<1CONTENTS>1 Preface by Jeremy Treglown v A Selective Chronological Table of Performances of <2Richard III>2 in English 1 Abbreviations 5 Introduction 9 Richard III 85 Appendix: Richard's Seven New Soliloquies in Cibber's Version 251 Glossary 255 <1PREFACE>1 It ought to go without saying that production is part of the creative process of making a play. Throughout the history of the English theatre, actors and directors have been important in deciding not only how the playwright's text is performed -- what the settings and costumes look like, where characters stand and how they move, what business is introduced, how the lines are spoken and so on -- but in what the spoken text itself consists of. Between Betterton in the seventeenth century and the Victorian Irving, for example, no play by Shakespeare was ever performed exactly as it appears in the best printed editions, and many of his plays were only known in versions radically different from what he wrote. The adaptations of Charles Marowitz do not seem unusually free in a historical tradition which also includes the versions of Davenant, Dryden and Cibber, and of nineteenth-century popular entertainers. The "text' of a play, then, pursued by literary historians and bibliographers, is only a limited kind of text in theatrical terms. The real, full text is any given production, just as the text of a film is the film itself, and not the scriptwriter's dialogue. Furthermore, just as at any particular time <2Richard III>2 or <2The Alchemist>2 has been whatever version was then best known in the theatre, so all such versions have been related to the ones before them, either through positive influence and the inheritance of pieces of business, or through an effort to make the new production break with established tradition. The Plays in Performance series is aimed at anyone interested in what this tradition amounts to for a particular play: who has acted in it, what the main interpretative characteristics of the performances have been, how productions have reflected current concerns of the time and so on. Each edition contains a substantial introduction giving a critical account of the play's theatrical history, and a text with full annotation on the appropriate page, detailing how each important moment has been handled in productions over the centuries, and what changes have been made. The individual editors cannot provide exhaustive information: each play would take up many volumes if they tried to. But they can give a wealth of selected detail: what Bottom's ass-head has looked like in different productions, how Richard III has made his first entrance, who cut what lines when, how they did the ghost or the love-scenes. v vi These editions show that theatre history both gives us a special insight into great plays, and is an absorbing and often amusing subject in itself. <2Jeremy Treglown>2 <1A SELECTIVE CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF>1 <1PERFORMANCES OF RICHARD III IN ENGLISH>1 A span of years indicates that the play was in repertory and that the actor played it more or less continuously over the period. Since most actors in the eighteenth century moved freely from theatre to theatre I have indicated in their case the theatre of first performance. All eighteenth century dates are taken from Charles Beecher Hogan, <2Shakespeare in the>2 <2Theatre 1701-1800, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1957).>2 <2Date Actor/Director Theatre>2 1593-1619 Richard Burbage ? Globe Blackfriars? 1689-90 Samuel Sandford Drury Lane 1700-39 (in his own Colley Cibber Drury Lane adaptation, un- challenged until Macready) 1732-41 Dennis Delane Goodman's Fields 1734-50 James Quin Drury Lane 1741-76 David Garrick Goodman's Fields 1741-68 Hannah Pritchard Covent Garden as Elizabeth 1751-59 Henry Mossop Drury Lane 1754-76 Thomas Sheridan Covent Garden 1760-69 Charles Holland Drury Lane 1761-88 William Smith Covent Garden 1777-85 John Henderson Drury Lane 1783-10, 1811-14 J.P. Kemble Drury Lane 1792-96 Sarah Siddons Drury Lane as Elizabeth 1800-1810 (American G.F. Cooke Covent Garden debut 1810) 1814-33 (American Edmund Kean Drury Lane debut 1820) 1 2 Selective Chronological Table of Performances 1817(American J.B. Booth Covent Garden debut 1821) 1819, 1821 (two W.C. Macready Covent Garden performances in his Drury Lane (1836) own version), 1836 Haymarket (1837) (Acts 1-3 only), 1837 1826 C.M. Young Covent Garden 1838, 1840, 1844, 1854 Charles Kean Drury Lane, Haymarket, Drury Lane, Princess's 1846 Charles Kean New Park Theatre (New York) 1844 Charles Selby (author of The Strand <2Kinge Richard ye>2 <2Third)>2 1837, 1845, 1849 (the Samuel Phelps with Haymarket (1837) latter two in his Mrs Warner as Sadler's Wells restored text), 1861 Margaret ( 1845) and Miss Glyn as Margaret (1849) 1837 Edwin Forrest Drury Lane 1856 Equestrian version Astley's Amphitheatre 1868, 1876 Barry Sullivan Drury Lane 1877, 1896(in his Henry Irving with Lyceum restored text) Genevieve Ward as Margaret(1896) 1878(in his restored Edwin Booth Booth's Theatre text) (New York) 1889 Richard Mansfield Globe 1901-15 Frank Benson The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (Stratford) 1909, 1911 Benson with Genevieve The Shakespeare Ward as Margaret Memorial Theatre (Stratford) 1915 Robert Atkins/dir. Old Vic Ben Greet 1921 Atkins with Genevieve Old Vic Ward 3 1920 John Barrymore Plymouth Theatre (New York) 1921, 1923 Balliol Holloway/dir. The Shakespeare Bridges-Adams Memorial Theatre (Stratford) 1925 Balliol Holloway with Old Vic Edith Evans as Margaret 1936 William Devlin/dir. Old Vic Henry Cass 1937 Emlyn Williams/dir. Old Vic Tyrone Guthrie 1939 John Laurie/dir. The Shakespeare Iden Fayne Memorial Theatre (Stratford) 1942, 1944 Donald Wolfit Strand and St James's (1942), Scala (1944) 1944-5 Laurence Olivier with The New Theatre Sybil Thorndike as Margaret, Ralph Richardson as Buckingham, Joyce Redman as Anne 1948-9 Laurence Olivier with Old Vic Vivien Leigh as Anne 1953 Marius Goring/Harry The Shakespeare Andrews as Memorial Theatre Buckingham/dir. (Stratford) Glen Byam Shaw 1953 Alec Guiness/Irene The Shakespearian Worth as Margaret/ Festival Theatre dir. Tyrone Guthrie (Stratford, Ontario) 1957 Robert Helpmann/dir. Old Vic Douglas Seale 1961 Christopher Plummer/ The Royal Shakespeare dir. William Gaskill Theatre (Stratford) 1963-4 Hall-Barton/Ian Holm/ The Royal Shakespeare Peggy Ashcroft as Theatre (Stratford) Margaret The Aldwych 4 1967 Alan Bates The Shakespearian Festival Theatre (Stratford, Ontario) 1970 Norman Rodway/dir. The Royal Shakespeare Terry Hands Theatre (Stratford) 1978 dir. Michael Young Vic Bogdanovich 1979-80 Chkivadze/dir. Sturua Royal Lyceum (Edinburgh), The Roundhouse 1980s John Wood The National Theatre <1ABBREVIATIONS>1 <1Books and Articles>1 Alger: W.R. Alger, <2The Life of Edwin Forrest, 2>2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1877) Ashwell: Lena Ashwell, <2Myselfa Player>2 (1936) Barnes: <2Specimens of English Dramati-c Criticism, XVII-XX Centuries,>2 ed. A.C. Ward(1945) Bell: <2Bell's Edition of Shakespeare's Plays as they are now Performed at the>2 <2Theatres Royal in London, Regulated from the Prompt Books of Each>2 <2 House>2 ( 1 774) Boaden: James Boaden, <2Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble,>2 2 vols. (1825) Borden: Marshall E. Borden, <2The Richard the Third of Charles Kean,>2 <2Edwin Booth, and Alan Bates. A Stage Chronology and Collative A nalysis>2 <2 of Production, Performance and Text,>2 Ph.D. thesis (Wayne State University, Michigan, 1973) Brereton: Austin Brereton, <2The Life of Henry Irving, 2>2 vols. ( 1908) Brown: T.A. Brown, <2History of the New York Stage from the First Perfor->2 <2mance in 1732 to 1901,>2 3 vols. (New York, 1963) Bullough: <2Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare,>2 ed. Geoffrey Bullough, 8 vols. ( 1957-75) Byron: <2Byron's Letters and Journals,>2 ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 10 vols. (1974) Chambers: E.K. Chambers, <2The Elizabethan Stage>2 ( 1923) Cibber: Colley Cibber, <2An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber,>2 ed. B.R.S. Fone (University of Michigan Press, 1968) Theo. Cibber: Theophilus Cibber, <2Dissertations on Theatrical Subjects or>2 <2Two Dissertations on the Theatre>2 (1759) Clemen: Wolfgang Clemen, <2A Commentary on Shakespeare's Richard III>2 (Eng. trans. 1968) Cole: John William Cole, <2The Life and Theatrical Times of Charles Kean>2 <2F.S.A.,>2 2 vols. (1859) Cook: Dutton Cook, <2Nights at the Play, a View of the English Stage, 2>2 vols. (1883) Courtneidge: Robert Courtneidge, <2I was an Actor Once>2 (1930) Crosse: Gordon Crosse, <2Shakespearian Playgoing 1890-1952>2 ( 1953) 5 6 Darlington, <2The Actor:>2 W.A. Darlin~on, <2The Actor and his Audience>2 (1949) Davies, <2Life:>2 Thomas Davies, <2Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick>2 ( 1780) Davies, <2Miscellanies:>2 Thomas Davies, <2Dramatic Miscellanies,>2 3 vols. (1784) Dickins: Richard Dickins, <2Forty Years of Shakespeare on the English Stage>2 <21867-1907>2 (n.d.) Doran: John Doran, <2Their Majesties Servants; A nnals of the English Stage>2 <2from Thomas Betterton to Edmund Kean,>2 ed. R.W. Lowe, 3 vols. (1888) Downes: John Downes, <2Roscius Anglicanus>2 (1708) Dunlap: William Dunlap, <2Memoirs of George Frederick Cooke,>2 2 vols. (1813) Farjeon: Herbert Farjeon, <2The Shakespearian Scene: Dramatic Criticisms>2 (n.d.) Finlay: John Finlay, <2Miscellanies>2 (Dublin, 1835) Forster: <2Dramatic Essays: John Forster and G.H. Lewes,>2 ed. William Archer and Robert Lowe (1896) Garrick, <2Private Correspondence: The Private Correspondence of David>2 <2Garrick,>2 ed. James Boaden (1831) Genest: John Genest, <2Some Account of the English Stage,>2 10 vols. (Bath, 1830) Gentleman: Francis Gentleman, <2The Dramatic Censor: or Critical Com->2 <2panion, 2>2 vols. (1770) Gould: T.R. Gould, <2The Tragedian: an Essay on the Histrionic Genius of>2 <2Junius Brutus Booth>2 (New York, 1868) Grein: J.T. Grein, <2Dramatic Criticism,>2 5 vols. (1899-1904) Hackett: <2Oxberry's 1822 Edition of Richard III with the Descriptive Notes>2 <2Recording Edmund Kean's Performance made by James H. Hackett,>2 ed. A.S. Downer (1959) Hall Caine: T.H. Hall Caine, <2Richard III and Macbeth: the Spirit of>2 <2Romantic Play in Relation to the Principles of Greek and Gothic Art>2 (1877) Hazlitt: <2The Complete Works of William Hazlitt,>2 ed. P.P. Howe, 21 vols. (1930-34) Hobson: Harold Hobson, <2Theatre 2 ( 950)>2 Hunt, Archer: <2Dramatic Essays of Leigh Hunt,>2 ed. William Archer and Robert W. Lowe (1894) Hunt, Houtchens: <2Leigh Hunt's Dramatic Criticism, 1808-1831,>2 ed. L.H. Houtchens and C.W. Houtchens (New York, 1949) Kott: Jan Kott, <2Shakespeare our Contemporary,>2 trans. Boleslaw Taborski (1965) Lamb: <2The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb,>2 ed. E.V. Lucas, 4 vols. (1912) Lamb, <2Letters: The Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb,>2 ed. Edwin W. 7 Marrs, 3 vols. (Cornell University Press, 1975-8) Lewes: G.H. Lewes, <2On Actors and the Art of Acting>2 (1875) Macready: <2Macready's Reminiscences,>2 ed. Sir Frederick Pollock, 2 vols. (1875) Marshall: <2The Henry Irving Shakespeare,>2 ed. Henry Irving and F.A. Marshall(1890) Martin: Henry Martin, <2Remarks on John Kemble's Performance of Hamlet>2 <2and Richard III>2 (1802) Merchant: W.M. Merchant, <2Shakespeare and the Artift>2 (1959) Murphy: Arthur Murphy, <2The Life of Garrick>2 (Dublin, 1801) Murdoch: James Murdoch, <2The Stage or Recollections of Actors and Acting>2 <2from an Experience of Fifty Years>2 (Philadelphia, 1880) Nashe: <2The Works of Thomas Nashe,>2 ed. Ronald B. McKerrow, 5 vols. (1904-10) Odell, <2Annals:>2 George C.D. Odell, <2Annals of the New York Stage,>2 15 vols. (New York, 1927-49) Odell, <2Shakespeare:>2 George C.D. Odell, <2Shakespeare from Betterton to >2 <2Irving, 2>2 vols. (New York, 1920) Ordish: T.F. Ordish, <2Shakespeare's London>2 ( 1897) Oulton: W.C. Oulton, <2The History of the Theatres of London,>2 3 vols. ( 1796) Phippen: Francis Phippen, <2Authentic Memoirs of Edmund Kean>2 (1814) Pickering: Roger Pickering, <2Reflections upon Theatrical Expression in>2 <2Tragedy>2 (1755), p. 79 Richardson: William Richardson, <2Essays on Shakespeare's Dramati-c>2 <2Characters>2 (1812) Russell Brown: John Russell Brown, "Three Kinds of Shakespeare: 1964 Productions at London, Stratford-upon-Avon and Edinburgh', <2 Shakespeare Survey,>2 18 (1965), pp. 147-55 Shaw: George Bernard Shaw, <2Our Theatres in the Nineties,>2 3 vols. (1948) Spencer: Christopher Spencer (ed.), <2Five Restoration Adaptations of>2 <2Shakespeare>2 (Urbana, 1965) Spivack: Bernard Spivack, <2Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil>2 (New York, 1958) Sprague, <2Histories:>2 A.C. Sprague, <2Shakespeare's Histories, Plays for the>2 <2Stage>2 ( 1964) Sprague, <2Stage Business:>2 A.C. Sprague, <2Shakespeare and the Actors, the>2 <2Stage Business in his Plays (1660-1905)>2 (Harvard University Press, 1948) Stoker: Bram Stoker, <2Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving>2 (1907) Vickers: <2Shakespeare, the Critical Heritage,>2 ed. Brian Vickers (1974- Weimann: Robert Weimann, <2Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the>2 <2Theatre,>2 ed. Robert Schwartz (1978) Wilkes: Thomas Wilkes, <2A General View of the Stage>2 ( 1759) 8 Williamson: Audrey Williamson, <2Old Vic Drama>2 (1948) Wilson Knight: G. Wilson Knight, <2Shakespearian Production, with Especial>2 <2Reference to the Tragedies>2 (1964) Wilstach: Paul Wilstach, <2Richard Mansfield, the Man and the Actor>2 (1908) Winter, <2Booth:>2 William Winter, <2The Life and Art of Edwin Booth>2 (1893) Winter, <2Mansfield:>2 William Winter, <2The Life and Art of Richard Mansfield,>2 2 vols. (New York, 1910) Winter, <2Shadows:>2 William Winter, <2Shadows of the Stage,>2 3 vols. ( 1892-5) Winter, <2Shakespeare:>2 William Winter, <2Shakespeare on the Stage (>2 1912) Wolfit: Donald Wolfit, <2First Interwal>2 (1954) <1Newspapers>1 and <1Periodicals>1 <2BP: Birmingham Post NS: New Statesman>2 <2D T: The Daily Telegraph PMLA>2 : <2Publications of the Modern>2 <2ELH: Journal of English Literary Language Association of>2 <2History Ameri-ca>2 <2ES: Evening Standard SH: Stratford-upon-Avon Herald>2 <2FT: The Financial Times Sh.S: Shakespeare Survey>2 G: <2The Guardian SP: Studies in Philology>2 GM: <2Gentleman's Magazine SQ: Shakespeare Quarterly>2 <2ILN: Illustrated London News ST: The Sunday Times>2 ME <2T: Manchester Examiner and T: The Times>2 <2Times>2 <1A Note on the Text>1 The old Cambridge edition of Shakespeare's works which forms the basis of the Shakespearian texts in this series, uses for its copy-text the first quarto (Q 1) edition of <2Richard III>2 -- an edition which modern scholarship has since shown to be "bad', that is to say, a reported or memorially contaminated text. The later Folio text, which differs in thousands of readings from Q 1 is now considered to have greater authority than the Cambridge editors allowed, and every modern edition, while being an amalgam of the two, puts the emphasis on the Folio. From the point of view of sense and style the Folio is in very many readings preferable, so I have kept to the Cambridge text only where those things are not impaired. One place perhaps needs a special explanation: in leaving the Cambridge readings during the murderer's dialogue in I.4 before Clarence's entrance, I have been influenced by the fact that the quarto text has often been preferred on the stage. <1INTRODUCTION>1 The theatre has a proprietorial fondness for <2Richard III.>2 It is a minor play and has been in many ways unpalatable to audiences -- long, confusing, elephantine in its ironies and relentlessly iambic. The eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries had no doubts that as it stood it was unplayable, and twentieth-century audiences, more sheepish about the drastic textual overhaul that the play had undergone, have nevertheless swallowed even the shortened original with misgivings. And yet in spite of its drawbacks, <2Richard III>2 has held on as one of the most popular of Shakespeare's plays. The reason of course has lain in its hero; but not for the things that generate books and courses of lectures, the things that make, say, Hamlet as well digested out of the theatre as in it. This play has owed its status solely to the limelight. Richard is a performer, and whether he is the transparent exhibitionist of Colley Cibber's eighteenth century adaptation or the masked Proteus of Shakespeare, he is a gift to the actor. On the strength of this gift the play has always been dubbed the "showpiece of the Theatre Theatrical'.s Yet this theatrical favouritism has been a strait-jacket as much as an advantage. Theatre critics are more willing than they would dare to be with <2Hamlet>2 or <2King Lear>2 to say what they think ought to be shown. Any actor who, for whatever reason, has avoided the tradition of the virtuoso Richard, has been reproached as though he had cheated the theatre of its right. But over the last century the virtuoso Richard has lost his innocence. Before Irving, towards the end of the nineteenth century, he was performed in all earnestness, and audiences came away thunderstruck. Since Irving attitudes towards the play have become more sophisticated. There is a suspicion that the old magic is child's play, and that what used to be tragedy is only melodrama. The tradition of a Richard who must lift his audience out of their seats has been vitiated by a certain knowingness. Only very few actors in modern times have dared to seize the part as a solo turn. The rest have ducked the limelight, at first with no discernible motive apart from embarrassment, and then later with a sense of inter- pretative purpose. Always there has been nostalgic dismay in the reviews. But nostalgia would like to have both the simplicity and the sophistication. Irving himself played the part both ways, and though he was reviled by both the old guard and the new according to their views of 9 10 the play, he succeeded with most in getting away with it. <2The Athenaeum>2 (26 December 1896) was shocked that he should have transformed a "tragic role' into a "character part', but George Bernard Shaw in <2The Saturday>2 <2Review>2 of the same day complained that he had gone for a "pathetically sublime ending'. On the other hand A.B. Walkeley in the <2Illustrated>2 <2London News,>2 also of the same day, loved him for treating the play as "an enormously amusing tragedy', featuring "Punch Gloster and his dog Toby Buckingham'. The first soliloquy, he said