"Richard" Reviews

Here are links to the reviews I have found for our production, although I have to say my favorite reviews came in the form of "fan mail" from the students of Somerset High School who saw our high school matinee performance. This obviously very bright group of students was captivated by the production, and the reactions from all of the students who attended throughout the performance were terrific and unforgettable!

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 'Richard III' at CMU challenges and entertains

"Gabriel King is wearing the heavy crown in Carnegie Mellon's current production of "Richard III," a daunting responsibility for a young actor, but he doesn't shirk from the burden. After a tentative, subdued start opening night, Mr. King seized the role with energy and growing confidence as the play marched toward its inexorable finale of blood and revenge."

"Robert Kotcher composed and arranged a welter of musical styles that lent both a historical period sense as well as a sense of paranoia, fitting to a story of cynical betrayal and brutality.

'Richard III' is rich with possibilities, from the least interesting (English history) to the infinitely fascinating (the seductive qualities of evil with a smiling face). The CMU crew couldn't decide which ones to choose, so it tried a bunch of them. Some worked, some didn't, yet the overall result is a rich night of theater, both challenging and entertaining."

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: CMU's 'Richard III' thoughtfully conceived

(Take this review with a grain of salt: the description of the set makes me think that the reviewer saw a model or rendering of the set and not the actual set itself...)

"Thoughtfully conceived and stylishly attractive, it's a very up-to-date, yet timeless retelling of Shakespeare's drama."

Pittsburgh City Paper: 'Richard III' On stage

"That clarity is needed, given the dark intricacies of this sinister nightmare. To follow these twists, an advance grasp of the royal families and how they relate to each other is helpful. The good program notes help, as does a lobby genealogy chart. But even if you don't understand all the relationships, you can get the basics. Richard would become king. He plots and kills his way to the throne.

"Gray's images are contemporary, evoking eternal evils, reminding us of how greed for power knows no bounds, how deception and treachery rule. Those who stand in the way meet cruel fates; those who seek to preserve themselves fall into obsequious self-abasement."

Also, a very positive review congratulating all of the actors and designers on their work was printed in the Carnival week edition of the Tartan. Not only did they quote my program notes a couple of times, but they also helped advertise the (very successful) talk back on Tuesday night!

Lab A6 Podcast Recording

Click here to listen to the Lab A6 podcast recording for Richard III with the designers Crystal, Jordan, Riley and Danielle, Gabe King, who plays Richard, and myself, the dramaturg. It will also be available soon on iTunes.

Notes from the Citizen Scene:

“Abroad”: It was not until 1560 that “abroad” meant foreign, but instead meant:

1. a. Over a broad or wide area; widely, broadly; so as to be fully open or outspread (obs.). In later use more commonly with reference to non-physical things, as news, information, etc. Freq. in later use to spread abroad.

or:

2. In public, so as to be widely known, believed, used, etc.; openly, publicly; (so as to be) in general circulation; at large.

(From the Oxford English Dictionary).

From a faculty website at Wisconsin, by JP Sommerville on Medieval English Government:

http://history.wisc.edu/sommerville/123/123%20133%20Government.htm#Justices

“Justices of the Peace were typically members of the local gentry (large landowners who did not have noble titles) given a commission by the monarch to administer justice in their county. JPs could personally punish minor offences and commit criminals for trial at the Assize Courts. Justices of the Peace were appointed from the 14th Century onward but it was only during the 16th that they became the primary administrators of local government, replacing the sheriff.”

Words I Love and Terms You Should Know in "Richard III"

Abortive rooting Hogge: an aborted or stillborn fetus, failing to produce a viable child, an unsuccessful result; the act of implanting, later, slang for the male’s part of sexual intercourse; specifically, a castrated male swine raised for slaughter, also refers to Richard’s symbol, the boar.

Arme: spelling could mean both arm or army, conjuring images of flesh and war at once.

Burgundy: the most wealthy, powerful state during the 15^th century in Europe reaching from the English Channel to western Germany with power concentrated in the Duchy of Burgundy, it had a large influence on English trade and culture. For example, under Edward IV, England adopted the elaborate Burgundian court ceremonies. Burgundy’s Phillip the Good allowed the English to take much of northern France and thus this remained a supporter of York while his cousin, Charles VII, and later Louis XI supported Lancaster. The even more fervently anti-French successor, Charles the Bold, married Edward IV’s sister, Margaret of York, who was hostile towards Henry VII and continued to support various Yorkists even after the Duchy was reabsorbed into France. Also, a sweet red wine from this region in France.

Cloy: satiate, gorge, satisfy.

Cockatrice: a serpent identified with a Basilisk that was hatched from a cock’s egg and could kill with its glance; rarely, another term for crocodile.

Crosbie House: one of Richard’s houses in London, which became where Elizabeth I received ambassadors.

Crosse-row: the alphabet, used in prophesizing; Shakespeare’s audience would have known that Queen Elizabeth was herself a fan of astrology and employed “philosophers,” such as John Dee, who scheduled her coronation with his horoscope.

