At the conclusion of Shakespeare’s Richard III, the title character is abandoned by his allies and his friends, and caught amidst a fierce battle without even his royal mount, he utters the famous last words, “my kingdom for a horse!” (5.4.13). Perhaps the horse did not forsake Richard, but it seems that every other character in the play does, even those Richard once considered friends - or as close as he gets to friends. And little wonder why; Richard is a “foul devil” (1.2.49), “a murth’rous villain” (1.3.133), “bloody” (3.4.103), “a hell-hound” (4.4.48), and “God’s enemy” (5.3.252), though the term “devil” crops up more often than any other (1.2.45, 1.3.117, 4.4.418, etc.). He murders on a whim, betrays even those most loyal to him (Buckingham in 4.2), and steals the throne of England from its rightful heirs, just to scratch the surface. It seems obvious why every character hates Richard with a passion by the end of the play, and there is hardly a point to exploring their acrimony. What titillates the Shakespearian theorist is attempting to understand Richard’s brain - specifically, his conscience, or lack of one. Why does he choose to be a “villain” (1.1.30), and how might this be connected to his physical deformities? Does he have a conscience, and if so, why does he ignore it? What light does his dream in Act V shed upon his soul?
Because of Richard’s profound dishonesty whenever he converses with the other characters in the play, it is necessary to focus on his monologues - which reflect his inner thoughts - in order to gain an understanding of Richard. Conveniently and appropriately, Richard III begins with that very dramatic technique, as the Duke of Gloucester summarizes the War of the Roses between Lancaster and York. By line 14, however, he confronts what the audience and the dramatic characters already see - his physical deformities. Richard is “not shap’d for sportive tricks” (1.1.14) and is “curtail’d of this fair proportion” (1.1.18). Then, in an almost metatextual moment, Richard concludes that, since he “cannot prove a lover” (1.1.28) because of his infirmity and ugliness, he is “determined to prove a villain” (1.1.29). Without further explanation, the “plots have [been] laid” (1.1.32), as has the plot of the tragedy. But why must his impairments precipitate his depravity? Perhaps, as evidenced by the juxtaposition of the “dogs bark[ing]” at him (1.1.23) and his confession to being “false, and treacherous” (1.1.37), the two are innately intertwined in the minds of many, including Richard. If he sees his own hideousness as an impetus to act hideously, the problem may lie in his self-esteem.
This interpretation is enforced by Gloucester’s monologue after his successful seduction of Lady Anne. Nearly ecstatic at his own skill at manipulation, he marvels that she will “abase her eyes on [him]” (1.2.246) despite the fact that he “halts and [is] misshapen thus” (1.2.250). Then, exclaiming that he may have “mistake[n his] person all this while” (1.2.252), he says he has “crept in favor with [himself]” (1.2.258), and desires “a looking glass,” “a score or two of tailors,” and a “fair sun” so he “may see [his] shadow” (1.2.255, 256, 263, 264). At what is the only point in the play where Richard seems happy, his gaiety is caused by feeling handsome for once. By inserting this monologue early in the play, before Richard becomes severely paranoid and completely loses himself, Shakespeare provides an insight into the character that cannot be found anywhere else. Despite the king’s profession that “Richard loves Richard” (5.3.183) near the end of the play, it seems that he does not love himself. Professor Kerry Bystrom, a Shakespearian scholar at Dartmouth, posits that this key statement is in fact Richard’s entire motivation to “[act] for his own gain” throughout the tragedy (Bystrom). However, it is more likely that Richard is in fact lying when he says he loves himself, and that his utter hate for himself - motivated by his physical appearance - is actually the reason he decides to be a “villain” and therefore undertakes and attains his advancement.
Self-loathing alone does not qualify as a conscience, however; the few moments where Richard is alone on stage must be examined further. Like many of the characters, Hastings misjudges Richard as being less devious than he is. “I think there’s never a man in Christendom/ Can lesser hide his love or hate than he,/ For by his face straight shall you know his heart” (3.4.51-53), Hastings says, blind to the irony of his statement. And like Hastings, the audience is not clued in to Richard’s thoughts from Act I through Act IV, as there is a remarkable paucity of monologues from the title character. By the time the audience is reacquainted with the mind of Gloucester, he is King Richard III (4.2), and he has abruptly changed from a successful, Machiavellian character to the epitome of a paranoid, neurotic monarch. While deceiving the populace into supporting his usurpation of the throne, Richard ironically protests that it is “against my conscience and my soul” (3.7.226) to be crowned king, showing a remarkable poise throughout that scene in his manipulation of the crowd. However, within two brief scenes, he has lost his prowess at iniquity, as evidenced by his dialogue with Buckingham. Rather than devising some devious plot to murder young Edward, he tells Buckingham, “I wish the bastards dead,/ And would have it suddenly perform’d” (4.2.17-18). There is no strategy to his cruelty now, but merely the temerity of the powerful. And finally, the audience receives a further glimpse into Richard’s subconscious - but it is as eloquent as it is insightful, which is to say, hardly. His reasoning for killing “the bastards” is that he is “so far in blood” (4.2.64) that sinning further does not matter, and he denies that there is any “tear-falling pity” (4.2.65) within himself.