approvingly, was spoken "as who should say ""Please make no mistake, I am the villain of this play; sit tight, keep your eye on me, and I will see you get your money's worth.''' Against that, there were those who were awestruck by his heroism, his final "face of steel' which he bore "though terror gnaws his entrails'.s Irving himself, whatever his interpretation, could never be negligible. He dominated the production; everyone else, said Walkeley in his review, was "mere crowd', except Genevieve Ward as Margaret. But he left to his successors, living in more hardbitten times, the almost impossible task of inflating a balloon to which he had, though slyly, given a slow puncture. For in spite of Walkeley and Shaw, the pad was still expected to be terrific. Enough of their jauntiness had been taken on board to make the play something of a joke, but not enough to absolve it from having to evoke the old terror and pity. Walkeley was content not to feel a "hap'orth' of either and Shaw had imagined for Forbes-Robertson, whom he urged to take the part, a "charming' Richard, a "gay, ecstatic villain', who, at the end, lightly pitches his crown to his opponent and dies a gentleman to the last.s But the legend of Garrick's and Edmund Kean's extraordinary effect on their contemporaries in the mid eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries could not so easily be effaced. "By Jove,' Byron had written in his diary when he came back from seeing Kean as Richard, "he is a soul! Life -- Nature -- truth without exaggeration or diminution. Kemble's Hamlet is perfect; -- but Hamlet is not Nature. Richard is a man; and Kean is Richard.'s Theatrical nostalgia, united with the new cynicism resulted in an awkwardly hybrid ideal. Shaw's review had coincided with Walkeley's in saying that <2Richard>2 III was no more than a glorified Punch and Judy show, and Shaw had added that it was a favourite with the world because the world was no more than a "mischievous schoolboy'. Agate in <2The Sunday>2 <2Times>2 11 October 1925) echoed Shaw in saying that <2Richard III>2 was a "boy's play -- for one boy to write and another to see', but at the same time he wanted Richard to be "magnificent', one for whom "we demand. . . at the end, not the gallows but the Judgement seat'. At a time when naturalism was "in', when Hamlet was being done in modern dress and cigarettes, <2Richard III>2 was being claimed for the old blood-and-thunder 11 school. But the heart had gone out of it, and actors were unwilling, or did not know how to go through the motions. Neither did the play invite outright experiment. Leopold Jessner in Berlin (1920) could daringly dispense with gothic arches and heraldry and dress his characters in historically incorrect symbolic colours, disposing them up and down on a huge symbolic staircase. But his Richard, riding his sword like a hobby- horse and lolloping down the steps to die ignominiously at the bottoms implies a level of political interest in the play which in England and the States it simply did not attract. Not until the Hall-Barton trilogy in 1963-4 was the story treated coherently as a sordid game of power politics, rather than as a portrait of a picturesque individual. So it limped on, neither escaping nor living up to the eminent tragedians, the evasions of actors only drawing reminders from the critics which pushed the play further into the past. When Herbert Farjeon urged Balliol Holloway in the 1920s to remember that this was "essentially a show part' and wished he would play it more "showily' he had Edwin Forrest (no doubt distantly) in mind. It was a "gaudy part,' he said, "demanding an actor of melodramatic genius, rather than one versed in subtleties and fine shades'.s When Emlyn Williams did a low-key Richard in 1937, Ivor Brown had no patience with it: "according to my view of the play as a thick-eared melodrama about Dirty Dick with poetic ""trimmings'', this version was over-subtilized and underlit.'s Brown's ideal sounds like the Richard Barry Sullivan was doing in the 1860s. And when at last, in 1942, Donald Wolfit did the part at full blast, terrifying both cast and audience, the relief was plain. Here was no "interpretation', "no introspective figure of evil,' wrote James Agate in <2The Sunday Times>2 (18 January 1942) but a Richard "conceived in the back-of-the-pit, Saturday night vein demanded by this roaring melodrama'. J.C. Trewin in <2The Observer>2 of the same day was equally grateful that at last the play was being treated as a "larking melodrama'. But in the effort to keep the play in the old virtuoso tradition, the best they could do was to invoke a parody of it. In its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century heyday, critics had always implored actors not to overlook the subtleties and fine shades, the introspection and morality. But the reversal was inevitable, once the "boy's play' notion had made a theatrical mascot of it. The problem is making Richard believable. He is so absolute a villain, so untentative and undivided. He goes from crime to crime congratulating himself, and at last when he does pause, in the dream soliloquy, it is too late to make much difference. There are moments before this crisis which actors can develop but it is hard work turning Richard into Macbeth. From the point of view of roundedness, of light and shade, even of motivation, Richard strains credulity. One is inclined to give up and make 12 the best of him as melodrama. The difficulty with that approach is that Richard is then regarded too gratefully as the one entertaining role in an otherwise dreary collection of interchangeable nobles and wailing queens. The play becomes a penance which we suffer for his sake. Only his extraordinary glamour can compensate for the relentless ironies and symmetries of the rest of the play. On his own, however, all the things that strain our credulity are nakedly on display. He has nothing but sheer showmanship to get by with. Olivier, who carried it off brilliantly, felt it to be a sort of hypnotism: "I felt a little power of hypnotisrn; I felt that I had them. It went to my head . . . to such an extent that I didn't even bother to put on the limp. I thought I've got them anyway. I needn't bother with all this characterization any more. It's an awful story really.'s Without a production which grants the rest of the play its own corresponding reality, Richard is always within a hair's- breadth of the wrong sort of laughter. Even Olivier did not escape it, as T.C. Worsely pointed out in a review of his revival in 1949; he had allowed it to degenerate from "laughter that is crossed with a shudder' to straight "ordinary' laughter.s But once allow Richard's monstrousness to belong in its own peculiar world and the whole exercise becomes less precarious. The mode is altered, and the audience sheds its expectations. From being merely a piece of dazzling (or failed) theatricality, the play can become a formidable evocation of human depravity. <1The Elizabethan Richard>1 An audience in 1593 had the advantage over us in not having to surmount expectations of psychological realism. Against a background of morality plays, dramatized debates, seasonal festivities and pageant offerings, the drama of a closer personal illusion was an innovation. This unshaded, undivided, curiously unmotivated Richard would have needed no apology. Besides he had the momentum, almost unimaginable now, of what the historian of it, G.B. Churchill, has justifiably called the Richard saga. In <2Richard the Third up to Shakespeare>2 he shows that as soon as Richmond had been crowned Henry VII, Richard had been called Anti- Christ and Henry the messenger of God. From then on the particulars had accumulated; conjecture became fact, other people's crimes were foisted on him, and murders he had connived at he was said to have performed. What started as broad propaganda by the Tudor court chroniclers turned into a general fascination with the man. By the time Shakespeare wrote his play, then, Richard was vividly alive in the popular imagination. He was bad and damned, almost by definition. 13 He needed no explanation. The analogy with that other self-defined villain, the Vice from the morality plays, which Shakespeare was the first to seize on, fitted perfectly. Richard's manipulation of the plot, his assumption of piety with the other characters and his mask-dropping with the audience, above all his enjoyment and familiarity, would have reminded his listeners (as he reminds himself) of that enormously popular theatrical character. The Vice had established a tradition of the self- assenting villain.s United here with the historical tyrant, Richard's habitual complacency -- which now threatens to let the bottom out of the play -- would then have been simply part of an inexorable and ironic moral pattern. Even as the audience were laughing they would have seen the devil's horns. When at the end "the bloody dog is dead', there would have been no hesitation in dismissing him since there would have been no concern during the play to think of him as a feeling individual. His solidity derives from his language, his wit, his manner; he assurnes that the audience inhabits his world, and he theirs. In a play which is rigidly formal and patterned, he is colloquial, familiar and, for his soliloquies, downstage, confiding. He is perfectly realized, without being psychologically elaborated. In the context of the whole play and of the history of its production this perception of him is crucial. The idea of historical Nemesis which pervades the play draws its strength from the impenetrability of its chief agent, Richard. It is very often at the cost of this theme that Richard's character is "psychologized' in production. Shakespeare is singular among writers who treated Richard in refusing (perversely, it might seem to us) to develop his inward life. Thomas More's biography of him, which first appeared in 1543, had been rich material for that. More had shown a "deepe dissimuler', rankling with malice, wrath and envy, and haunted by conscience after the murder of the princes, sometimes leaping from his bed suddenly and running round his room in the "stormy remembrance of his abominable dede'.s In the anonymous <2True Tragedy of Richard III,>2 a play which was shown on the public stage not long before Shakespeare's, Richard is drawn, crudely but sometimes with much power, as a self-gnawing, introverted villain, torn by ambition and conscience, but defiantly bloodthirsty and self-hating. Long explicit speeches make these characteristics clear; there is no question, as there is in Shakespeare, of the actor having to develop them. The same emphasis on feelings involved treating Richard's victims as pathetically as possible. In the <2True Tragedy>2 the murder of the princes is actually shown. In More, where it is also graphically described, we see them on an earlier occasion in the Tower, pining and fearful; his account, too, of the abduction of the young Duke of York from his mother in sanctuary is unbearably moving. 14 Shakespeare neglects these opportunities. His Richard never talks of his ambition, never hankers, as does the Richard in the <2True Tragedy,>2 for the feeling of the crown on his head. Whatever voluble cravings, malice or envy he bore in <2Henry VI Part>2 3 are left behind him. His deformity is no longer offered as a reason for "wanting to o'erbear such / As are of better person than myself.' Lady Anne tells us in Act III of his "timorous dreams' but we might never have known. His dream at Bosworth is no longer of "horrible devilles. . . pulling and haling of hym', as Hardyng, one of the chroniclers describes it,s but a staid and formal visitation. By the same token his victims are treated summarily. The princes are made little of. Tyrrel has his eloquent set-speech about their murder, but there is no dramatization of their plight. The pathos of Clarence is also acknowledged, but Shakespeare is at pains to give equal weight to the fact that his death is retribution for his past betrayals. Shakespeare's drift is always away from the personal sympathies and antipathies which cluster round evil doings, and towards irony, detachment and formalism. For in coming to the story after the <2Henry VI>2 trilogy his design was bound to be different from that of his predecessors. In the sequence as a whole (which, though not written as such, is -- as John Barton's RSC trilogy in 1963-4 showed -- intimately linked), Richard's inhumanity is not remarkable. Whenever he strikes he cannot help unwittingly dealing out punishment for murders, betrayals, or at least connivances, almost as bad as his own. Even the murder of the princes is no worse than the Lancastrian murder of Rutland. Justice prevails, but in a blind, mechanical, automatic way; that quality is epitomized as much by the pragmatic insouciance of Richard, as by Margaret's endless balance sheets of murder. In such a world of retributive symmetries and ironic reversals, sympathy, psychology and remorse (beyond what serves to make the pattern clear) are a distraction. As Shakespeare's two points of reference -- the Vice and the Tudor myth -- begin to fade, as they inevitably did even in Shakespeare's life time, Richard becomes more of an individual personality. His detachment, his invention, his histrionic talents come to seem exclusively his personal attributes rather than the quaIities which link him to his theatrical ancestor and to the whole theme of the play. That theme begins to rest more and more heavily on Margaret and the other women, and on those formal moments before each execution when the victim recognizes how his death confirms the general pattern. The two sides of the play are driven further and further apart until Richard stands alone in front, an extraordinary phenomenon forcing us nevertheless to try and understand him. His easy indifference to the usual constraints, which before was the privilege of his type, becomes something to wonder at and almost to admire. A pleasantly 15 absorbing moral difficulty arises. He begins to need interpreting, explaining, excusing. It becomes a challenge to harmonize his villainy with what is assumed to be his basic humanity. "The bloody dog is dead' begins to sound brutal or priggish. The rest of the play becomes impossibly tedious. It was inevitable that if the play was to survive the period in which it was written, it would do so in a version which could accommodate these shifts in perception. Colley Cibber's adaptation in 1700 was written with nothing in mind but to give Colley Cibber in the lead a chance to strut and rant almost without interruption. But it so happened that he paid lip service to the by then standard link between conscience, or at least agitation, and villainy, so opening the door to all the psychological and moral complexities of later interpretations. By the end of the nineteenth century, the realistic theatre had become so expert that Shakespeare's character, restored (as it was said of Irving's performance) with "Pre- Raphaelite minuteness',s could no longer be convincingly contained. The essential flatness of Richard was exposed. He became a Punch, but not the hideously mocking figure of the sixteenth-century imagination -- only a children's bogeyman. Henry James put the point after seeing Irving, but without imagining the sort of non-illusionistic theatre that might cope with the play he concluded that "the represented Shakespeare is simply no longer to be borne'. "The attempt', he wrote, "to make real, or even plausible, a loose, violent, straddling romance like <2Richard III.>2 . . only emphasises what is coarse in such a hurly-burly and does nothing for what is fine. . . The thing suffers (till it positively howls) from everything to which, in fiction, -- the fiction of the theatre or any other -- the present general cultivation of a closer illusion exposes it' <2(Harper's Weekly,>2 23 January 1897).s By contrast the thing thrived on everything to which the Elizabethan acceptance of non-illusion exposed it. In the brief interval between the first performance, probably in 1593 at the old Theatre in Shoreditch, and the death of Richard Burbage in 1619, the play became immensely popular. The number of quarto editions of it printed before the first folio collection in 1623 exceeded all the other Shakespeare plays except <2Henry IV Part>2 1; Francis Meres in <2Palladis Tamia>2 (1598) put it among the six plays which showed that Shakespeare was as excellent "among the English in tragedy' as Seneca "among the Latins'.sA horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse' became a byword, turning up with variations in plays throughout the period. Richard was one of Burbage's most famous parts, and the historical figure was virtually synonymous with the actor. On one occasion he was actually named, by a slip of the tongue, instead of Richard. Bishop Corbet in <2Iter Boreale>2 (1621) tells the story of a guide showing a party of visitors 16 round the field at Bosworth, and "when he would have said ""King Richard died'' / And called ""A horse! a horse!'', he ""Burbage'' cried.'s It is easy to see how the open-air thrust stage of the Elizabethan public theatres would have favoured this kind of play; how easily it would have accommodated on the one hand its movements between naturalism and formalism, and on the other Richard's freedom in stepping in and out of the action. There is often, now, a self-consciousness about both those things. So much is "the cultivation of a closer illusion' our starting point, that the other has a faintly <2avant-garde>2 flavour about it. But for Burbage the two worlds of audience and make-believe would still have run naturally into each other. Coming out on to the platform from his entrance in the tiring-house wall at the back, he would have launched himself very definitely into the assembled company. The heads of the groundlings craning up at him would have pressed round all three edges. The first gallery to the left and right, on a level with the stage, would have been only a few feet away. Further off, out in front and high above on all sides, the great cliff of faces would have been clearly visible in the afternoon light. Though two-and-a-half to three thousand people do not make for intimacy, the audience could never have been an anonymous presence, either to the actor, or to itself. His own doors of exit and entrance would have been further away from him than much of the audience, and he could have had no sense ofa backstage world on either side of him. Nor, in this sparse play, would there have been much in