Diet: way of living, i.e. Edward’s corrupt lifestyle is his “evil diet."

Dighton and Forrest: The two servants hired by Tyrell to carry out the murder of the two princes.

Eagles should be mew’d up: specifically the Golden Eagle, a native species of England, symbolic of nobility, power, and royalty.

Haire about her ears: Elizabeth enters with her hair undone, a way Shakespeare liked to depict his distressed damsels, such as Constance who tears her hair in King John.

Hedge-hogge: hedgehogs represented evil because they “robbed” grapes from vines the way the devil was thought to rob people of their souls. They were also believed to be another form of goblin and were associated with neglecting to pray.

Humour: mood, disposition, frame of mind as determined by the balance of the four humours, or bodily fluids, blood (passion), phlegm (idleness), choler (anger) and melancholy (sadness).

Kites and Buzzards: birds of prey, thieving birds and bad omens; inferior breed of hawks used as an insult to mean a stupid person. Hastings means that it is a pity that he and Clarence (“eagles”) should be locked up by their enemies, whom he likens to inferior species of bird.

Livery: the special uniform provided for an official by his employer, such as a collar, hood or gown in a special color or design.

Lord Chamberlaine: a peer and member of the Privy Council who was one of the King’s closest, most important officers. This is Lord Hastings.

Margaret’s “bloody deed”: In Henry IV, Part III, Margaret stabs Richard of York, Richard III’s father, at Wakefield, after first offering him a handkerchief drenched in his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland’s blood and placing upon then knocking off a paper crown from his head.

Minority: the state of being a minor, not of age (14 years old), so that a Lord Protector would rule instead until he was of age (typically one of the King’s brothers according to age).

Mistress Shore: Elizabeth or Jane Shore was allegedly Edward’s favorite mistress, with whom he became involved about 1470. Her later affair with Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset and later his rival Lord Hastings is what landed her in prison for practicing “sorcery,” though she was probably just their political go-between.

Nest of Spicery: figuratively, the womb.

Pomfret: from Latin “ponte fracto,” meaning broken bridge; Pontefract Castle, in Pontefract, West Yorkshire; belonged to John of Gaunt and the site of Richard II’s murder in 1399.

Pursuiuant at Armes: a junior officer attending a herald.

Queenes Kindred: Elizabeth’s eldest son Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset, her son Richard Grey, her brother Anthony, Earl Rivers.

Scaffold: hanging was considered a common form of punishment while beheading was typically saved for the upper classes. Traitors could be hung, drawn and quartered, murderers or criminals might be mutilated or dissected and displayed after death, and drowning or boiling pits were not unheard of.

Son of York: Edward IV assumed a sun as his emblem after the vision of the three suns appear to him and his brothers before the battle of Mortimer’s Cross (Henry VI, Part III).

Sowre Ferry-man: Charon, who carries souls across the rivers Styx and Acheron in hell.

Surfet: illness brought on by excess, gluttony. Margaret’s curse reflects on Edward’s indulgent lifestyle.

“The Curse my Noble Father layd on thee”: at Wakefield, Richard of York curses Queen Margaret in Henry VI, Part III before she slays him.

“What would betide on me”: While some Queen Mothers became guardians or coregents of their young kings, others were completely stripped of their political power and left court, some evening entering a convent, unable to remarry. Historically, Elizabeth did not receive much from Edward IV’s will and it was not until Henry VII was crowned that she received the wealth and property due to her position as Queen Dowager.

White-livered runnagate: cowardly fugitive or rebel.

Wolves, Spiders, Toades: wolves are both a symbol of appetite and Catholicism; spiders could traditionally symbolize both evil creatures who sucked the blood of their prey and signs of good luck; toads were symbols of witchcraft and decay.

Wonton ambling Nymph: Literally, a malicious and lusty wandering earth-spirit in the form of a maiden; nymph can mean anything from a maiden to a prostitute to a slangy old-Latin term for the labia minora.

Images of "Why This Play Now?"

Some research images and ideas that keep Richard III relevant. Find out more on Matt's Ning. Read about cyborgs and Richard III here.

After Bhutto assasination.

Lamenting women.

Media attention.

Young leader.

Prince in the Tower.

Surveillance in Great Briton today: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6108496.stm

Death, Ritual and the Media.

Grief.

Bhutto's unmarked coffin.

Power and Technology.

Sources:

Dailyxpress/Thai Photo Blog.

"How things go pop." Indymedia Ireland.

Hoyt, Mike. Reporting Iraq: An oral history of the war by reporters who covered it. Hoboken, NJ: Melville House Publishing. 2007. Print.