Watching Richard, the audience may begin to believe what he does. They will see him describe himself as “jolly” (4.3.43) after his wife Anne’s death and call for “a flourish, trumpets! strike alarum, drums!” (4.4.149) to drown out Queen Elizabeth’s admonishment of himself. Whereas in the first few acts, the audience understands that Richard could have refuted all her arguments - and most likely convinced her to marry him in the process - they now see him as harried, witless, and weaker. His cruelty is no longer admirable in a sadistic way, but merely deplorable because of its unrestrained evil. In one last grand effort, Richard convinces Elizabeth at the end of Act IV to give him her daughter in marriage, but his “self-misus’d” (4.4.374) wooing seems only an echo of his previous self, ending with less of a frightened committment and more of a temporary acquiescence on the part of Elizabeth (“Write to me very shortly,/ And you shall understand from me her mind” (4.4.428-429). Richard’s growing impotence reflects the unorganized chaos of his reign, and possibly represents his lack of conscience to the audience.
Then, at the climax of the play in Act V, the ghosts of each character that Richard has murdered appear to him, cursing him and blessing his foe, Richmond. They desire to “sit heavy in [Richard’s] soul” (5.3.130) and decry him as “bloody and guilty,” ordering him to “guiltily awake” (5.3.154). Because the ghosts “came to [Richmond’s] tent” (5.3.231) too, Shakespeare seems to want the audience to believe that the ghosts are real, not figments of Richard’s conscience. Even if the ghosts themselves to not betray his conscience, the king’s monologue upon awakening reveals his soul for the first time. “Have mercy, Jesu!” (5.3.178) he exclaims, divulging that he is fearful of Judgment Day, which affirms his self-identification as a villain at the same time as it speaks loudly of a near repentance in the face of hell. He is certainly a coward, and what does a coward innately fear but himself? “Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why--/ Lest I revenge” (5.3.185-186), Richard contemplates in a bipolar manner. His self-confident mien has collapsed, leaving an admission that he “hate[s himself]/ For hateful deeds” (5.3.189-190), and that his “conscience hath a thousand several tongues” (5.3.193), which “throng to the bar, crying all, ‘Guilty! guilty!’” (5.3.199). Perhaps if this was the only evidence that Richard had a conscience, his self-hate and visions of “tongues” - the ghosts - would merely represent his cowardice in the face of a loss in battle. However, Richard confesses:
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? (5.3.200-203)
The inner sense of right and wrong that is the hallmark of a conscience is evident in this quote. Richard understands, and likely has all along, that no-one loves him, that his death will go unmourned, and that even he himself would not love someone who had made the choices he has made.
What Richard labels a “coward conscience” (5.3.179) seems to be at work in his own psyche. A deformed man with miniscule self-esteem, he chooses to be a “villain” since he cannot be a “lover” - in other words, cannot see why anyone would love him. He commits his heinous acts with full knowledge that they are wrong. His wickedness, at first successful, causes his descent into incompetent malevolence by Act IV. Perhaps, to take the analysis one step further than it has yet meandered, Richard’s self-loathing is the reason he ignores the conscience that seems to be present in himself, calling it “a word that cowards use” (5.3.309). Perhaps his villainy is inherently masochistic; he subconsciously desires to be hated by both people and God, as he feels he already must be because of his deformities, and to be condemned to hell because he deserves nothing else. Thus he causes his own downfall - and that of many others - because of his masochistic cowardice. It is ironic that Richard continually correlates cowardice with a conscience, since the audience sees Richard as a coward, especially after his murder of Edward’s heirs in Act IV and his dream in Act V. Shakespeare seems to be implying yet again that Richard does indeed have a conscience, and knows he has one. The Bard of Avon has created a character so complex and so twisted that it is difficult to fully grasp the extent of his psychological pandemonium. That makes Richard III one of the most intriguing minds of the Shakespearian canon, perhaps of all literature, and thus an exploration or examination of his mind, soul, and conscience can never be complete.
Works Cited
Bystrom, Kerry. "Containing Richard: Richard's Loss of Self in Richard III." Dartmouth.edu. Dartmouth University, 1999. Web. 24 Oct. 2009.
Shakespeare, William. Richard III. Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. 748-804. Print.
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