the way of scenery: a bench-couch for Clarence, a table, a throne would have been all that was necessary. The court costumes of course would have been as gorgeous as possible, but so too would the clothes of many of those watching, England being a very "player's stage of gorgeous attire'.s When in Act III the play's crowd, dressed probably much like the groundlings -- there would have been no attempt at period dressing -- was on stage to offer Richard the crown, and Richard was "aloft' in his balcony over the tiring-house doors, dressed like the lords nearby, the mirror image would have been complete. At the edge of the stage, in the position occupied by all commentators on the action, clowns, fools and Vices,s Burbage would have been able effortlessly to borrow, so to speak, the reality of the outside world, so as to reinforce his own solidity as Richard. There is an anecdote which testifies to the powerful effect of this curiously double image. Manningham recorded it in his diary as he heard it (on 13 March 1602): that "Upon a tyme when Burbidge played Rich. 3. there was a citizen grewe soe far in liking ws him, that before shee went from the play shee appointed him to come that night unto hir by the name of R. the 3.'s Olivier in his film (1956), looking straight into the eye of the audience via the camera's lense, is the nearest modern equivalent of that easy 17 conjunction of actor and role which Burbage was able to exploit. And Olivier avoiding the camera is the equivalent of Burbage stepping back from the edge and turning in the moment someone else joined him. How "natural' or formal acting was in general at that period has been much debated. It was probably much more formal in the early years of Shakespeare's company than it was, say, a decade later when his drama had moved towards a more personal, emotional perception of humanity. And it must, too, have changed according to the theatre used and the kind of audience. The court, the private halls, and then in 1608 the indoor theatre at Blackfriars which Burbage's company, the King's Men (formerly the Chamberlain's Men), used regularly in the winter, would have accommodated finer detail than the huge open-air theatres. But even within a play (certainly in this one) a variety of styles must have been used. The sort of off hand tone implied in Richard's "Tut, thou art all ice', and the quick flashes and turns of dialogue at, say, 1.3.92-102, must have been conversational; more emphatic and heightened perhaps, but intended to convey the irnpression of everyday speaking. Whereas Tyrrel's and Clarence's set-pieces, and even more the lamentations of the women, need the tones and rhythms, whatever they may have been precisely, of rhetoric. The incantations would have fallen easily upon ears accustomed to the litany, and in general long, carefully-organized speeches would have been listened to with expert appreciation or at least with patience. In the modern theatre they are often shortened, and we can only suffer them if they are particularly well acted. Margaret has to be played by a Peggy Ashcroft if she is to be bearable. Of course the young boys playing the Queens could have pleased Elizabethan audiences by being excellent speakers rather than actors as we understand the term. The First Quarto, which is thought to have been put together from the actors' memory of their parts, perhaps when they were on tour and for some reason without their promptbook, reflects no impatience with the choric passages. It is surprisingly complete, only two hundred lines shorter than the Folio,s and the cuts hardly touch the great rhetorical moments at all. On the other hand Richard would have needed an actor who could sound "natural', or whatever passed for natural on the stage. He is a stylist, but he is always direct. On the main points he could not be plainer: "I am determined to prove a villain', "I'll have her, but I'll not keep her long', "Chop off his head, man', "I wish the bastards dead.' Indeed, on one level the play can be seen as an elaborate exercise in rhetoric which Richard, when he is not using it for his own ends (as when with Anne), is always implicitly puncturing. Most of the others allow themselves the grand gesture, the full-blown speech: Clarence's dream, Margaret's curse, Edward's self-laceration, Elizabeth with her hair down 18 insisting that no one hinder her "to wail and weep', the three women resting their "unrest on England's lawful earth'. When Elizabeth in the great lamentation scene at IV.4 calls words "poor breathing orators' that do "ease the heart' she gives an intimation of the manner in which they were spoken. Richard's plain speaking is a built-in antidote; his "Margaret' just before she ends her curse is devastating not only because it turns her curse upon herself, but because one word does it. When his mother, just before her curse, promises to be "mild and gentle in my words' he adds "And brief, good mother', glancing again at the intolerable wordiness of rhetoric. The duchess does it herself, though too late for anyone to profit by it, when she says in IV.4 "Why should calamity be full of words'. On the page, then, it looks as though Shakespeare is exploring the limitations and possibilities of certain kinds of language; in the theatre it would have been, as well, an exploration of different kinds of acting. As a play about dissimulation, among other things, it is appropriate that it should also be about performance. Richard succeeds in the first half not so much by being wicked as by having what old-fashioned actors call technique. He is a professional, and as such is highly conscious of his own and other people's styles. Clarence worries him briefly, because he is "well- spoken, and perhaps / May move your hearts to pity, if you mark him': a rival artist. Richard's remark about the quaking tragedian who murders his breath in the middle of a word and then again begins and stops again (III.5. 1-3) is an appraisal from an expert. As an actor of the "natural' school he has no time for the exaggerations of the "heroic'. Buckingham knows well enough what Richard means and develops the satire. The audience would have recognized it as a dart against Alleyn (or at least his imitators) at the Fortune Theatre, where Marlowe's high-reaching plays were being performed. Burbage uttering Richard's level ironies would have been the very antithesis of Alleyn conjuring Heaven and Hell as, say, Tamburlaine. At least, this squares with Burbage's reputation, for he was remembered for his "lively', that is to say life-like, action; a cliche for any good actor, but distinguished from Alleyn's talent for "stalking and roaring'.s1 However we try to imagine an Elizabethan performance of <2Richard III,>2 it would be a mistake to think of a "production' or of acting in any very elaborate sense. There was no time. The London companies worked a repertory system for a public so voracious for new plays that even the most popular were not repeated more than once a month or so. Andrew Gurr has worked out that, in the 1594-5 season at the Fortune, the Admiral's Men, Alleyn's company, "performing six days a week, offered their audience a total of thirty-eight plays, of which twenty-one were new to the repertory, added at more or less fortnightly intervals. Two of the new plays were performed only once, and only eight survived through to the next 19 season.'s The Chamberlain's Men could have offered no less. After learning the lines, and trying to keep them separate from the five other plays that were on that week, there can have been little time for rehearsal or private study. A performance must have been largely a matter of theatrical aplomb. Casting according to "lines of business' -- by which each actor specializes in a certain type -- would have eased the strain, and so too would the use of conventional gestures. Of course, conventional gesture need not be stiff and formal, nor need it be a literal-minded code where each movement translates the spoken word like classical mime in ballet. Certainly such a code had been a fashion on the stage, but by the early seventeenth century it had come to be generally ridiculed. Philip Rossiter in 1601 described it as "the old exploded action in comedies when if they did pronounce Memini, they would point to the hinder part of their heads, if Video, put their finger in their eye'.s There is no hint of that in this play, where gesture is symbolic, almost ritualistic in places, but always prompted by the significance of the scene. Shakespeare appears to have been at pains to provide his actors with some expressive action at each important moment, which would focus the meaning and emotion of that situation. In other words, however sketchy they were in their acting, however hard they were concentrating instead on remembering their lines there was usually a strong physical picture they could make or react to. For example, the three women each in turn sitting on the floor would by that alone have signified as much as their words could of their abandonment to misery. The action was conventional but not without power. Again, Elizabeth's dishevelment would itself have spoken her state of mind. The Duchess, according to Clarence's children in II.2, beats her breast and shakes her head, looking sadly at them -- unoriginal, but a useful peg for the boy who acted her. The court too is helped at a difficult moment. "They all start', says the Folio stage direction when Richard reveals that Clarence is dead; but since the actors might, as the scene proceeds, find it hard going to keep up the impression of shock, Shakespeare creates it for them with Buckingham's "look I so pale, Lord Dorset, as the rest', and Dorset replies "No man. . . but his red colour hath forsook his cheeks.' Similar examples are plentiful. Anne, confronted by the kneeling Richard and clutching the sword that he has given her, with the corpse of Henry VI at hand, needs scarcely to act at all to convey the impossible irony of her position, her real helplessness in the face of his disguised power. Stanley kneeling for mercy while Edward laments his own lack of it is a juxtaposition that brings out the pitiless atmosphere of the court. When Elizabeth and the Duchess halt the king and his army, their physical feebleness and powerful fury are at once expressed by the stage picture. 20 Richard, characteristically, is given a sure eye for a vivid symbolic picture and places himself between two bishops, or takes Buckingham's hand when ascending the throne, as though he were his own stage manager. But his "business' helps the play as a whole, crystallizing the essential part of each high moment, and providing a vivid image for the other actors to react to. When he suddenly bares the arm that everyone knows always to have been shrivelled, the whole group is bound to be thunderstruck; when he appears on the walls with Buckingham in "marvellous rotten armour' and then the head of Hastings is brought on, the Mayor's part acts itself. The play has, in an age of directors' theatre, been called "actor-proof partly because of these vivid theatrical moments which look after the actors so well. One such moment which is perhaps not so obvious to us now is when Richard sits on his throne after Buckingham's exit at IV.2.26. For the first time in the play he ponders, briefly soliloquizing without obviously addressing the audience (II.4l-4 and 58-63). Assuming that he is still sitting on his throne at these moments (there is no Folio or Quarto direction to say that he descends from it) the sight of him there plotting further crimes would have darkened him suddenly. Richmond's later description of him in his oration to his soldiers as a "base foul stone, made precious by the foil / Of England's chair, where he is falsely set' would have recalled that moment. Further than that, his position there, well back from the edge of the stage, talking probably in genuine soliloquy, would have placed him at last within the play that until now he has seemed to manipulate from outside. Having conquered it, he is now trapped in it. All his later efforts to regain his old familiarity with the audience fail. His little joke, for example, about going to Elizabeth "a jolly thriving wooer' is quite in the old vein, but the laugh in the reign of her grand-daughter Elizabeth I would have been instantly against him. When Shakespeare wrote <2Richard III,>2 London companies were unstable and fluctuating groups of actors, frequently forced out of town because of the prohibitions on the theatres during the plague epidemics. Lord Pembroke's Men, the company to which Shakespeare and Burbage are thought to have belonged in 1593, was in any case newly established and still without any name comparable to Alleyn's with which to draw the crowds. Edward Alleyn had been the chief actor of an earlier, larger company, the Admiral's-Lord Strange's Men, a remnant of which now formed the Pembroke's Men. After a quarrel with Richard Burbage's father, James, Alleyn had split off and joined Philip Henslowe at the Fortune. In 1593, while on tour in the country, Pembroke's Men were at such a low ebb that they had been forced to sell their costumes and some of their playbooks.s In these conditions, it was obvious that the company needed a play that they could easily make a success of, and which would 21 show off their leading actor while distinguishing him most sharply from his rival. History plays were in vogue at the time. The <2Henry VI>2 trilogy had succeeded, especially the first part in which Talbot triumphed -- "his bones', said Nashe, "new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times) who in the tragedian that represents his person imagine they behold him fresh bleeding'.s The only character of comparable theatrical attraction was Richard, who had already begun to emerge above the crowd of barons in the last part of <2Henry VI. Ri-chard III>2 was the perfect answer to the company's problems. But during the following twenty years the company (since 1594 the Chamberlain's Men) must have developed and changed immensely. Working together in secure conditions, with a steady supply of Shakespeare's gradually maturing plays they would by the turn of the century have looked back on <2Richard III>2 as belonging to their apprentice days. By the early seventeenth century the rage for history plays had fallen off. Closer and more intimate plots, characters that were nearer home, had replaced them. Nevertheless the play was kept in the repertory. Quarto editions of it continued to be printed after the first in 1597. The second came in 1598, and the others followed in 1602, 1605, 1612 and 1622. Then came the Folio collection in 1623, followed by still more quartos in 1629 and 1634. Even ifits rhetoric seemed old-fashioned and stiff, Richard himself, more supple and colloquial, would have continued to fascinate. At Blackfriars, Burbage would have been able to refine his style and draw the audience into his confidence more privately and insinuatingly. As the grand impersonal theme of historical Nemesis dropped into the background, Richard would have come to seem more like the personally vindictive villains of Webster and Tourneur. The close atmosphere, the smaller audience, the candles (though supplemented by daylight through the large windows) would have emphasized all that was sinister. No name emerges certainly as Richard after Burbage's death in 1619, but ironically the first recorded performance of the play occurs after his time. It was obviously still liked enough in 1634 to be performed at Court on the queen's birthday, "it being the first play she was at since her Majesty's delivery of the Duke of York'.s <1Richard after the Restoration>1 In 1642 civil war broke out and the theatres were closed, not to be officially opened and licensed again until the Restoration in 1660. When the play emerged again it was into a completely different atmosphere. Restoration tragedy was heroic but moralizing and sententious, while all 22 the real immorality of the age -- or at least of the court which dominated theatrical fashion -- all its wit, lechery and love of intrigue was mirrored in its comedy. When Thomas Betterton, the leading tragedian of the period, took the part of Richard III, it was not in Shakespeare's play but in one written by John Caryl in 1666, <2The English Princess,>2 in which the story had been completely reshaped to suit the new taste. The ramifications of the plot and the sentiments that animate it are worth pausing over for a moment so as to show how outlandish Shakespeare's play would have come to seem. In the new version, Love and Fame are the mainsprings of the action, and the plot is organized on the principle of balance and contrast. Elizabeth is the central figure, with Richmond and Richard as rivals for her hand. Richard appoints William Stanley, brother to Lord Stanley, to prevail on his sister, Mistress Stanley, Elizabeth's confidante, to act for Richard in his suit. Mistress Stanley stands firm and William Stanley turns the tables by declaring his own love for Elizabeth, vowing to win her when her rival suitors have killed each other. Meanwhile we learn that Elizabeth's page-boy is really a Breton gentlewoman in love with Richmond, who has run away from her father Lord Chandew, a nobleman in Richmond's camp, for no very clear reason except, obscurely, her love. She is then employed by Richmond's agent, Lord Stanley, to help on Richmond's suit with Elizabeth. A scene between Richard and Elizabeth follows in which the king is shown to be unequivocally tyrannical and cruel: "Prepare for marriage or a funeral / To be my wife or not to be at all.' All the skilful dissimulation of Shakespeare's villain, the cool indifference to humanity which make him as free from malice as from compunction, is replaced here by growling and sabre-rattling. When Elizabeth exits he is gl-ven a soliloquy for which the direction reads "Pointing his sword' and in which he describes mowing down "All that grew up between me and the crown'. Elizabeth who, of course refuses his suit, is imprisoned and the king is later seen arranging to have her murdered. Meanwhile, Richmond, unwilling for fear of her life to fight Richard while Elizabeth is prisoner, manages on the eve of battle to penetrate the enemy lines and attempt her rescue. She repulses him, and in the name of honour bids him -- in some characteristically tautologous couplets -- win her openly in battle: "You must not cast such scandal on our Flame / By your concern for me you must be more / And not less than what you were before.' Later there is an interesting