"Pakistan Mourns Death of Benazir Bhutto." LIFE.com

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images via New York Times

Warrick Page/Bloomberg News via New York Times

Production History of Richard III

While Richard III was one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays during his lifetime, Richard played by the famous Richard Burbage, its success has by no means stopped there. The play was performed once more in 1633 before the closing of the theatres in 1642, and then revived in 1700 with Colley Cibber’s shortened adaptation that embedded text from the Henry VI plays into the script. Throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries, these condensed versions of the play remained popular and Richard III propelled many great English actors through their successful careers. David Garrick played Richard III almost continually from 1747 till 1776, and later Edmund Kean, the great, drunk, womanizing celebrity actor in London during the mid-19^th century. In America, it was Edwin Forrest who used Richard III to achieve unprecedented fame on the American stage, playing into the typical portrayal of Richard as an “irredeemable monster, a dire warning against political tyranny” (Cliff 16-17). Although William Macready tried to popularize the full text once again in 1821, it was not until the 1870s that audiences were interested in a full-length Richard III.

David Garrick as Richard III.

The twentieth-century took the play from its popular shortened, highly theatrical and melodramatic form into more dynamic, diverse interpretations and ambitious stagings. In 1920, Leopold Jessner directed a version of the play in Berlin that reflected the “time of social and political upheaval in Europe” that inspired later productions to follow this more contemporary, political interpretation of the play (Besnault 123). Donald Wolfit, for example, directed a 1942 version of the play in which a Hitler-like Richard III reminded audiences all too well of the recent horrors of Nazi Germany. It is said that the audience even had to run for shelter because of a bomb alert that sounded during a production. Laurence Olivier played a “supremely cunning and devilish” Richard who also reflected the “cold-blooded ruthlessness” that viewers would have identified with the current war times (Besnault 123).

The 1950s saw a return to staging Shakespeare’s history plays with their “original practices” and it wasn’t until Terry Hands’ production in 1970 that the text was more fully experimented with. In 1984, Bill Alexander directed Richard III with the Royal Shakespeare Company in which Anthony Sherr played a spider-like Richard with a “crippling disease” who used a pair of crutches to move across the space while hopping and crawling (Besnault 123). In addition to Olivier’s own expressionist-inspired film version, the 1995 Richard Loncraine Richard III starring Ian McKellan offers yet another uncannily modern production that calls on images of 30s fascism and American gangsters to present a totalitarian Richard.

More recently in 2009, the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre staged its own “timeless” version of the play that looked at the play through more of a psychoanalytical lens then a political one. Although director Barbara Gaines saw the women as the “soul” of the play, she still placed them as powerless, fragile creatures in a violent world, while Richard was a man “attempting to deny his own humanity” and repress his instincts and feelings (Interview). The Garage Theatre in Long Beach, California invited audiences to “trip out on Richard as he slimes his way to the top” in its 2009 production (Garage Theatre Website). This performance, directed by Amy-Louise Sebelious, envisioned Richard as the DJ of a hot club called “The Tower,” updating the script with texting, drugs, and cross-dressing. At BAM, Kuwait’s Sabab/Sulayman Al-Bassam Theatre performed Richard III: An Arab Tragedy in which Richard’s rise to power was adapted for our own tumultuous, oil-obsessed times. The religious conflicts, nationalism, ritual, propaganda, and foreign affairs of the original text took on new meaning in this Arabic-language, contemporary version of the play commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The Royal Shakespeare Company's recent production of Richard III was set in “an alternative 19^th century” England in which the Victorian prim-and-proper society becomes a glossy cover for the sordid, violent politics beneath. This production, in which director Sean Holmes strived to emphasize the theatricality of Richard’s character and his world, explored the movement in the plot from realism to expressionism while finding subtle connections to England’s current political structure and climate. These contemporary productions reveal how Richard III has lost no relevance or popular appeal since Richard Burbage was on the Elizabethan stage and continues to provide dramatists and audiences alike with haunting reflections of our own times.

Check out the YouTube video of Richard’s opening monologue on the BAM website, or read more about the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company productions.

Read more about the original production here.

References:

Besnault, Marie-Hélène and Michel Bitot. “Historical legacy and fiction: the poetical reinvention of King Richard III.” The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Histories. Ed. Michael Hattaway. Cambridge University Press. 2002. Print.

Cliff, Nigel. The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama and Death in Nineteenth-Century America. NY: Random House. 2007. Print.

Halperin, Marylin. “The Undertow of Richard III, Backstage, Director Interview.” Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. 2008. Web. Accessed 9-15-10. <http://www.chicagoshakes.com/main.taf?p=2,19,3,19,4,12>.

“Richard III.” Royal Shakespeare Company, n.d. Web. Accessed 9-15-10. <http://www.rsc.org.uk/richard/current/home.html>.

“Richard III: An Arab Tragedy.” BAM. n.d. Web. Accessed 9-15-10. <http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=866>.

Scarborough, James. “Richard III, The Garage Theatre, by James Scarborough.” What the Butler Saw. Sept. 26, 2009. Web. Accessed 9-15-10. <http://perhapsperhapsperhaps.typepad.com/what_the_butler_saw/2009/09/richard-iii-the-garage-theatre-by-james-scarborough.html>.

