a dual vision is reflected in the base recitation of phenomena: Margaret’s prophetic curses, the accusation of witchcraft that Richard levels at Elizabeth, the association of Richard, linguistically, with devils and demons, the Princes’ discussion of the ghosts of their dead uncles, but it is also reflected with sophistication and subtlety as in Richard’s seduction of Anne and in Richard’s continuous seductive monologues by which the audience is, itself, enjoined to fall prey to the usurper’s powerful charisma.

Although Richard claims that his physical deformity is the impetus for his wicked ambition, this plea may viewed as manipulative, disguising the true nature of his ambition, which is pure evil, as the Elizabethans understood it; Richard III, however, avoids a psychological interpretation of evil in favor of depicting its malicious operations. Richard’s victims are seduced to their own destruction: Lady Anne is seduced by Richard’s words, even though she realizes he is likely to kill her, one by one characters (and the audience) allow themselves to be charmed.  Even though the audience is put-off by Richard’s criminal actions, his brilliance engenders support, just as his deformity engenders sympathy.

Just as the average Elizabethan could accept the notion of a demonically invested charisma, they could respond to the idea of ghosts, portents, precognitive dreams, and omens. At one end of the spectrum of phenomena are “overtly miraculous manifestations, like ghosts, omens, the bleeding corpses, or a girl whose tongue had been cut out suddenly regaining the power of speech. Semisupernatural and portentous occurrences include nosebleeds and bloodstains, and remarkable and coincidental but not intrinsically impossible manifestations in the elements and the natural world--for example, contrary winds or a horse going lame--which prevent the murderer's escape”(Atkinson 3).

Thus, to the Elizabethans, the supernatural elements of Richard III were not viewed merely as dramatic devices, but as genuine phenomena: “nor could one argue from Richard III that the Elizabethans did not believe in the objective reality of ghosts" (Whitmore 79). Conceptions drawn from common superstition found life in the play; including the idea of a murdered corpse which reveals its murderer through portent. The “bleeding corpse motif, in which blood issues afresh from the corpse when the murderer approaches or touches it, thus revealing the guilty person” (Atkinson 2).

This phenomena is used by Shakespeare, famously in Richard III, when Richard intercepts the corpse of Henry VI on the way to its interment: “See, see dead Henry's wounds/Open their congealed mouths and bleed afresh./Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity,/For 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood/From cold and empty veins where no blood dwells/:Thy deed inhuman and unnatural/Provokes this deluge most unnatural.”

In his quest for power, Richard embodies a Faustian pursuit of power and is plagued with likewise consequences. The supernatural elements of the play swing full circle, from providing or ensuring Richard’s abilities to manipulate and control forces for his benefit, to the haunted and bitter trappings of total defeat and failure.“The greater the power Richard acquires, the more isolated he becomes. When his kingship is finally under attack, and his own downfall and death are imminent, he releases another aspect of his personality: I shall 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?”(Cahn 191).

At last, “the besieged King is visited by ghosts of his many victims” (Cahn 317). This proliferation of dead spirits embodied the most fearsome of consequences for the Elizabethans “such figures belonged to one of two categories: objective ghosts had the power to make themselves visible to several people, while subjective ghosts were figments of a single imagination. Here the ghosts, such as the young princes whom Richard ordered killed, are creations of his conscience, and as such they may be regarded as manifestations of guilt;” however, it is important to realize that for the Elizabethans, objective ghosts could indeed plague an individual. Such a fate was to be Richard’s. Though the isolation and lack of feeling which were once the “bulwark of his strength now partially humanize him,” Richard is subsumed by the supernatural forces which have provided for his Machiavellian climb to power. (Cahn 317).

By investing his historical drama with elements of the supernatural which ranged from plebeian superstition to the most profound spiritual and moral conceptions of his age, Shakespeare created an archetypal drama which represents the Elizabethan fascination with the supernatural, as well as the attempt to integrate the influence of supernatural forces on human morality and justice.

Works Cited

Atkinson, David. "Magical Corpses: Ballads, Intertextuality, and the Discovery of Murder." Journal of Folklore Research 36.1 (1999): 1-29.