variant on the dream scene in which Richard is revealed from behind a curtain, "in a distracted posture, newly risen from his bed, walking in his dream with a dagger in his hand and surrounded by the Ghosts of those he has formerly killed'. The soliloquy he then speaks ends with a firm recognition of his guilt: "Of sovereign power, it is the only 23 curse / To be successful and then feel Remorse.' Enough has been said to give the flavour of the version without having to enter into the complications of the de/nouement which involves disguisings, mistaken identities and happy reunions. William Stanley does the decent thing and abandons his hopeless love in exchange for Fame which he hopes to win by killing Richard in the battle. To do so, however, he has to draw Richard by wearing armour like Richmond's, but Richmond discovers them in the nick of time and wins the honour of the villain's death for himself. Though pedestrian in the extreme' the language of this play never suggests a natural speaking voice. There is a prosy sort of elevation in it which precludes the raciness of lines such as Shakespeare's about the "Breton bastards' who had been "beaten, bobbed and thumped' in their own land by the English. And yet Betterton, we learn, played it "excellently well' and the whole play gained "applause from the town, as well as profit to the company'.s In a Restoration production of Shakespeare's <2Richard III,>2 on the other hand, he played Edward IV, leaving the more familiar, less sententious Richard to the character actor who specialized in villains, Samuel Sandford. All that is otherwise certainly known about that production is its date, about 1689-90, and its cast, a list of which has been found written in a contemporary hand in a copy of the 1634 Quarto edition of the play. Montague Summers argues from its composition that the performance took place then, but he also mentions allusions to the play which show that it was probably in the repertory in the 1670s and 1680s.s If allusions, descriptions and stories about a play are any measure of its success, <2Richard III>2 seems to have been a failure. Little survives. Colley Cibber, that garrulous follower of and participator in the life of the theatres during the 1690s and later, and the man who, as the author of its most famous adaptation, had such an interest in the play, seems never to have seen only to have imagined Sandford in the part. All his illustrations of Sandford's acting are taken from other plays. In the small world of the London theatre, much smaller and more exclusive than before the Civil War, it would have been difficult not to have heard of a success. In 1689-90, London was served by only one company, an amalgamation of the earlier two, Davenant's and Killigrew's, who had found in 1682 that there was not room enough in the town for both of them. The theatre they settled in was Killigrew's, the Theatre Royal in Bridges Street. Conventionally known as Drury Lane, it was basically the same as the Drury Lane that rose to eminence under Garrick in the second part of the eighteenth century. The most obvious difference between the theatres after the Restoration and the indoor theatres before the closure, was that the later theatres were designed to take scenery. Of course scenery, notably 24 Inigo Jones's, had been in use before in England, but chiefly at court, and the staging of plays in the so-called private indoor theatres had not in general, as far as we know, differed from the staging in the open-air theatres.s The scenery that so distinguishes the Restoration theatre was not an all- surrounding environment for the actors so much as a three-dimensional picture hung in the background. It was a pleasure in itself, a decoration to the play, not an attempt at illusion. It consisted of sets of matching wings and shutters, which were drawn on and off along grooves in the floor and in overhead beams, the shutters meeting in the middle with a click and a dividing line. They were placed behind the proscenium arch, and their changes, fascinating in themselves, were carried out in full view of the audience. The drop-curtain was never used to conceal scene-changes until Irving introduced the practice in 1880.s The actors used the deep apron in front of the proscenium -- though more so in comedy than in high tragedy -- in general making their exits and entrances not through the wings but through doors set in the arch at each side, above which were balconies that could be used by the actors. In many respects, therefore, the Restoration theatre resembled the earlier indoor theatres, which in turn reproduced the features of Elizabethan public open-air theatres: the doors, the area above and the bare acting area are all there. Even the scenery-area behind the proscenium, considering how frequently it is used in Cibber's play to "discover' tableaux as the shutters are drawn back, could be derived from the Elizabethan curtained discovery-space between the doors (not used in Shakespeare's play). Furthermore, Restoration actors were drawn as far forward as possible on the apron so as to supplement the overhead light from the chandeliers or hoops over the stage with light from the house, which of course remained unvarying throughout the performance. Footlights too, if it is possible to generalize from the one piece of evidence for them in the Restoration periods, would have been a powerful attraction downstage. The actor, therefore, was almost more closely related to the auditorium than to the scenery behind him. A manager attempting to deprive the actors of that relation by cutting back the apron to fit more benches into the pit, or by doing away with the proscenium doors for more boxes (so forcing them back among the scenes for their exits and entrances) always met with protests. Cibber, for example, lamented the loss of four feet from the apron, which kept the actors back by ten feet "not only from the stage's being shortened in front, but likewise. . . in respect to the spectators that fill [the stage-boxes]' which had been put in instead of the "former lower Doors of Entrance' on each side. In Cibber's day there were at least other doors of entrance left, but when they were briefly done away with altogether at the end of the eighteenth century the actors were seriously 25 discomfited. Cibber recalled with regret that "when the actors were in possession of that forwarder space to advance upon, the voice was then more in the middle of the house, so that the most distant ear had not the least doubt or difficulty. . . all objects were thus drawn nearer the sense, every painted scene was stronger;. . . every rich or fine coloured habit had a more lively lustre. Nor was the minutest motion of a feature (properly changing with the passion or humour it suited) ever lost as they frequently must be in the obscurity of too great distance'.s The happy conditions described by Cibber were those Sandford enjoyed when he played Richard. We can imagine him vividly, as Anthony Aston describes him in his <2Brief Supplement to CoIley Cibber>2 (1748) "round- shouldered, splay-footed, with a sour face and long lean arms'.s Cibber in his <2Apology>2 tells us that he had a "low crooked person's and "a harsh sullen Pride of Speech, a meditating brow, a stern Aspect, occasionally turning into an almost ludicrous Triumph over all Goodness and Virtue: From thence falling into the most assuasive gentleness and soothing candour of a designing heart.' His voice was acute and piercing, and he would often "slight the ornament of harmony . . . chusing, when the sense would permit him, to lose it than to value it'. He had also a "peculiar skill in his look of marking out to an audience whatever he judged more than their ordinary notice'.s Clearly everything about him proclaimed him villain. Like Caryl's Richard he can have had little of Shakespeare's easy nonchalance. The "assuasive gentleness' would have been a transparent device to cover his obvious wickedness. The moral orthodoxy of the age would not have allowed a villain to be anything but self-consciously odious, nor a virtuous person anything but amiable. That was the didactic purpose of the drama, and, according to Cibber, there were some at least in the audience who were so persuaded by Sandford's villains that they applauded him less than the actors of virtuous characters, lest they should be "look'd upon as an aider or an abettor of the wickedness in view'.s This story casts an interesting light on the more common picture of Restoration audiences: cynical, critical, restless and, largely, ogling and dallying. The description of the pit by a traveller, M. Misson, is typical of the complaints that are scattered through the plays, prologues, epilogues and lampoons of the period: "Men of Quality, particularly the younger sort, some ladies of Reputation and Virtue, and abundance of Damsels that hunt for prey sit altogether. . . higgledy piggledy, chatter, toy, play, hear, hear not.'s Presumably because of the continuous light in the auditorium, the theatre was much more of a social occasion than it is now. Of course the stage might win in the competition for attention. Betterton, said Cibber in his <2Apology,>2 "seemed to seize upon the eyes and ears of the giddy and inadvertant. To have talk'd or look'd another way, 26 would have been thought insensibility or ignorance.'s It is thought that the tragic voice of the time was a kind of chant or recitative,s and although we recoil from the idea, Betterton's musical speaking enchanted his contemporaries. As Edward IV he would have been able to use it in his lament for Clarence. There is nothing there, as there is in Richard's part, which defies intoning. Elizabeth Barry, who played Queen Elizabeth, "had a presence of elevated Dignity, her Mien and Motion superb and gracefully majestick'.s As a tragedy queen, in as magnificent a dress as she could manage, with a "tail' (train) kept in order by a page-boy and a plume of feathers, she would have been difficult to ignore. Anne Bracegirdle as Lady Anne was equally attractive, though in a different way. She was the "Cara, the darling of the theatre', so desirable that "no judge could be cold enough to consider from what other source she became delightful'.s Edward Kynaston as Clarence would have drawn the eyes of the women, for although past middle age by that time he had been a most beautiful youth -- so beautiful that before women came forward to take the female parts he had been put in petticoats. Ladies of fashion in the 1660s had "prided themselves in taking him with them in their coaches to Hyde- park, in his theatrical habit after the play'. Even now he was still handsome, with teeth as "white and even as one would wish to see in a reigning toast of twenty'.s It is an interesting piece of casting, for it suggests that Clarence was regarded as a graceful figure, Shakespeare's poetry having led to his being thought of as a Poet, rather than a ruthless soldier. Against such a dignified and graceful cast, Sandford's crooked figure would have stood sharply out -- the more so since it is likely that he alone would have worn a "period' costume. Like Falstaff and Henry VIII, Richard III was singular, at least in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in being dressed in the original Elizabethan manner. Francis Gentleman in <2The Dramatic Censor,>2 1770, refers to the practice of "dressing him only in the habit of his times',s and "Dramaticus' of the <2Gentleman's Magazine,>2 May 1789, also singles him out for wearing "the habiliments of his time'. The frontispiece to Rowe's edition of the play (1709) shows him wearing a fur-trimmed three-quarter length robe, reminiscent of those worn by Holbein's ambassadors. The practice is never mentioned as an innovation, and it was probably long-standing enough to have included Sandford. Whether or not he also wore a black periwig as Charles II complained stage villains always did,s we cannot know, but what is interesting is that the customary singularity of villains -- in physique, dress and style of acting -- which was reproduced in this Restoration production of <2Richard III,>2 looks forward clearly to Cibber's adaptation ten years later. 27 Cibber himself was conscious of the influence. His perception of Richard led him to believe that Shakespeare would have chosen Sandford to play the part, and when he came to do it himself he "imagined [he] knew how Sandford would have spoken every line of it'. Vanbrugh agreed (though most did not) that he had "his very Look, Gesture, Gait, Speech, and every motion of him'. And Cibber obviously had Sandford in mind when he wrote his version of the play. He called Sandford "a theatrical martyr to poetic justice',s meaning that the distaste he occasioned was only proper to the moral purpose of drama. His own Richard is just that, his nastiness being dwelt on and elaborated in a way which, as we have seen, was not part of Shakespeare's design. And just as Sandford's supporting cast would have been, in all likelihood, decorous, so Cibber's has nothing to do but to set Richard off. <1Cibber' s Richard III>1 Cibber's adaptation of Shakespeare's play eventually became so successful that it lasted in the theatre without serious interruption until the 1870s. But it got off to a limping start in July 1700; in his "To the Reader' in <2Ximena>2 (1719), Cibber says that the play "did not raise me #5 on the third day'.s The Master of the Revels, that is the official censor, ordered him to cut the whole of the first act, which he had added on to the front of Shakespeare's play (drawing largely on <2Henry VI Part>2 3) and of which he was rather proud. The grounds were that the deposed Henry VI "a Character Unfortunate and Pitied, wou'd put the Audience in mind of the late <2King James'.>2s So for the first few years the play opened with Richard's courtship of Lady Anne. Having survived this misfortune, it became a popular piece even before the 1740s when Garrick won for it such general esteem in the theatre that the restoration of Shakespeare was not attempted, even if it was thought of, until 1821. It is about 1500 lines, more than a third, shorter than Shakespeare's play. The 2156 lines of the adaptation are divided about equally between Cibber and Shakespeare, though about 200 of Shakespeare's lines are imported from other plays, chiefly <2Henry VI Part>2 3, <2Henry VI Part 2>2, and <2Henry V.>2 By the early nineteenth century this hybrid was called a "vile jumble',s but in the eighteenth century Cibber was praised (as John Barton has been in our period) for his ingenuity: "stealing jewels. . . to ornament the just owner'.s His own contribution went unnoticed, for in general Shakespeare was not studied outside the theatre, nor was he taught in schools and universities. Besides, alteration was not in principle frowned on, and was 28 even considered proper where the work of a rough untutored author, however much a genius, was concerned. Cibber cut and rearranged extensively in such a way as to give Richard most of the lines most of the time. Characters who offer any sort of competition are dropped, and anything important to the plot related to them is reported. Thus Clarence, Hastings, Edward and Margaret all go, and of course with them eight entire scenes: I. 1 (except for Richard's opening soliloquy), I.3, I.4, II.l, III.2, III.4, III.5, III.6. Rivers, Vaughan and Grey are mutes and their execution (III.3) is reported not shown. Buckingham is neutralized, that is he becomes an attendant lord rather than a co-conspirator. He does not suggest the "little train' (II.2.120) or the plan to separate the uncles from the young king; nor does he instruct Catesby on how to deal with Hastings or argue Cardinal Bourchier into snatching the young Duke of York. His execution is also cut. Not surprisingly Francis Gentleman observed in an editorial note in Bell's <2Shakespeare>2 (1774) that "Buckingham should look like a man of quality, and speak like a man of sense; little more is wanted.'s Besides these excisions and others that have since become more usual (e.g., the citizens' scene at II.3 and the first 33 lines of II.2, in which Clarence's children appear) there is much shortening of the action. Without Margaret to swell the lamentation scene (IV.4), Richard's entrance is delayed by only 17 lines instead of the 135 that he has to wait through in Shakespeare's play. Then the two scenes in which the women appear without Margaret in the original (II.4 and IV.l) are cut, parts of them being incorporated into a new scene invented by Cibber which takes place with the princes in the Tower. The last act is cut by more than half. Only four ghosts appear, and to Richard alone; Richard's dream soliloquy is shortened from 30 to 9 lines; Richmond's prayer is cut, and so also are all but the last few lines of the two orations. These changes do more than concentrate attention on Richard. As far as that goes, to a large extent they undermine him, for they deprive him of his field of action. He can no longer play games with the queen and her faction: twitting them and taking umbrage one moment and opening his arms the next, only to throw suspicion on them in the end for Clarence's murder. He cannot piously pity Margaret, or lay his trap for Hastings. The palpable devices which are laid on for the Mayor and the citizens in III.5 and III.6 are lost to him. Over and above that, the cuts dispose of the whole idea of history coming home to roost. Of course it is Margaret who expresses that theme most explicitly, but all the characters in Shakespeare's play refer to the past, whether they are courtiers, hired assassins, or citizens who chance to meet in the street. "Pretty Rutland' and the clout dipped in his blood, York's paper crown, Warwick forsaken, the 29 queen's former husband and family factious for the house of Lancaster, the Edwards for the Edwards, Richard for Harry -- these things are fresh in everyone's memory in the play and suggest what Buckingham calls "the grossness of this age'. Without them Cibber's Richard is a freak of nature, neither creation nor symbol nor punishment of his times; the people around him are perfectly innocuous, their pasts wiped clean. But Cibber, as a man of the theatre -- he was manager, actor and playwright -- knew his audience. They would have been as baffled by the background of wars and factions as audiences, almost proverbially, are now, and the formal choric interludes would have gone clean against the naturalistic tendencies of the period. A clear narrative, swift, exciting and bloody, with a certain moral self-consciousness