About the Playwright: William Shakespeare

Personal Life and the Lost Years

William Shakespeare was born around St. George’s Day, April 23, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, which is about one-hundred miles northwest of London. His father was John Shakespeare, a glover, illegal wool dealer and local official, and his mother was Mary Arden. He was the third of eight siblings and the first son. He attended a local grammar school, The King’s New School, where he learned English and Latin, studying Aesop’s fables, Ovid and Virgil. In his early years he would have also been exposed to the Geneva Bible, The Book of Common Prayer, Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, and other Protestant works. He married Anne Hathaway, eight years his elder, in 1482 and became a father in 1583. Their children included the eldest daughter Susana, Hamnet and Judith.

An early drawing of Shakespeare's home.

After 1585, Shakespeare does not appear in any records until 1592, known as the “lost years.” Some believe that he fled Stratford after a poaching incident while others believe that he was studying abroad, practicing law, or teaching school. While equally mysterious is how exactly Shakespeare ended up in London, it is possibly that he joined a theatre troupe that traveled through Stratford and the rest is history.

While Shakespeare was in London, his family remained in Stratford. He probably traveled home on occasion, about four days walking or two days ride. It was in 1596 that his son Hamnet died, and Shakespeare also composed the melancholy lines in King John, “Grief fills the room up of my absent child…” (Gray).

Shakespeare and the Theatre

In London, the “upstart crow” Shakespeare became a very successful, versatile playwright. In March 1592, for example, his Henry VI plays are recorded to have played five times in rotation with thirteen other plays, making Shakespeare’s plays the most performed compared to Kyd, Marlowe or anyone else. At first, Shakespeare was a kind of “freelance dramatist” and worked for The Queen’s Men, Lord Strange’s Men, and Pembroke’s Men, who performed frequently at court (Gray). Despite being hit hard by the closure of the theatres during an outbreak of the Plague in 1593 that killed roughly 11,000 of London’s 200,000 inhabitants, Shakespeare stayed afloat writing verse for patrons like Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who became a long-term supporter. Shakespeare’s sonnets were most likely composed sometime during this “Southampton period,” between 1592 and 1595, earning him enough money to survive until the theatres reopened and become a sharer in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, organized by the Queen’s Chamberlain, Lord Hudson (Gray). It was with this troupe that Shakespeare worked with Richard Burbage, the great actor, his father James Burbage, and actor William Kempe. They performed publicly at the Theatre, the Swan and the Curtain.

Between 1594 and 1599, Lord Chamberlain’s Men became the most popular theatre troupe in London and Shakespeare’s writing was profuse. In 1597, when the lease ran out on Burbage’s Theatre, the family eventually decided to tear it down and use the timber to build the Globe on the Bankside across the Thames and could accommodate as many as 3,000 audience members beneath its open-air, thatched roof and among its three balconies. Shakespeare was one of the new theatre’s co-owners and made somewhere between £200 and £250 every year. Shakespeare was now able to help his father receive a coat of arms, and he even bought a mansion by Elizabethan standards in Stratford. The next years of explosive creativity and writing were probably connected to the rapid changes going on in society around him. Not only had the Essex Rebellion crumbled in 1601, ending in the execution of Southampton, but in 1603 England suddenly had a new monarch, James VI of Scotland, and Shakespeare was now a member of the King’s Men, the most popular company to perform at court. Shakespeare’s tragedies become increasingly popular, and it is speculated that Shakespeare himself was in a dark place while composing these “higher art forms.” In 1608, the King’s Men began performing at the more expensive, indoor theatre, Blackfriars, and Shakespeare focused on his romances that were in the spirit of the masques that became very popular at court. The Globe burnt down in 1613, but a second Globe was built on top of it, only this time with a tile roof.

In his final years, Shakespeare returned to Stratford to work on three more collaborative plays after The Tempest. It seems he spent his time with his two, now married, daughters, until his death at April 23, 1616.

Folios and Quartos

Shakespeare’s plays first appear in print in 1594 with Titus Andronicus in the form of quartos. These were very small, very inexpensive pamphlets that could be readily made and sold. The quartos remain the only source for Shakespeare’s writings, since he left no manuscripts, and they are often contradictory, reflecting drafts of plays or versions written by the actors from memory (British Library).

In 1623, the First Folio appeared thanks to two of Shakespeare’s colleagues, Heminges and Condell, entitled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies. The folio included 36 plays, 18 of which had never been published. The collection was probably inspired by the recent folio of Ben Jonson, Workes, who even included a commemorative poem to the Bard.

Catholic Shakespeare

One of the most highly debated aspects of Shakespeare’s biography is his religion. While historians do not have concrete proof that Shakespeare was a Catholic, many pieces of evidence suggest that he was despite the era of Catholic persecution in which he lived and wrote:

1. The Arden Family was a wealthy, powerful, and staunchly Catholic family located in Warwickshire. Mary Arden, Shakespeare’s mother, was a not-so-distant relative of Edward Arden, the head of the family, who actively supported Jesuit rebels, such as Edmund Campion and Robert Southwell. Arden was hung, drawn and quartered for his religion and alleged involvement in treasonous plots in 1583 after his son-in-law, John Somerville, was arrested for claiming the Queen to be a heretic and calling for her death. Shakespeare and his mother would have certainly been affected by this incident, if they were not present at the executions.