to heighten the immorality, was what Cibber substituted. The only history required was enough of the story so far to put the audience in the picture. If it yielded up one more murder for Richard, so much the better. To that end Cibber wrote in a new first act set in the Tower of London, in which Henry VI is kept prisoner while the armies of York and Lancaster battle for the crown at Tewkesbury. In the first scene Stanley tells the Lieutenant of the Tower that Edward has won, and is now king; a proclamation has gone out for the arrest of Edward, Henry's son. Henry VI then enters, soliloquizing on the cares of kingship, after which Lord Stanley and the Lieutenant approach and tell him the news. Tressel enters straight from the battlefield to say that young Edward has been killed and describes the scene much as it takes place in <2Henry VI Part 3>2, V.5. After Henry's lamentations, Tressel warns him that Richard, after murdering his son, "as if unsated with the wounds he had given', rushed to the Tower and has now arrived. Not unnaturally, Henry supposes himself to be the next victim, and with thoughts of death he leaves the stage. At this point Richard enters speaking the soliloquy with which Shakespeare opens the play, minus the first four lines. The rest of the act is taken, with minor alterations, from <2Henry VI Part>2 3, V.6. With the past thus tidied away, and no one of any interest within sight, Cibber gives his Richard a clear field for an almost solo turn. But with no grist, as it were, Richard has little to occupy his mind save his own villainous thoughts. His immorality, no longer taken for granted and almost forgotten in the hurry of plans, is now nursed, as it was with Sandford's villains. Crudely, he becomes a battleground for personal good and evil. Just as he did before Shakespeare, this Richard wears his heart on his sleeve, declaring his motives, his self-justifications and his twinges of conscience. Cibber adds seven new soliloquies (see Appendix) in which these feelings are expressed, and in the same spirit he interpolates the passage from <2Henry VI Part>2 3 (III.2.165-71) in which Richard confesses that the world affords no joy to him save "to o'erbear such / As are of 30 happier person than myself. His deformity becomes a bitter obsession, rather than a ground for self-congratulation. In his first two scenes he mentions it five times (in Shakespeare twice) offering it almost by way of explanation of his villainy, rather than as a sign of it. In his new emphasis on Richard's moral life Cibber is not inviting anything so high flown as sympathy or understanding. It is simply a piece of theatrical sensationalism, a way of displaying and relishing plain nastiness. The murder Richard commits within minutes of his first entrance is an example of the same thing. So is the new scene Cibber wrote in for Richard and Anne in which, hoping to get her to commit suicide, Richard tells her "With all my heart, I hate thee', and then adds, aside, "If this have no effect she is immortal.' In the same spirit Cibber heightens the pathos of Richard's victims. As we have seen, Shakespeare, being less interested in the individual sorrows inflicted by evil than in its methods and its patterns, made less of the princes in the Tower and the desolation of their mother than did his sources. Cibber goes back, though with a clumsy hand, to the earlier approach, and places IV.l within the Tower, inventing an interview between the captive princes and their mother. The young king describes his "frightful Dreams', his tears, his loneliness, his ill-natured guards "who look so bold, as they were all my Masters'. He is rudely interrupted by Stanley's news that the queen's kinsmen have been executed, then by Catesby's message that Anne is to be crowned Richard's queen, and the scene is finally brought to an end by Brackenbury who orders the women away. As they leave, the little Duke of York pleads "Won't you take me with you Mother? / I shall be so afraid to stay when you are gone', and they part "severally' with cries of 'O Mother Mother' and 'O my poor Children'. On top of this, Cibber had originally written in a scene which actually showed the murder of the princes, though the second edition of the play in 1718 and all subsequent editions omitted it. He replaced it, possibly only a few months after it was first played it is thoughts1, with a scene in which Forrest and Tirrel discuss how to murder the princes and then Richard soliloquizes outside while they go to work within. "Hark!' he says at the end of it, "the murder's doing', so presumably something gruesome was heard behind the closed shutters. Whatever its shortcomings as a closet play, Cibber's version was a gift to the actor. The villain who lays himself open emotionally gives a long handle to even the most mediocre amateur. When Richard falls into an ecstasy at the prospect of the crown ("Now by St Paul, I feel it here! Methinks / The massy weight on't galls my laden Brow'), when he indulges himself over the captive prince ("O yes! he shall have twenty [crowns] Globes and Scepters too, / New ones made to play withall -- But no Coronation'), when he defies the tugs of complaining Nature, energy 31 alone will get him respectably by. These moments are all designed for the flourishes of contemporary acting, and when finally the revamped fifth act turns Richard into a heroic warrior, it is obvious that Cibber was chiefly interested in writing a good part, not a searching account of personal ommorality. In fact, whatever moments of sensitivity the interpretations of later actors introduced, the one thing common to them all was the extravagance that Cibber's Richard allowed them. For the first forty years of Cibber's play's life the interpretative possibilities of the new emotional Richard lay concealed in the unyielding acting conventions of the day. Although Cibber had strewn the part with the psychological causes and moral consequences of evil he himself acted it as though it were strictly a "rant' part. In his <2ApoIogy>2 he has a passage about the "rant' in which he explains that Betterton's success with it led many a "barren-brained' writer and lung-tearing actor to exert themselves in a "frothy' style signifying "roundly nothing'. Disarmingly he admits to a suspicion that, in his early days, he may have been one such writer.s Certainly his own performance of his text suggests that he was that kind of actor. He "screamed through 4 acts', says <2The Laureat,>2 "without Dignity or Decency' and in the fifth degenerated into a panic-stricken version of his own fop, Sir Novelty Fashion in <2Love's Last Shift,>2 screaming " ""A Harse, A Harse, my kingdom for a Harse!''' in the affected diction of the day.s Cibber took a robust view of dignity in tyrants. He criticizes Booth in his <2Apology>2 for thinking it depreciated "the Dignity of Tragedy to raise a smile in any part of it', even in characters of "avowed barbarity, insolence and vain glory' among whom he lists Richard III; these characters should be acted with that "wantonness of spirit which the nature of those sentiments demanded's. But being primarily a comic actor, he misjudged his "wantonness', for the part as he played it became ridiculous. His face was against him, having, as Aaron Hill in the <2Prompter>2 put it, "a contracted kind of passive yet protruded sharpness like a pig half-roasted', and a voice which might have come from the same pig "while in a condition a little less desperate'. This critic goes on to say that as Richard he imported from his comic acting "the same unseasonable grimaces, the same low mincing curtails of magnanimity. . . a succession of comic shruggings' which altogether resembled "the distorted heavings of an unjointed caterpillar'.s Cibber does not go entirely without praise, for Thomas Davies mentions Richard III among the tragic parts in which he pleased,s and Richard Steele in <2The Tatler>2 182 (8 June 1810) remarks on his excellence in the early scenes. Downes in <2Roscius Anglicanus>2 puts his relative failure in tragedy down to his feeble lungs, not his "finisht Judgement'.s But Thomas Davies comes clean in his <2Dramatic Miscellanies,>2 when he confesses that Cibber's passion for writing and acting tragedies "constantly 32 exposed him to severe censure' and that he was only "endured in this [Richard] and other tragic parts on account of his general merit in comedy'. In the end, he says, "the public grew out of patience and fairly hissed him off the stage'.s The impatience was no more than Cibber himself felt with the part. When in 1739, late in his career and after an interval of seven years he acted it again at Drury Lane, he whispered to Benjamin Victor, the theatrical historian, who had come back stage after the third act to enquire after him, "that he would give 50 guineas to be then sitting by his fireside'.s Cibber was peculiarly unsuited. But even his contemporaries James Quin, Lacy Ryan and Dennis Delane made no particular mark in this part. The decorums of deportment and voice which were at that time considered appropriate for tragedy made a barrier which an ordinary actor, even a "good' ordinary one, obviously found impossible to cross. Cibber and his contemporaries were carrying on the old method of intonation. Like the rise and fall of the non-conformist preacher's voice, it was an easy target for parody, and it provided the comedy for several plays of the late seventeenth century, where the directions call for a <2'feigned heroic tone'>2 or a <2"lover's whining voice'>2 or simply <2"a tone'.>2s When in 1741 Garrick as Richard broke "the hoity-toity-tone of the tragedy of that day', as his mentor Charles Macklin said he himself had done,s audiences were shocked and then, on the whole, enormously relieved. At last a way had been found out of the "false elevation and cadence', as Steele had described it in the <2Spectator>2 (147, 18 August 1711), without the loss of any real dignity. Quin and Cibber, the chief proponents during the first part of the eighteenth century of this school of "canting' or "toning' as it was called, thought Garrick's "naturalness' vulgar and continued unrepentant in the old way. Benjamin Victor, to whom Cibber had confessed his weariness of Richard, makes a note of a performance given by the Cibbers, father and son, in 1742 (not of <2Richard III)>2 in which they revived the "good old manner of singing and quavering out their tragic notes'.s Quin when he played Richard had a way of "heaving up his words' and labouring his gestures, which "prevented his being a favourite's, and in spite of, or perhaps because of his "well-regulated tone of voice, judicious elocution and easy deportment', he became "forced or languid', his movement "ponderous and sluggish' whenever his part called for something more emphatic than usual.s It is not for the tragic characters, but for the fops, the coxcombs, the booby squires of contemporary comedy and their nearest equivalent in Shakespeare and Jonson that the actors at this period are known, and remembered for being natural. Quin, who was so lifeless as Richard, was the leading Falstaff of his day.s 33 <1Garrick's Richard>1 David Garrick set out to overthrow this whole system of tragic acting, and the part he chose to do it in was Richard. Quin, who saw him, took the point when he said that "if the young fellow was right, he and the rest of the players had been all wrong'.s Garrick's first appearance on 19 October 1741 was billed as an interval entertainment between the two halves -- presumably much abbreviated -- of a concert. In this way the "illegiti- mate' theatre in Goodman's Fields found its way round the Licensing Act which confined the presentation of "legitimate' drama to the two playhouses, Covent Garden, which had opened in 1732, and Drury Lane. After a thin first night the word spread. Garrick's effect was irresistible. Thomas Davies, a fellow actor, described it: Mr Garrick's easy and familiar, yet forcible style in speaking and acting, at first threw the critics into some hesitation concerning the novelty as well as the propriety of his manner. They had been long accustomed to an elevation of the voice, with a sudden mechanical depression of its tones, calculated to excite admiration, and to intrap applause. To the just modulation of the words, and concurring expression of the features from the workings of nature, they had been strangers, at least for some time. But after he had gone through a variety of scenes. . . their doubts were turned into surprise and astonishment, from which they relieved themselves by loud and reiterated applause.s The play was staged six more times before the end of the month and five times again before the end of the year. Over the previous five years the two legitimate theatres had managed to show it on average three times a year. Now in the space of three months Goodman's Fields showed it eleven times. This obscure playhouse drew the town: "from the polite ends of Westminster the most elegant company flocked to Goodman's Fields, insomuch that from Temple Bar the whole way was covered with strings of coaches'.s Pope was dug out of his retirement at Twickenham to see the new "theatrical Newton' and expressed to Lord Orrery the fear that "the young man would be spoiled, for he would have no competitor'. Quin was nettled and pronounced the thing a craze, a "new religion': "Whitfield was followed for a time but they did all come to church again.' Garrick's answering epigram swept Quin and his "school' away in the same language: Thou great infallible, forbear to roar, Thy bulls and errors are revered no more; 34 When doctrines meet with general approbation, It is not heresy, but reformation. Even Colley Cibber, challenged by Anne Bracegirdle to admit that there was "something like envy' in his dismissal of Garrick, had reluctantly to reply "Why, faith, Bracey, I believe you are right; the young fellow is clever.'s On 31 May 1742, Garrick played Richard at Drury Lane, where he stayed, with only brief interruptions, until he retired in 1776, closing his career with the same play that had opened it so brilliantly. His success in Dublin, which he visited in the summer of 1742, was again very great, so that almost a century later Finlay could report that Dubliners were reluctant to accept any other way of doing the part, so faithfully had "his reading and points of character. . . been. . . conveyed and preserved'. On the strength of his popularity and the tradition it had created "hundreds of mechanics in the city of Dublin', Finlay wrote, "could repeat all the speeches of Richard'.s The theatres in which Garrick performed were still relatively small. When he first came to the original Drury Lane it held about seven hundred people, and though the interior was later remodelled by him it never held more than eighteen hundred.s In spite of Cibber's complaint, the actor could always be close enough to the audience to make every movement of his face tell. This was the power that Garrick was especially known for. At first, of course, he was as noticed for what he was not as for what he was. His voice was neither whining, bellowing, nor grunting, but perfectly easy in its tran- sitions, natural in its cadence, and beautiful in its elocution. . . [his] gait. . . is neither strutting, nor mincing, neither stiff, nor slouching. When three or four are on the stage with him, he is attentive to whatever is spoke, and never drops his character when he has finished a speech, by either looking contemptuously on an inferior performer, unnecessary spitting, or suffering his eyes to wander through the whole circle of spectators.s If that were all, one might remain unconvinced. Arthur Murphy, an actor, a dramatist and a critic who had studied Garrick, tried in his biography of him to describe his specific quality. It was something energetically expressive, perhaps more than would seem "natural' to us now: "The passions rose in rapid succession, and before he uttered a word were legible in every feature of that various face. His look, his voice, his attitude, changed with every sentiment.'s The style was pantomimically extremely 35 detailed, so much so that a performance could be imitated and recognized without resorting to the words. Murphy tells a story of a deaf and dumb painter, Shireff, who explained his admiration for Garrick in a strange tribute to this expressiveness. He "stood up. . . and. . . went through the part of Richard III by his deportment, his action, and most significant looks, distinguishing every scene and all the various situations of <2Richard>2 from the beginning to his death in Bosworth field'.s Murphy was con- vinced by the technique: Garrick was "the very man', everything he did was "almost reality'.s What thrilled Garrick's audience especially was the "warrior and hero' that he turned himself into upon the first news of rebellion. This is entirely in keeping with Cibber, for if Shakespeare had taken some of the shine off Richard from the coronation onwards, Cibber transforms his earlier less sparkling Richard so that "in the fourth and fifth acts he breaks out like a flame that has long been smothered'.s Shakespeare's Richard goes into battle gamely enough, but his "let us to't pell mell / If not to Heaven then hand in hand to Hell' is a last ditch, devil-may-care kind of bravery. Cibber, on the other hand, cuts or reduces several moments when Shakespeare's Richard loses his grip, and heartens him with genuine self- confidence shortly after the dream. For example, Cibber's Richard shows none of the agitation of Shakespeare's when the messengers bring their bad news. He does not forget his orders, or contradict them, or strike the bearer of good news. When he arrives at Bosworth, Cibber invents a little exchange for him in which he can show himself to be the intrepid leader of men. To Norfolk's suggestion that he should save blood by issuing a pardon, the warrior-statesman replies: Why that indeed was our Sixth Harry's way, Which made his Reign one scene of rude Commotion. I'll be in men's despite a Monarch: No, Let kings that fear forgive. Blows and Revenge for me. After the ghosts appear, the solipsisms and the nihilistic bravado of Shakespeare's Richard are cut and his mood simplified. After a plain "I am but Man, and Fate do thou dispose me', Cibber omits Shakespeare's "I fear, I fear', and the eavesdropping plan, and dispels the mists of terror and remorse with the famous claptrap: "Hence, Babling dreams, you threaten here in vain: / Conscience avaunt: Richard's himself again.' Finally, after Shakespeare's "A horse, a horse', Cibber gives him another fourteen lines of defiance, first in a skirmish of words with Richmond before the fight ("Thy Gallant Bearing, <2Harry>2, I could plaud / But that the spotted Rebel stains the soldier') and then in a death speech taken partly from 36 Northumberland's speech in <2Henry IV Part 2.