2. Coventry, known for its medieval Catholic Mystery plays, was just a day’s ride from Stratford, where Shakespeare would have surely first have been exposed to the theatre.

3. John Shakespeare, William’s father, was certainly raised Catholic, although as a Bailiff and later Chief Alderman of Stratford, he publicly identified as a Protestant during his career. However, it is suggested by historians that John Shakespeare’s financial troubles and retreat from public affaires later in life was due to his difficulty functioning in an increasingly Protestant political climate. Most incriminating of all, in 1757, a testament of faith was found in Shakespeare’s birth home signed by John Shakespeare, and his name is later found on a list of Catholic sympathizers who refused Protestant communion by claiming to be in too much debt.

4. Shakespeare was possibly educated by known Catholics both at grammar school and in his “lost years” it has been speculated that Shakespeare studied abroad in Rome, attended a Catholic college or became a schoolmaster for a prominent Catholic family in Lancashire.

5. As a dramatist and poet, two of Shakespeare’s patrons, Lord Strange and Earl of Southampton, were from very Catholic families.

6. There is also documentation to suggest that Shakespeare purchased the gatehouse at Blackfriars, London where Catholics secretly met, making a very personal contribution to the survival of Catholicism.

Click here for an additional Shakespeare timeline including his life, plays and historical context.

References:

The British Library. “Basic facts about William Shakespeare, his, life, his plays and the quartos.” William Shakespeare in quarto. Web. Accessed 2-22-10. <http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/basics.html>.

“Edward Arden,” “John Shakespeare,” “John Somerville.” In Search of Shakespeare. PBS. 2003 Web. Accessed 2-22-10. <http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/>.

Gray, Terry. “A Shakespeare Timeline.” 1998. Web. Accessed 2-22-10. <http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/timeline/timeline.htm>.

Hammerschmidt-Hummel, Hildegard. "The most important subject that can possibly be": A Reply to E. A. J. Honigmann." Connotations. 12.2-3, 2003. Web. Accessed 2-22-10. <http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/connotations/ham-hu1223>.

How Women Function in "Richard III"

In her book Women’s Matters: Politics, Gender and Nation in Shakespeare’s Early History Plays, Nina S. Levine describes how Richard’s simultaneous dependence on and hatred of women that results in his “warring with women” throughout the play was ultimately reflective of the crisis of succession and a female monarch experienced by Shakespeare’s Elizabethan audience (99). Levine argues that while Richard makes a claim for the women as unnatural, sexually perverse enemies, an Elizabethan audience would have seen their lamentation and cursing as “an acceptable model for female heroism” that allows the female characters “a place in politics [beyond] Richard’s misogynistic construction of women as either aggressors or victims” (102). Rather than portraying Margaret as a passive victim, she is aligned with Richard as a foil character, equally implicated in the play’s bloody conflict while actively reasserting her last “vestiges of power” in the form of elaborate curses (102). Anne on the other hand embodies the contradictory role of women within a patriarchal lineage system, in which she becomes trapped within Richard’s manipulation of “courtly discourse” to confirm both his power over her and his dependence on her. Finally, Levine illustrates how Elizabeth functions as a positive symbol of maternal heroism and aggression, battling for her children rather than herself (107-8). However, the women also represent a maternal source of destruction that mirrors contemporary concerns with “the female Tudor body politic” and Richard’s own misogynistic discourse on the subversion of masculine power and proper sexuality (110). Levine suggests that the women “turn their grief into vengeance” in an attempt to “[right] the monstrosity they have engendered” in Richard, or as an Elizabethan audience would have seen, in the Queen’s England (115). Ultimately, the play “interrogates the differences between the patriarchal myth of Tudor origins and the political realities of the 1590s” by underscoring Shakespeare’s ending that “[restores] patriarchal authority…and [returns] women to their place, off the political stage” as fictional and unrelated to the reality of England’s reliance on “women’s roles…in ensuring the succession…and the nation’s welfare” (120, 122).

Not only does this essay provide the role of women in the play with historical relevance, suggesting what they might have meant to Shakespeare’s audience, but it also demonstrates how Shakespeare’s use of Tudor propaganda might be used to critically examine patriarchy and its cultural myths. According to this essay, the women of Richard III are actively engaged in politics in a way that undermines traditional gender roles and empowers them, even when they are potentially implicated in the destruction and chaos of the play. This essay establishes the world of the play as destabilized in a way that empowers its female characters, providing them a crucial place in the political sphere even within a system that attempts to exclude them. Levine’s essay also allows a modern production to situate the play within the frameworks of post-modernism, cyborg feminist theory, and the current political scene that has just experienced a comparable overturning of traditional white, Western, patriarchal notions of who is fit to rule a country.

References:

Levine, Nina S. Women’s Matters: Politics, Gender and Nation in Shakespeare’s Early History Plays. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press. 1998.

Hypermasculinity and "Richard III"

In his essay “The Unruly Masculinity of Richard III,” Ian Frederick Moulton writes that Shakespeare’s first four history plays not only address wars of the fifteenth century, but “concerns and anxieties provoked by the contemporary war with Spain,” addressing “the dangers of feminine rule [and] uncertain succession of the crown, the threat of foreign invaders, and the excesses of unruly or self-serving captains” (254). A play about “masculine disorder,” Richard III features the inversion of traditional gender values, women appear as strong, masculine usurpers while men appear weakened (255). Moulton argues that, “in the absence of strong masculine royal authority, English manhood…turns to devour itself” (258). The deformed Richard is the personification of this “destructive masculine force,” represented by his emblem the boar and contrasted by his successor Richmond (259). Moulton also points out that Richard’s reference to his inability to cry over the death of his father suggests his “excess of masculine heat” and imbalance of the humors (260-61). Richard’s disregard for the order of patriarchy and the bonds of male warriors is what makes his viciousness, ambition and skill in battle makes him monstrous and dangerous to the state rather than a military asset (262). Moulton also describes the way in which deformity was perceived in the sixteenth century as connected to sin, eroticism, female imagination during childbirth and was considered threatening to the nation (262-3). Moulton concludes by explaining how Richard’s wooing of Anne demonstrates his need for women within the patriarchal order of reproduction despite his mysogeny, demonstrating his inability to see gender as non-essential (268).

Moulton’s essay not only makes a clear case for Richard III as a complex narrative of gender roles and patriarchal order as well as situating the play’s themes within historical events and ideology. While Richard appears to be a problematic figure in gendered terms, situated between masculine power and feminine weakness represented by his deformity, this essay shows how these two gender identities can coexist. Richard’s need to assert his masculinity in the form of ambitious and cruel political scheming may be understood as the consequence of his physical deformity, not as an Elizabethan manifestation of “sin” and warped eroticism, but a psychological response. Moulton’s essay provides insight into the complicated role of women in the play relative to anxieties about Elizabeth I as both strong leader and “usurping woman,” demonstrating how they can at once act outside of accepted social roles to confront a male authority and become victims of a usurper themselves. Moutlon’s essay ultimately provides a way of understanding Richard III not only as part of a historical study of gender roles and nation-building, but also reveals its potential as a modern critique of patriarchy, revealing its inadequacy in the face of individual agency and non-traditional gender roles.

References:

Moulton, Ian Frederick. “’A Monster Great Deformed’: The Unruly Masculinity of Richard III.” Shakespeare Quarterly. Vol. 47, No. 3. Autumn. Folger Shakespeare Library. 1996. Pp. 251-268.

Deformity and Performance in "Richard III"

Chapter four of Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse addresses representations of Richard’s deformity in film, tracking historical interpretations of Richard’s disability and finally examining various film versions of the play. David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder assert that film as a representational medium relies on “external deformities and visible ticks of character” in order to communicate the character’s psychological state (97). Comparing Richard’s quest for vengeance and need to compensate for “built-in defects” to the cyborgs in Bladerunner, the authors state that Richard’s disability “[underlines] his own metaphysical unfitness to govern” and would have been recognized by an Elizabethan audience as a traditional representation of Vice (99-100). However, the authors also suggest that when viewed in the context of changing contemporary attitudes towards disability and self-fashioning, Richard’s deformity becomes part of his performance and a narrative device. Richard wields his disability as a weapon, “[reclaiming] the myriad of associations placed upon his form to his own advantage even while divulging his tactics to an audience that thereby becomes an accomplice to his own treachery” (104). Mitchell and Snyder ultimately argue that “Richard III is Shakespeare’s first depiction of the modern subject,” who “conceives of the world as a stage” and “yields the very stuff that individuality is made of—the multitude of psychic ‘depths’ alluded to by disability” (108). The chapter ends with a brief discussion of various film versions of Richard III, some which only reaffirm the naturalized connection between physiology and psychology while others take advantage of the unfixed meanings of Richard’s deformed physique.

This essay provides a basis for understanding Richard’s deformity in a non-traditional way, opening up his deformity to interpretation by the director, the actor and the audience while also revealing how Richard’s disability can humanize his often caricature-like character. Rather than a fixed character trait that must be worked around by the production and the actor, Richard’s deformity becomes a powerful tool that helps to drive the action of the play, such as the scene where Richard craftily uses his disability dispatch Hastings. If Richard’s disability is a narrative device and a tool, then the nature of his physical difference is mutable, potentially enhancing, and no longer predetermined by the text. This reading of Richard’s deformity also asks the audience to question their own naturalized perceptions of disability and psychology, making the play a story about physicality, performance and personal identity. If Richard’s deformity is no longer trapped within the medieval conception of disability and psychological depravity, then Richard is a fuller, more modern, and more threatening protagonist and the play’s traditional performances destabilized.

References:

Mitchell, David T. and Sharon L. Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. The University of Michigan Press. 2003.

Cyborg Feminism and "Richard III"

I could gush about Donna Haraway and athlete/model/actress/badass Aimee Mullins, but instead I'll try to reign it in and focus on why this feminist theory tailored to our technological age has anything to do with a play written hundreds of years ago about a man with a disability.