>2 Nor does Cibber let it rest thi for when Richard is dead Richmond pauses over him, and delivers the nearest thing to an encomium that it is possible to give a villain: "Had thy aspiring Soul but stir'd in Vertue, / With half the Spirit it has dar'd in Evil, / How might thy Fame have grac'd our <2English>2 Annals.' Garrick's heroism during the second half took the roof off. Fanny Burney, who saw him towards the end of his career, wrote in her diary for 30 May 1772 "the applause he met with exceeds all belief of the absent. I thought at the end they would have torn the house down: our seats shook under us.'s <2The Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser,>2 reviewing him in the same season (1 June 1772), was purple with adjectives in the effort to praise "the explosive impetuosity and fire-eyed execution of intrepid heroism'. Although it may never have been used, the grand wild scenery designed for him by de Loutherberg for the last act shows the kind of feelings that this part of the play aroused. The maquettes (reproduced in Merchant, pp. 60 and 62) are incomplete and have been damaged, but with de Loutherberg's paintings in mind one can imagine their intended effect. The precipitous rocks, the overhanging trees, the broken irregular foreground (this would have been the first instance of a built-up floor) strewn with the debris of war -- the whole impression would have reinforced the "sublimely horrible' feelings about Richard that Fanny Burney also mentions in her diary entry. Although this was the Richard that most people came to see, Garrick's other one in which he displayed the "deliberating, subtle, calm and Protean versability of political arnbition's is as interesting to the stage historian. For here is the first recorded instance of a subjective, psychological interpretation of Richard. It appears that Garrick, picking up the suggestions strewn through Cibber's text, asked himself why Richard was a villain, and wondered what it felt like to be one. Cibber's Richard says plainly enough, using the words of Richard in <2Henry VI Part>2 3, that his only joy is to "o'erbear such / As are of better person than myself, and that therefore his "aspiring head' must be "round encircled with a glorious diadem'. Later, after the murder of Henry, he analyses himself again: "I have no Brother,' he says, "am like no Brother / And this word love which Grey beards call Divine / Be resident in Men, like one another, / And not in me -- I am -- myself alone.' Twice more before Anne's entrance, which in Cibber he watches from a retired position, Richard is made to refer to his deformity, and not as in Shakespeare with humour, but in self-hate. The invitation to play him psychologically is open, and though Cibber himself did not take it, Garrick did. There is a generation between them, and in that interval the idea, deriving from Locke, that people are what they are by reaction had had its 37 influence. If actions and words were the outward consequences of inward feelings which had themselves been caused, then acting required a leap of the "sympathetic imagination' to search out the springs that gave rise to them. It was not enough to embody the action, or say the speech, trusting to its inherent goodness or badness to give you enough. Those fixed values needed a gloss which the actor could find only by an act of identification. The idea of the "sympathetic imagination' had been felt in moral philosophy and literary criticism during the early part of the century,s and it developed after about the middle of the century into a specific attention to Shakespeare's portrayal of character, as distinct from his arrangement of the "fable'. Garrick's sensitivity to the feelings of his characters was the stage equivalent of the new criticism, and he was indeed held up as the bard's best commentator. In this he was doing no more than the best of his forebears had done in the eyes of their audiences; but so entrenched had acting become during the first decades of the eighteenth century in externals, stage decorums, that it took a small revolution to return it to a style which could take account of human feelings at all. Shakespeare's Richard yields little to the new sensibility, and this may have contributed to Garrick's rejection of Fox's suggestion that he revive the original.s Cibber's Richard gave Garrick his opportunity: Thomas Wilkes observed Garrick's new subtlety: "whenever he [Richard] speaks of his own imperfections he shows himself galled and uneasy. . . Garrick in all these places shews by his acting the cross-grained splenetic turn of Richard the Third; he shews you how the survey hurts him. Whereas I have seen some people smile upon themselves as if they were well pleased with their own appearance.'s In the <2London>2 <2Chronicle: or Universal Evening Post>2 (29 January 1757) Arthur Murphy, criticizing Spranger Barry, who tried the part at Covent Garden in 1757, makes some observations on the acting of the character which one cannot help thinking are prompted by Garrick's acting. When he advises Barry that the soliloquies should not be ranted but "uttered with deep and grave Tones of Voice and a gloomy Countenance' it is probably of Garrick that he is thinking. He warns Barry, too, against allowing Richard's pleasantry to rise to mirth: "there should be no free Exultation, because his Mirth is ironical and he is still sensible of his own Deformity' (this concerns the soliloquy after the wooing of Anne). The effect is somehow to soften the villainy itself. It becomes less bald; we are bound to take account of Richard's feelings and misfortunes. Not that he is less horrible, but more understandably so. The criticism of Shakespeare that was being written in the second half of the eighteenth century was in search of the same envelope of pathos, as it were, for the moral message. Mrs Griffith in <2The Morality of Shakespeare's>2 38 <2Drama Illustrated>2 charges Shakespeare with ignorance of human nature for introducing a "comic stroke' (the strawberry episode) in Richard's part whilst "his mind was deeply intent on murder': "No designing or determined villain was ever cheerful' she pronounces.s Earlier, commenting on the opening soliloquy, she had been greatly relieved by Shakespeare's care for "the honour of the human character' in contriving "to make Richard's wickedness appear to arise from a resentment against the partiality of Nature' thus moving us "to a sort of compassion for the misfortune, even while he is raising an abhorrence for the vice of the criminal'.s The idea that Richard is not a suffering soul was now not only uninstructive morally, it was unnatural. William Richardson, in <2Essays on>2 <2Shakespeare's Dramatic Characters>2 (18 12; the essay on <2Richard III>2 originally appeared in 1784), thought it would have been "better suited to our ideas of human nature' if Shakespeare had made Richard speak of his evil intentions obscurely, with "hints and surmises' rather than openly with equanimity: "even the Neros and Domitians, who disgraced human nature, did not consider themselves so atrociously wicked as they really were'.s Garrick's dark and moody Richard would have been in tune with this new sensibility.s Whether he sustained this kind of inwardness in every performance is doubtful. He is accused, and not only by his enemies, of employing "claptraps' -- that is tricks of voice and gesture as a signal for a round of applause -- which are difficult to reconcile with psychological subtlety. Theophilus Cibber, Colley's son, was an enemy, but his detailed pictures of Garrick in his <2Two Dissertations on the Theatres>2 (1759, first published 1756) have an air of authenticity. He found fault for the very thing Wilkes said Garrick avoided. At the end of the first soliloquy, for example, "for the sake of an Attitude which is sure to be dwelt on till the Audience clap', he would point to the ground and fix his eye thereon "as if <2Richard>2 had a real Delight in ruminating on his uncouth Person'.s A critic for <2The London>2 <2Magazine>2 (December 1776) condemns in general the practice of making certain passages "weak and insipid' in order to "render by contrast the other parts. . . more marked and distinguished' -- a mere "stage-trick', which only Garrick had succeeded in and even then "no man ever abused this indulgence of the town more grossly and inexcusably, particularly in the characters of Hamlet, Richard, and two or three others'. In his last season when he revived his first success, he appears, on at least one night, to have played unashamedly to the galleries, "putting an air of ridicule on the most serious passages' so that people were "thrown into convulsions of laughter when they should have been struck with horror'.s The line between energy and ridiculous exaggeration is differently drawn by different people. What Theophilus Cibber saw in his first <2Dissertation>2 as "convulsive Twitchings, Jerkings of the Body, sprawling of the Fingers's 39 might have been what Murphy in his <2Life of Garrick>2 admiringly called the "spectacle of horror' that Garrick was transformed into on waking from his dreams.s But it does seem that just as with Edmund Kean later, his "naturalness', his attempt to get away from the rotundities of oratorical speech and gesture, led him into peculiar mannerisms. William Shirley in the <2Herald or Patriot-Proclaimer>2 (1758) notes his "moulding the habit on his stomach, catching at and grasping the side of his robe', being "awkwardly embarrassed with his hat'. Theophilus Cibber in his second <2Dissertation>2 described the hat again "twitched from hand to hand. . . moulded on his stomach, and with ungraceful vehemence slapped upon the Thigh'.s Shirley mentions the "false pauses, stammerings, hesitations and repetitions' and Theophilus Cibber in his first <2Dissertation>2 echoes with a complaint against his "wilful Neglect of Harmony, even where the round period of a. . . noble Sentiment demands a graceful cadence in the Delivery'.s For all his "naturalness' and absorption in the part, Garrick was a showman, and that worked both for and against him. In Richard it must have been more to his advantage than not, though on occasion it took him over the edge into farce. Shirley says he "debased his excellencies', but Richard, especially in Cibber's version, thrives on a little debasement. What really counted was Garrick's "dreadful energy'.s Not for another twenty-five years or so would any other actor make his reputation with the part as Garrick did, and that actor, George Frederick Cooke, was similarly reviled for his coarseness and acclaimed for his vigour. Garrick established that whatever else is done with Cibber's Richard, he has to be played as a <2tour de force.>2 He was not the only Richard of his period, but others tend to be mentioned by reviewers and memoir writers of the time in order to illustrate his beauties or to be praised faintly beside him. What he did was to make the part enormously popular with actors and audiences. Samuel Johnson in his edition of Shakespeare (1765) virtually shrugged the play off for the purposes of literary criticism and consigned it to the theatre with the remark that although it had some scenes which were "very well contrived to strike in the exhibition', some parts of it were "trifling, others shocking, and some improbable'.s According to George Winchester Stones the play was put on three times as often during the thirty years in which Garrick was manager at Drury Lane as it was during the forty years between Cibber's first performance in 1700 and Garrick's in 1741. Records of box office returns extant for the period between 1700 and 1741 show an average of #54 a night, while the returns for Garrick's performances show an average of #214 a night. His success goaded other actors into competing with him at Covent Garden,- such as Quin in the 1740s and Spranger Barry in 1757 ("lamentably deficient in every point; 40 which occasioned no little exultation to Garrick's). Of the other actors to try it at Drury Lane under Garrick and after him, Gentleman pronounced that Henry Mossop needed "more delicacy with less labour', Thomas Sheridan "more harmony with less stiffness', and William Smith "more variation with less levity'.s <2The London Chronicle>2 (29, 1757) scantly praises Mossop as Richard, for "the tone of his voice [which] is generally justly varied and never fails to be an echo of the sense', but Davies implies that he was second only to Garrick.s It appears that the second rate was very far off the first. The only woman to attract favourable attention during Garrick's period was Hannah Pritchard as Queen Elizabeth. It was she whom, in 1744, Cibber attempted to persuade back into the old school by telling her to <2"tone>2 her words', but she was of the "natural easy school'.s Gentleman notes in the <2Dramatic Censor>2 that Queen Elizabeth is a part usually given to third-raters, but that Pritchard showed what a first rate actress could do with it. She "did more for it in action than the author in writing'.s Sarah Siddons, then a new actress from the provinces, was tried out as Lady Anne in 1776 but failed. It was not until the 1790s that she was to make any success in the play, and then, like Pritchard before her, as Queen Elizabeth. The performance of the ladies in 1776 was said by the reviewer of <2The London Magazine>2 (May 1776) to have been wretched: "Mrs Hopkins was an ungracious Queen, Mrs Johnson a frightful Duchess, and Mrs Siddons a lamentable Lady Anne.' As for the rest of the cast -- what chance had they? Henry VI has it to himself at the beginning and therefore the actor is occasionally noticed in the reviews. But Cibber had written the others as dummies. Buckingham only began to be noticed in the 1930s, and then in the inauspicious performance of Cyril Trouncer who according to <2The Times>2 (15 January 1936), hustled Richard about the stage "as if he were the other funny man in a pantomime duet'. Since then Ralph Richardson, Harry Andrews and many others have shown what possibilities are there, but throughout Cibber's heyday the play was what Cibber intended it to be: a solo turn for Richard. There is a certain logic in the performance by a Dr Landis in 1876 who engaged the Tamany Theatre in New York and did Richard with all the other parts read from behind screens: "No other person was allowed on stage, while the Doctor alone roared and bellowed.'s <1Kemble and the Gothic Revival>1 Inevitably, not every actor was suited to that kind of exhibition. It was, as Garrick confessed to Hannah More in a letter, "a trial of breast, lungs, 41 ribs, and what not',s and the asthmatic John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons's brother, would by temperament have probably left it alone if his public had let him. But <2Richard III>2 had become such a test piece that it would have been as strange for the chief tragedian of the day to neglect <2Hamlet.>2 Kemble was a tall, dignified actor (Garrick was under middle size, light and quick rather than dignified) and he was especially noticed for his classical face and limbs. There may have been some malice in the reviewer for the <2Champion>2 (25 May 1817), when he said that Kemble "might stand on the stage for an hour together and not weary us, -- but there we should be gazing at him, as at a fine piece of Grecian sculpture'. His private life and his public image were of a piece. He was what his contemporaries recognized as a scholar and a gentleman. If anyone had dared to restore Shakespeare's play it would have been him. When he published an essays defending the bravery of Macbeth as compared with Richard's he quotes from Shakespeare not Cibber. Many people were unaware of the difference and would quote Cibber for Shakespeare without noticing. But although Kemble did restore some of Shakespeare, notably the first four lines of Richard's first soliloquy, s he kept faithfully to the adaptation. Genest, always scornful of Cibber, was disgusted: "damned custom had braz'd him so that he was proof and bulwark against sense'' -- he digested cold mutton and even the spiders crawling upon hopes did not startle him.'s As Richard, Kemble did what he could with his royalty; at least he was a prince. In the prefatory remarks to the play in <2Cumberland's British>2 <2Theatre>2 (1829) the editor (D-- G--) says that he played the royal qualities to perfection, and the warrior with "terrific energy', when the "grovelling and baser parts of the character were forgotten'.s By contrast, a more conventional Richard, Holman, according to the <2Public Advertiser>2 (15 January 1785), "indulged' so "vulgar and low [an] appearance of humour -- aided by the act of sticking both hands upon his hips', that in the funeral scene the attendants were convulsed, "down to the very beefeaters' So far from all this was Kemble that he erred almost on the other side. He inspired in his audiences a sence of "elevation and grandeur'.s Henry Martin was solemn with admiration for his "lofty' tone which made it seem that "he could fill the throne of all the world'; for his commanding quality that "made us know' that "danger must be gigantic ere he would measure his prowess with it'; for the "nameless sublimity' with which he spoke "By my soul's hope';s and for the "heroic loyalty and love' which he would have inspired in his men had he been a legitimate ruler. Finally, in a burst of devotion, he confesses "it was impossible not to glory in such a sovereign, by whatever means he gained the title'.s Here is an altogether new order of excitement. Garrick was fiery and impetuous; he thrilled his audience, but they were not uplifted. (Fanny 42 Burney had written in her diary ". . .I felt myself glow with indignation every time I saw him.')s The overblown note in Henry Martin gives a hint of the romantic enthusiasm which, from these apologetic beginnings, would later glorify evil itself as a necessary part of heroism. It was a "moody defiance against nature' that Martin observed in Kemble, very different from the hurt imagination of Garrick. We hear that on "the utmost reaching of my soul' (Cibber, I.2.26) his eyes pierced the Heavens.s There is a suggestion of Prometheus about him. Boaden, Kemble's devoted biographer, says that he refined Richard's manners; he gave him <2"subtlety'>2 where Garrick gave him dreadful energy, and improved his "address' avoiding "the too apparent cunning' which he felt to be vulgar.s Though some were impressed, the opinion of most who looked back on him after Cooke and Edmund Kean was that he was too genteel a villain. Both Kemble and his sister Sarah Siddons belonged to a statelier school of acting than Garrick. Their stance was statuesque, their voices were rhythmical and cadenced, though both voice and gesture could be thrown into the passionate violence of the romantic tragedies that were fashionable at that time. Sarah Siddons by all accounts possessed a power that transcended the affectations of that style, and Boaden on the strength of it wished that Shakespeare's Margaret in <2Richard III>2 could be restored for her: she would have been able, he says, "to lift the hair upon the heads of those who heard her', if she had "devoted herself to the curses of Margaret.' Her Elizabeth, according to Boaden, "beggars all description'.s Kemble, less of a genius, was more describable. The tone of his voice was noted many years later, after his best days were over, by a German visitor to England, Tieck, in 1817. Though what he heard would have lacked the vitality of the younger man, the manner may have been the same. He calls it a "musical declamation', where "everything is made to depend upon little <2nuances>2 of speaking, and every monologue and every single passage is sought to be rounded off into an artistic whole'. Describing him in <2Julius>2 <2Caesar>2 he says that his voice was "now drawled, now emphasized every second or third word, one could not say why, and then ended frequently in a sort of sing-song. . . I thought I was again listening to one of those Protestant preachers. . . indulging in this wailing, tedious <2tempe.'