In A Cyborg Manifest: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century Donna Haraway describes how the cyborg in today’s world of biotechnology, robotics, and cybernetics is not limited to its monstrous science-fictional image of future warfare and domination but is also a powerful tool of post-modernism and feminism, undermining the binary tradition of white, masculinist, Western culture to allow new understandings of sexuality and selfhood. Haraway’s argument rests on the premise that “we are all cyborgs,” who join material reality with imagination, function outside of gendered notions of reproduction and erase the boundaries between public and private spheres (384-5). Cyborg politics not only calls attention to its own artificiality, it also challenges the naturalization of dichotomies like body/mind, organism/machine, nature/culture, women/men. Haraway suggests that the cyborg is “a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self” that “[indicates] that science and technology provide fresh sources of power” (388-9). The female cyborg is freed “of the need to root identification in vanguard parties, purity, and mothering” and becomes empowered by her appropriation of “masculine” information and technology (392). Cyborg feminism asks the question “why should our bodies end at the skin?” and insists on bodies as “maps of power and identity,” actively communicating and creating new meaning. Haraway’s cyborg imagery provides “a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves,” concluding by stating that she “would rather be a cyborg than a goddess” (394).

Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto functions as a potentially powerful framework for a play that participates in a Western masculine literary tradition, particularly for new ways of understanding issues of deformity and gender in Richard III within a contemporary setting. For example, rather than trapping Richard’s deformity within the boundaries of systems of whole/part, or male control, aggressiveness and fertility/feminized weakness and sterility, it can also be understood within the cyborg imagery of the “enhanced” human, challenging Richard’s role as naturally depraved or villainous and accusations of his mother/sorceress-creator as perpetrator. Queen Margaret’s identity as a war veteran might also explore new territories of gender identity, her physical and political immobility potentially complicated by her access to technology. Cyborg feminism also calls into question the “naturalness” of the female characters as cursing witches, lamenting mothers, usurping queens or powerless widows. When women have access to masculine technology, military force and cyborg identities, a patrilineal monarchy that rests on the strict dichotomy of women as reproducers and men as rulers become entirely unstable. Within a cyborg feminist framework, the women of the play are neither harpies and hags nor helpless victims, excluded from masculine military strength and equated with nature, but instead they seize significant agency. Their curses become their powerful tools of communication, their access to technology as a means of participating in the chaos and killing. Even the considerable reproductive power enjoyed by the women of the play can be understood as part of their cyborg identities, pushing the boundaries of female agency at the intersection of biology and politics at a time when the nation was concerned over its female monarch, the embodiment of this contradiction of gender identity. When seen as part of cyborg feminist discourse, the disruption of order in Richard III is no longer the result of “problematic” overturned gender roles, but representative of both Elizabethan and contemporary politics and culture, full of frightening and liberating uncertainty punctuated by advancing technology. Within a world of cyborg imagery, Shakespeare’s characters no longer have fixed meanings within political or gender discourses, giving the production freedom to challenge traditional performances of Richard III and its characters while addressing culturally relevant issues such as post-modern identity, advancing cybernetic technology, and polymorphous sexuality and gender roles.

Want to see more? Check out Cyborgs and Prothetics.

Donna Haraway. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Twentieth Century.” Feminist Theory, A Reader. Second Edition. Ed. Kolmar, Wendy and Frances Bartowski. McGraw Hill Companies, Inc. 2005.

Character Circles for "Richard III"

This image comes from the "Shakespeare's Words" website, where you can find a complete hypertexted script and character list as well.

What was the first production like?

It is believed that "Richard III" was first written and performed in 1591 following his Henry VI trilogy. The first performance was most likely performed by a mix of the Admiral’s Men and Lord Strange’s Men, possibly for “Essex, Southampton and the growing opposition, Catholic and radical Protestant, that gathered in Essex House to nurse grievances and plot enemies’ downfall” The play became very popular and was performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men at the Globe in the 1600s, and even as late as 1633 at court. Richard Burbage, Shakespeare’s leading actor, was performing the role of Richard after the Globe opened in 1599. Like the other early history plays, Richard III was designed to be performed for large audiences in open-air theatres, packing hundreds of Elizabethans hungry for entertainment in to see the show. The first quarto appeared in 1597, printed from a manuscript that was believed to have been written from memory by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and Shakespeare.

References:

Asquith, Clare. Shadowplay: Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare. NY: Public Affairs. 2005.

Hattaway, Michael. Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays. Cambridge University Press. 2002. p.103

Shakespeare in Quarto. The British Library. 10/25/09. <http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html>.

The Princes in the Tower

The story of the Princes in the Tower, which refers to the confinement of the sons of Edward IV by Richard III in the Tower of London in 1483, is perhaps one of the most bone-chillingly mysterious places where fact and fiction become blurred. Edward V was born in Westminster Abbey while his mother, Queen Elizabeth, was in sanctuary on November 2, 1470, making him only twelve-years old at the time of his death. Edward, Prince of Wales, was at Ludlow when his father died under the care of Earl Rivers, who then helped to escort him along with a force of 2,000 men to London.