>2 In among this recitative, Tieck says, there were sudden surprising moments of naturalness which were such a relief that the audience would go wild with "vehement applause'.s Against this one must quote <2The Morning>2 <2Post and Daily Advertiser>2 (30 December 1788), which noted that "Kemble is considerably improved by being less peculiar. His Richard is now not the mere effect of study, but the bold effusion of animated feeling.' He was an acquired taste. Both he and his sister were "the practical patrons of. . . recitative' which some liked and others found "hateful'.s That apart, even 43 Boaden admitted that as Richard he lacked a certain "concentrated force of body and voice'. His "dignity' was no match for Garrick's "passion'.s There was, however, a disadvantage that Kemble and Siddons had to overcome and which Garrick was spared. The new theatres that were redesigned or built within the old Covent Garden and Drury Lane, first in 1792 and 1794, and then again when they were both burnt down in 1808 and 1809, were huge. The new Drury Lane designed by Holland now held about three-and-a-half thousand people and there are plenty of complaints about not being able to see or hear. Malone, the Shakespearian scholar, apparently went round to Kemble backstage after one performance and said "I daresay it was a very perfect performance but you have made your houses so large that I can neither hear nor see in them's. Walter Scott, reviewing Boaden's <2Life of Kemble>2 in <2The Quarterly Review>2 (34, 1826), remembers the Drury Lane of Garrick's day where "the nicer touches of fine acting -- the smile however suppressed -- the glance of passion . . . the whisper' reached "the whole circle of the attentive audience', and which are now "all lost or wasted in the huge halls that have since arisen'. Now "extravagant gesture must be used, excess of rant must be committed by the best actors in their finest parts'. In his nostalgia, Scott forgets that rant and extravagance were not unknown in the old theatres, but we must take his word that the finer touches were less noticed in the new. Hazlitt has to take Edmund Kean to task, on occasion, for acting with his face in a way which most of the audience must miss,s and certainly he developed a style of exaggerated contrasts which may have owed something to the larger theatre in which he was acting. Whatever the disadvantages of the new Drury Lane, it caused Kemble to renew his stock of scenery. Before 1800 we hear of nothing in particular for <2Richard III,>2 and at a time when scenery was rarely made specifically for one play one must guess that its <2"Garden Within the>2 Tower', its <2"Chamber>2 <2in the>2 Tower', its <2"Presence'>2 and <2"Field'>2 scenes indicated in the acting editions were unspecific enough to be shared with other vaguely historical productions. The new Drury Lane now needed much larger flats and William Capon, an architect and antiquary, was given the job. All Capon's scenery was destroyed in the subsequent fire, but in the selection from it that Boaden lists in his <2Life of Kemble>2 is a scene specifically for <2Richard III,>2 the Tower of London "restored to its earlier state'. Another scene that was used in the play, but not made specifically for it, was "Six chamber wings of the same order [pointed architecture] for general use in our old English plays, -- very elaborately studied from actual remains.' There were also "the ancient palace of Westminster' and "six wings representing ancient English streets; combinations of genuine remains, selected on account of their picturesque beauty'.s 44 This is the first attempt at scenic accuracy, but the <2Gentleman's>2 <2Magazine>2 in 1800 ran two articles in April and June by "An Artist and Antiquary' which show how casual in fact was Kemble's enthusiasm for it. One or two designs might have been correct, according to the author, but others were not, and the furniture, costumes, props and music were erratic. The indignation of the writer is itself a sign of the changing times. Devoted as he is to the "superb remains of ancient buildings' he asks in his first article why the "historic plays' of Shakespeare should not be so mounted as to become "a captivating source of information and instruction to the patriot, the historian and the artist'. "Another chamber in the Tower', later in the play, for Cibber's IV.3, gives him some satisfaction -- "a tolerable attempt at the elaborate works of our ancient Bowers' -- "but why, in the name of common sense, hang up a portrait of Oliver Cromwell's day?' The costumes, he says, are "in the usual half-and-half mode, made up from portraits of Charles I's reign, and from unrestrained fancy'.s Richard hints at the costume of his day "but how modernized! A fancy cap and feather, with a milliner's white-ribband rose sewed thereon. . . a deep ruff, of that make not known until the reign of James I! From the neck depends a ribbon with the George. . . On his legs and feet white silk stockings, white shoes and <2red>2 roses.'s Meanwhile "the females, unrestrained, appear attired in all the elegance of drapery which the ton of the present hour gives to the fashionable world'.s Kemble's <2Richard III>2 was fashionably rather than strictly gothic. There was a suggestion of gothicism in the interior of the new Drury Lane designed by Holland, which "seemed to grow out of the pointed architecture's, and the new scenery was on the whole an elegant reflection of it. <1Richard and the Romantics>1 While Kemble was refurbishing his productions at Drury Lane in 1800, an actor appeared at Covent Garden in October who in <2Richard III>2 was to disconcert Kemble, and whom many -- both in England and America, where he went in 1810 -- were to prefer to Edmund Kean. The eccentric, often drunk George Frederick Cooke, who had already been acting for twenty years in the provinces and in Ireland, made his first great success in London as Richard. Like Sandford, villains were his "line', and "a judicious critic' is quoted in Genest as saying that though Cooke "did not play rnany parts well' what he did play well he played "better than anyone else'.s According to popular opinion, Richard was one of them: he repeated his opening performance twenty-three times that season. Part of his success was due, like Garrick's, to his avoiding the prevailing "recitative'. It seems 45 that the rhetorical style in varying forms provided the ground bass, as it were, of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century acting from which Garrick, Cooke, Kean and Irving each departed in their different ways. It is a fact that many actors who have felt themselves to be in rebellion against this style have chosen Richard, or Shylock, in which to make their first mark. Both parts are of consequence without being "poetic'. Shylock is odd, a Jew in a gabardine, dignified in a peculiar way, half grotesque, not at any rate a "straight' tragic hero. Richard is also odd -- royal, and yet crippled and colloquial. When Sandford avoided the "jingle of numbers', as Cibber says he did, when Garrick neglected "the round Period of a well expressed noble sentiment', as Theophilus complained, when Cooke wrote out his speeches in prose so as to "break up a tendency to rhythmic delivery',s there was in the idioms of Richard or Shylock less drag in the opposite direction. Moreover Garrick and Kean were at first the more shy of other parts because they had not the height thought proper to the tragic actor. Cooke was not especially small, but in comparison with Kemble he was not elegant. Boaden describes "his gait and the motion of his arms' as "awkward but impressive'. His arms were in fact very short, "fin-like' arms.s All these things, Dunlap his biographer noted, helped him in Richard, where his "quick, abrupt and impetuous' manner served him better than the picturesque poses of Kemble.s Cooke's Richard was neither subtle and protean like Garrick's, nor lofty like Kemble's; it seems to have been joyfully, gloatingly horrible. Lamb in the <2Morning Post>2 (4 January 1802)s found him intolerably coarse, his hypocrisy "glaring and visible', his humour the "clumsy merriment of a low minded assassin'. Although he carried on from Garrick the notion that his deformity was, in the words of Lamb's review, "an offensive and haunting idea' to be looked upon "with unmixed distaste and pain', and although his Richard showed a compunctious sense of his crime, it is not for those things that he was famous, but for the "unctuous enjoyment' of his successful craft.s In the preface to <2Cumberland's British Theatre>2 edition he is noted for his "horrible anxiety and joy during and after the murder of the young princes', and for his "ferocious exultation and calm content' on Cibber's famous line "Off with his head, so much for Buckingham.'s Cibber's own conception of an obviously horrible villain was fully realized by Cooke, and it is strangely appropriate that he should sound more like Sandford than anyone else before him. The two voices that Cibber described in Sandford, are there in Cooke according to Boaden: "one of which was harsh and acrimonious, the other mild and caressing'.s Like him he was a specialist in villains, his features being "peculiarly adapted for the sarcastic'.s His movements were abrupt, his manner of speaking was uncadenced. Everything that Lamb objected to in Cooke is there in 46 Cibber: the loud triumphs, the "coarse, ranting humour', the intrusive obsession with his deformity.ls Cooke as Shakespeare's Richard would have been, as Lamb felt, utterly wrong, but as Cibber's he was right. Macready, who had seen Cooke several times, made just that distinction when he said in his <2Reminiscences>2 that while Kean was closer to Shakespeare's Richard, Cooke was as effective in "the more prosaic version of Cibber'; he gave a "powerful and rich effect to the sneers and overbearing retorts of Cibber's hero'.s In America he was a greater success than in England, and James Murdoch in his <2Recollections>2 gives the flavour of his performance when he says that he "impressed the audience with the idea that it was the inherent right of the strong to put the weak out out of the way, which, by the way was much the fashion of the times'.s It seems that a new feeling about the play had sprung up since Garrick's day. Francis Gentleman in the <2Dramatic Censor>2 in 1770 had said that it was about "the voice of conscience which though unheard by the world, speaks thunder to the guilty wretch, who bears such a painful monitor in his bosom'.s By 1801 Lamb is writing to Robert Lloyd, provoked by Cooke into defining the "true' Richard: "I am possessed with an admiration of the genuine Richard, his genius, his mounting spirit, which no consideration of his cruelties can depress'.s This feeling of admiration does not cause a shiver as it did to William Richardson, and Richard's "unstrained mirth', as Lamb put it in his <2Morning Post>2 review, does not seem unnatural, as it did to Mrs Griffiths. On the contrary, Lamb was quick to point out that the allusions to deformity in Shakespeare's play are made in "an ironical and goodhumoured spirit of exaggeration', and that Cooke was wrong to show distress. Boaden, indeed, felt that Cooke showed "not the slightest <2pathos'.>2s What delighted audiences generally was his "sturdy vigour'. s Both Lamb's and Cooke's robust acceptance of evil is symptomatic of the same shift. Their difference was one of style. Cooke's version came "black and prose-smoked from his prose lips' and Lamb's "awe and deep admiration' are not for Richard's nastiness as such but for his "witty parts, his consummate hypocrisy, and indefatigable prosecution of purpose'. As if not quite liking the sound of that, Lamb insists that Shakespeare's Richard was really a man of deep sympathies. How could he describe maternal feeling so well to the Queen Elizabeth in Act IV unless "he had a deep knowledge of the hurnan heart'. "Richard must have <2felt,>2 before he could feign so well, though ambition chok'd the good seed'.s This was no more than dressing up in moral sentiment an enthusiasm for Richard which has nothing to do with morals. The old idea, in abeyance during the eighteenth century, that evil is somehow made splendid by the aspiring genius of the wrongdoer, was becoming attractive again.s It was not cold 47 amorality as such that was admired, but the individualism which dared to spurn the common restraints. Not until Edmund Kean, however, did it seem that the poetry of this idea -- whatever was awe-inspiring in it -- had been interpreted. Thomas Barnes reviewing for <2The Examiner>2 while its editor Leigh Hunt was in prison for debt, set out the philosophy as it appeared in Kean's Richard so plainly that it is worth quoting him at length: The great characteristics of <2Richard>2 are a daring and comprehensive intelligence, which seizes its object with the grasp of a giant, -- a profound acquaintance with the human soul, which makes him appreciate motives at a glance, -- a spirit immoveably fearless, because how can a mighty being tremble among animals who are but as atoms to his towering superiority? -- Besides this, he is a villain; that is he moves onward to his purpose careless of ordinary duties and ordinary feelings; and yet when we observe his horrid march, we neither shudder with disgust nor overwhelm him with execrations. Why is this? because he seems to belong to a class above mankind: he is the destroying demon whom we regard with awe and astonishment, and not the mere murderer whose meanness and vulgarity almost rob crime of its horrors. Such are the leading features of the character which Mr Kean has presented. s In this heady atmosphere, Hazlitt in <2The Morning Chronicle>2 (15 February 1814) was able to describe Shakespeare's Richard as "towering and lofty; equally impetuous and commanding; haughty, violent, and subtle; bold and treacherous; confident in his strength as well as his cunning; raised high by birth, and higher by his talents and crimes; a royal usurper, a princely hypocrite; a tyrant, and a murderer of the house of Plantagenet'. The very magnitude of the crimes seemed to lend him a sort of aura. Hazlitt continued: "The restless and sanguinary Richard is not a man striving to be great, but to be greater than he is: conscious of his strength of will, his power of intellect, his daring courage, his elevated station; and making use of these advantages to commit unheard of crimes, and to shield himself from remorse and infamy.' These were the qualities that he felt Kean embodied more nearly than any other actor he had seen, "more refined than Cooke, more bold, varied, and original than Kemble'.s There was another quality which combined with these to strike a chord in many who saw Kean -- melancholy. Garrick's spleen, the eighteenth- century equivalent, had been psychologically rational, quite specifically to do with his deformity. Kean's melancholy appears to have been vaguer and more pervading. It laid little claim to pity, and seemed to go beyond an intelligible moral despair. Leigh Hunt in <2The Examiner>2 (October 1819) 48 compared Macready's Richard with Kean's and noticed that where the former was naturally "high and sanguine, though pulled down by mortification', the Richard of Kean went "deeper even than the relief of conscience' for he "found melancholy at the bottom of the necessity for that relief'.s This was with reference to his business before his tent on the eve of battle and the <2Champion>2 (27 April 1817), expands on the same theme: Mr Kean stands. . . surrounded by his generals, but communing only with his own gigantic thought. His eye, -- dark, wild and piercing, -- is fixed but on no visible object. It looks upon the air, and seems to live upon things past or to come. It seems to hold the concentrated rays of the mind, and to have a deep and desolate feeling of its own. His eyebrows come down edgy and contracted: his face is pale and full of loneliness; -- And his lips are compressed with an immense feeling. George Henry Lewes remembered being "strangely shaken by the terror, and the pathos and the passion of a stormy spirit uttering itself in tones of irresistible power'.s The likeness to Byron is compelling, at least to Byron as people thought of him and as he sometimes liked to think of himself. A week after Byron had first seen Kean as Richard and had exclaimed in his diary "By Jove, he is a soul!', he finds himself quoting from the play with a fellow feeling: "Hobhouse says I am a <2loup garou>2 -- a solitary hobgoblin. True, -- ""I am myself alone'''.s The lines are a Cibberian importation from <2Henry VI Part 3>2. It was Kean's business of abstractedly drawing lines on the ground the night before the battle that was thought to have given Byron the idea for his description of Napoleon