When Rivers and Sir Richard Grey, his nephew, went to meet Richard and Buckingham, they were both arrested, leaving Edward entirely vulnerable. When she heard that her son had been captured, Queen Elizabeth immediately took sanctuary with her other children. Thanks to a considerable military force surrounding Westminster Abbey, the queen was eventually persuaded to relinquish her younger son, the nine-year-old Richard, Duke of York, who was taken to meet his brother in the Tower.

John Everett Millais' "The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower, 1483," 1878.

It is at this point in the story where the facts become obscured. The only detailed written version of the deaths of the two princes comes from Sir Thomas More’s History of King Richard III, in which he relates a confession supposedly given by James Tyrell, the alleged murderer, upon his trial for treason in 1502. Since this confession has never actually surfaced, it is impossible to know whether More invented it or not. More claims that after Brackenbury refused to do the murders himself, Richard employed his ambitious servant Tyrell and placed the princes in the care of “Black Will or Will Slaughter” instead of their usual keepers. With the help of Miles Forest, “a fellow fleshed in murder before time,” and John Dighton, “a big, broad, square, strong knave,” Tyrell had the princes smothered to death at midnight and then buried at the foot of one of the Tower’s staircases (214). Apparently, Richard then had them re-buried in an unknown location.

The Murder of the Princes in the Tower, James Northcote, 1785

While it is most widely accepted that Richard III was responsible for the deaths of the princes, there are several other highly plausible scenarios. First, it has been claimed that Buckingham himself killed the princes, since he would have had access to the Tower at the time. The alternative defended by modern-day Ricardian supporters is that Henry Tudor had the princes killed in order to stabilize his own claim to the throne, which also explains why the blame would have been ascribed to Richard III as an integral piece of Tudor propaganda. It has even been suggested that the princes actually died of disease, such as the plague, while in confinement. To complicate matters, in 1674, a chest was uncovered buried beneath the White Tower containing two child skeletons supposed to be the princes’ remains. Although an examination of the “bones of 1674” found them to be appropriate matches for the two princes and believed the deaths to have occurred in 1483, making it impossible to have been the work of Henry VII. However, this was discredited in the 1950s, and it remains uncertain whether these are The Bones or not.

References:

Maurer, Helen. “Bones in the Tower: A Discussion of Time, Place and Circumstance.” Part 2. The Ricardian, vol. 8, no. 111. 1990. pp 474-493.

Wagner, John A. Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Roses. CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc. 2001. Print.

Shakespeare and Prophesy

Astrology, which came to medieval Europe by way of Arabian scholars, was divided into “natural” and “judicial” theories. Natural astrology had to do with the influence of the stars and planets on the physical world, like weather and the development of living things while judicial astrology related to “the influence of heavenly bodies on human destiny” (245). While this second theory of astrology complicated Christian teachings of free will and the possibility of redemption, the church allowed that the stars incline based on the will of God, even if they do not compel. It is unclear whether most people believed in the powers of the stars, sort of like people might believe in the power of hormones without really knowing how they work, or if the population was generally more skeptical. Either way, horoscopes and almanacs were an important part of medieval culture and used to tell everything from how a child’s personality might develop to when the Queen herself should be crowned. Like many elite who employed court-astrologers, Elizabeth I employed John Dee as her “philosopher.” Astrological events, such as “solar and lunar eclipses, comets and meteors were regarded as portents for rulers and nations,” explaining why the appearance of the three suns before Edward IV and his brothers was more than just a “wondrous-strange” phenomenon, but a miraculous and meaningful sign of glory (Henry VI, Part III 2.1.33).

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An astrolabe.

Although other Shakespearean plays and sonnets, like sonnet XV, imply that he shared the contemporary belief in natural astrology and was familiar with its common rules and forms, there is no indication that Shakespeare ever studied astrology or believed in judicial astrology. In Richard III, one might attribute the mistaken astrology that allows Edward to condemn his brother Clarence instead of Richard as an example of Shakespeare’s skeptical cynicism about the value of astrological knowledge. Clarence appears to be no less gullible than Edward, who condemns his own brother to the Tower based on a prophesy. If both Richard and the audience know that the letter G really points to Richard himself, who ultimately does destroy Edward IV, does this suggest that our belief in fate and astrology is futile or that we should simply pay better attention? What does it mean that Richard’s villainy is emerging at the same moment that we see his omniscient rationality and ability to manipulate superstition? This might “modernize” Richard and separate him from his gullible contemporaries, but it also makes him even more frighteningly sly and familiar, since as modern audience such as ourselves can better identify with a skeptic and cynic when it comes to superstition and stars, even if he is a “divell.”

An astrological treatise.

References:

Sondheim, Moriz. “Shakespeare and the Astrology of His Time.” Journal of the Warburg Institute. Vol. 2, No. 3. Jan., 1939. Pp243-259. JSTOR. Accessed 2-13-10.