tracing "with thine all idle hand / In loitering mood upon the sand' ("Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte', stanza 14). And it was Napoleon, that hero of romantic aspiration, that Mrs Trench thought of as she watched Kean's Richard: "He reminded me constantly of Buonaparte -- that restless quickness, that Catiline inquietude, that fearful somewhat, resembling the impatience of a lion in his cage.'s But the melancholy of Kean's Richard seemed like shadows cast by a dazzling brilliance. Macready, noticing that the chief difference between Cibber's and Shakespeare's Richard lay in the compunctious hesitation of the one compared with the business-like hurry of the other, felt that in this Kean was Shakespearian. He seemed to Macready like Napoleon again, but in his upward course.s The reviewer for the <2Champion>2 (27 April 1817) was dazzled: "he fills the stage with a mental gaiety and spurs the souls of his hearers into a delightful madness'. He leapt from the "hyper-tragic to the infra-colloquial', making Coleridge compare his acting to "reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning'.s Hazlitt complained that there were 49 too many of these "glancing lights'.s Kemble's sustained delivery of an artistic whole was broken up into bursts of feeling. Inspired improvisation, the vivid moment, were ideals of the romantic poets, and, down to the faults of ill-concealed artifice, Kean's acting was their stage equivalent. As with Garrick's, Kean's "naturalness' was thought vulgar by some and artificial by others. He had broken Kemble's rhetoric, and to many this was a delightful shock: he actually rubbed his hands together in moments of glee,s he lifted Anne's veil and peeped under it,s his voice dropped into familiarity on "Chop off his head' as he gave Buckingham a tap on the arm. His "daring to adopt the simplicities and familiarities of the commonest everyday life's had an "electric' effect (as the reviewers were always saying). But not everybody wanted art to be close to nature. Roger Pickering in 1755, had taken the old view that "Tragedy, like Painting must shew us Nature; but under as much Advantage as she will admit of.' He had advised against turning the toes in or placing them "in a strait line with the Bone of the Leg'. Sir Joshua Reynolds specifically warned against being natural in "theatrical representations': "The expression of violent passion', for example, "is not always the most excellent in proportion as it is most natural. . . violent distortion of action, harsh screamings of the voice, however great the occasion, or however natural on such an occasion are therefore not admissible in the theatrick art.'s If, as Reynolds main- tains in his fourth Discourse, Bernini spoilt his David by showing him biting his lips, Kean would have demeaned King Richard by making him rub his hands. These views belonged to the general neo-classical cast of mind. Kemble's patrician demeanour was many people's ideal. Kean's bustle, according to William Robson, was a vulgar "wriggle'. Kemble's art he said was in the "fine touch, the beautiful tint, the last magic shade of the pencil, the last satisfying chip of the chisel. . . His person and face made it noble, his understanding made it correct, his study and accomplishments made it graceful.' Kean, on the other hand, could only do "to the life' the dramatic equivalents of the "darling porker or pet donkey' painted by George Morland.s The Augustan aristocrat and the romantic democrat confronted each other in Kemble and Kean. Even Kean's unruly, bohemian private life fitted the picture. The reviewer for the <2Champion>2 (27 April 1817), summed it up when he imagined that if a temple were erected to both actors, Kemble would stand at the top of the steps, leaning against a pillar and looking down upon the crowds with an eye of "confident grandeur' while "Kean would come down from the pillars and bustle among the people'. There was a third party of critics basically in sympathy with Kean, and yet disappointed in him for betraying the very principles he stood for. Leigh Hunt went to his first Kean night expecting the sort of naturalistic 50 detail exemplified by the man who comes back from a walk, throws his gloves into his hat, "gives a pull down to his coat or a pull up to his neckcloth, and makes up the fireplace with a rub of his hands and a draught of air through his teeth'. Instead he found him for the most part stagey in the ordinary way; only at moments did he "take leave of the pedantry of the stage' and strike an original note. His rubbing his hands was one point, his drawing on the ground with the point of his sword another, followed by the abrupt "self-recollecting' "Goodnight' with which he made his exit.s Henry Crabb Robinson felt the same disappointment when he noted that "Kean's action was very often that of Kemble.'ls Hazlitt was not looking for that kind of naturalism; in fact, he was enough in the old tradition to mind certain common touches, for example Kean's putting his hands behind his back while listening to Buckingham's account of the citizens. But he was also enough in tune with the new spirit to rejoice in the "animation, vigour and relief [which Kean gave] to the part'. What infuriated him was Kean's tendency towards self-parody. The animation in his first performances seemed to be the "freshness of nature', and the last fight overwhelmed him with its "preternatural and terrific grandeur'.s Even then these qualities bordered on extravagance, but a few months later they had degenerated into stage tricks. By October 1814, after a visit to Dublin, Hazlitt reported in the <2Champion>2 (9 October 1814) that the pauses were twice as long, the quick passages twice as fast. In the fight, Kean's former "gesture of motionless despair' -- or was it "the manifestation of some preternatural power'? -- had become an exchange of fisticuffs. The last act as a whole had become "inexplicable dumb-show and noise'.s It was the "towering and lofty' Richard that Hazlitt wanted -- much as some felt they had in Kemble -- but he wanted it in Kean's spirit. He saw nothing intrinsically incompatible in that combination. On the contrary, Kean's stance, for example (in spite of the huge hat and "bolster- like' leg-pad that Hunt advised him to abandon)s against the side wing at Anne's entrance in I.2 "would have done for a Titian to paint', and in wooing Lady Anne he was like the "first tempter', no common praise from Hazlitt.s His worst faults were a species of technical self-indulgence, the ludicrous transitions from dead pauses to gabbling familiarities resulting merely from a "desire to give expressive effect by a display of the utmost dexterity of execution'. s The exaggerations of this "elaborate and systematic' executions were, of course, a gift to his imitators. One of these, the American James H. Hackett, studied him he says in a note at the front of his copy "during at least a dozen of his performances of Richard' at the Park Theatre, New York, in 1826, and noted down all his business and readings. The document is less full than that implies, for his vocal oddities were not 51 recorded. Nevertheless it is interesting in that it strips the performance of its contemporary effect and gives us starkly what he did. We are told that he "beats his breast' with some frequency; that he "points' in pantomimic explanation to his head, to the ground, to heaven; that he "writhes his body right and left'; that he draws his hand across his throat on "Chop off his head'; that he "starts', and that during Henry's speech just before the murder he even "starts at intervals'; and frequently the note reads "uses his right hand', that "old oratorical right hand' that so displeased Hunt.s The impression on a modern reader is of ludicrous staginess. On the other hand there is the moment when, at the end of II.2, he "approaches Buckingham, and leans on his left shoulder, biting his half bent forefinger sideways'; there is his action of frequently lapping his robe round him as he soliloquizes dejectedly during the murder of the princes; there is the expressiveness of his listening face in I.2, which can convey that he "catches the idea of assuming the appearance of despair' as Lady Anne dares him to kill himself. There is a certain familiarity in his easy contact with the other actors. He "touches [Henry's] arm significantly' on the sarcastic lines about his son Edward's death (Cibber, I.2.25-9); we have seen him tapping Buckingham, leaning on him familiarly and seizing Lady Anne's scarf; he prods Stanley in Act V with his truncheon. These details of staginess and naturalness in gesture, taken with Kean's extreme transitions vocally, while they are not illuminating without the gloss of those who saw him, do nevertheless confirm the puzzlement of Leigh Hunt. Perhaps the comment of an old actor, Jack Bannister, who had performed with Garrick, is worth considering in this context. Asked for his opinion of Kean's Richard, particularly in comparison to Garrick's he answered, "For some time I could not form a judgement, and yet was unable to account for it. I had only seen Kean from behind the scenes, so one night I seated myself rather beyond the centre of the pit, and there he appeared to me another man. . : Indeed I found his conception of the character so entirely original and so excellent, that I almost forgot my old master, Davy Garrick.'s Just as a painting of exaggerated contrasts is confusing looked at closely, so Kean's performance needed to be understood broadly. Perhaps Kean himself recognized more than a casual similarity between his art and painting when he explained to one of his portraitists, John Neagle, that the monotony in parts of his soliloquies was like the shadow needed by the painter to bring out the highlights. "These bright lights,' he added, "are the proper emphasis to produce an effect.'s Too literal or logical an eye killed it. Whatever the judgements of the critics, Kean's Richard was the saving of Drury Lane. The theatre was on the verge of bankruptcy when Kean was engaged, and he filled it again almost nightly, at least during his first 52 season. His Richard was always the most lucrative role, making an average of #502 a night over twenty-five performances of it in his first season. Only the average for his Hamlet, #512, exceeds it and that was calculated over only eight nights. The overall average for Kean that season was #484 a night, while for non-Kean nights it was #212.s But as Hillebrand points out, "there was a certain lack of sinew' in Kean's success. During his second season it was not unusual for him to play to a house of#200 or so. A new role would increase the takings, and so would a contest with a newcomer. Otherwise "in spite of the very genuine admiration that was entertained for him, he palled. . . The first acquaintance with him was exciting -- but curiosity had a way of being quickly satisfied.'s <1Edmund Kean's Influence>1 The most famous of Kean's competitors was Junius Brutus Booth, and early in 1817 Harris, the manager at Covent Garden, and the management at Drury Lane ran both actors neck and neck. Booth opened the contest with <2Richard III>2 and astonished his audience with what seemed to be a duplicate of Kean's performance. The reviewer for the <2Champion>2 (16 February 1817) thought he had wandered into the wrong theatre. Booth had Kean's "eyes, face and walk' -- his "tempestuous action in his passionate scenes, and all. . . his familiarity in the calm ones'. Admittedly, Kean had so identified himself with the part that any new aspirant had to follow his manner, but Booth's fidelity seemed uncanny. However, he seemed at first to possess talent enough to alarm Kean, who enticed him from Covent Garden and contracted him for three years at Drury Lane for more money than Harris was offering. The result was a disaster for Booth, for after a humiliating performance as Iago to Kean's Othello, in which Kean annihilated him before a crammed house, he realized that his budding career was now to be blasted in second-line parts, Richmond to Kean's Richard, Macduff to his Macbeth and so on. He ned back to Covent Garden where Kean's notorious claque, the Wolves, drowned out his performances, as well as the shouted slogans from Booth's supporters. After the first fury was over Booth did have some success, though nothing he could do shook Kean's supremacy. In 1821 he crossed the Atlantic, and there made his name as America's first great tragedian and theatrical manager. What in England had been observed, in spite of Kean, as a genuine talent developed, so it was said, into a "prodigious force'. In Richard, one of his most popular roles, this was 53 especially noticed in the last act. He played the first scenes tamely, husbanding himself for the end, where he was "a whirlwind'.s "Crito' in <2The American>2 (16 October 1821) was less enthusiastic. The battle scene, he said, "was, as usual, full of acting and fury; and after Richard received his deathwound Mr Booth seemed disposed to treat us to a pugilistic feast, and as he had not slain his antagonist with his sword, to pummel him out of existence'.s The influence of Kean at his worst is apparent, as it is in Booth's dream soliloquy. "Crito' continued: "in the tent scene the actor <2shook>2 prodigiously, and when he found his <2ague>2 was effective he increased and prolonged it to admiration'. Booth's acting was most popular where it was athletic; where it could not be that, he developed an elaborately literal method of elocution, "varying his tones to suit each figure of speech'. s This tradition of physical acting thrived in <2Richard III.>2 American actors of Richard showed a savagery at the end that was quite unimagined in England. English actors always fenced the last fight. Kean had added a new touch at the very last moment which had sometimes developed into boxing, but the gallery had always been happy with the fencing match. In America, battle to the death was rougher and bloodier. Junius Brutus was especially suited for it by a streak of madness, aggravated frequently by drink (but even he fell short of the terrifying realism of his son Wilkes Booth, who was later, in 1865, to assassinate Abraham Lincoln). In the last scenes of <2Richard III>2 "his face was covered with blood from wounds supposed to have been received in slaying those five other Richmonds he refers to; his beaver was lost in the fray, his hair flying helter skelter, his clothes all torn, and he panted and fumed like a prize fighter'.s Edwin Forrest, an actor who championed the noble American savage, brought into the play a hint of the backwoods. John Forster reviewing him for <2The>2 <2Examiner>2 (5 March 1837) during his visit to England noted with English disdain that his "ideas of heroism and of the passion of courage or despair, appear to have been gathered among the wilds of his native country'. During the last two acts he played with "hideous looks and furious gestures, ear-splitting shouts and stage-devouring strides', ending with the "wretched' trick of coming on for the fight "with long and heavy strips of black hair which were fixed in such a way that they came tumbling over his forehead, eyes and face with every barbarous turn and gesture'.s No doubt because of this emphasis on the savagery of Richard, Cibber's version was not challenged in America until the early 1870s, and even after Shakespeare had been partially reestablished, Cibber continued to be performed. A.C. Sprague records a performance of Cibber's version in America as late as 1930 and Cibber was nowhere acknowledged in the programme.s 54 <1Macready and the First Shakespearian Experiment>1 In England, on the other hand, the new delight in the witty aristocratic temper of Richard resulted in an attempt by Macready in 1821 to restore Shakespeare. The experiment was shortlived -- 12 and 19 March 1821 -- but its spirit had been manifested in his reluctant performances of Cibber's version. Macready, who had first appeared at Covent Garden in 1816 and had been steadily rising, had pointedly avoided competing with Kean in his most popular part. But in 1819, when Covent Garden had sunk so low that the management could no longer pay the actors, he was tricked into taking it. Harris, after pleading with the actor to save the theatre with Richard, simply billed him, and one Tuesday morning Macready, horrified, read the playbills that announced him in the part for the following Monday. He describes how he prepared himself: "All that history could give me I had already ferreted out; and for my portrait of the character, the self-reliant, wily, quick-sighted, decisive, inflexible Plantagenet, I went direct to the true source of inspiration, the great original. . . 's The Richard that emerged had all the gaiety of Kean's with none of the shadows. The "mounting spirit', the lofty, intellectual and witty Richard that so thrilled Lamb and Hazlitt were given, but without the Byronic gloom. "We certainly never saw the gayer part of Richard to such advantage,' wrote Leigh Hunt at the end of a long and appreciative review, "his very step, in the more sanguine scenes had a princely gaiety of self-possession, and seemed to walk off to the music of his approaching triumph'.s Given this approach, it was inevitable that Macready should want to rescue some of Shakespeare. His instincts were still Cibberian -- or perhaps simply those of the actor-manager -- in that his attention was on the leading character. Judging by the preface to the published version, it was not for Margaret's sake that he largely restored 1.3, or for Hastings' sake that he restored the council scene. Clarence was back, with his dream, but the main reason for each restoration was to quarry for Richard the choicest of those witty, racy, colloquial interchanges that Cibber had omitted. The emphasis of the play is not greatly redistributed in Macready's version: Buckingham is no less inconspicuous, Margaret does not amount to a second point of focus. Many of Cibber's cuts and rearrangements and all his soliloquies are still there, though, one assumes, against Macready's better judgement. In the preface to his version he points out how unShakespearian is this "compunctious and self-examinl-ng' Richard, "stopping to sneer at every object past which Shakespeare hurries him with a contemptuous indifference'.s But he was in a difficult position. He knew that a Richard without the well-known "points', as they 55 were called, would be condemned, and the soliloquies had traditionally supplied Richard with some of his best effects. <2The London Magazine>2 for April 1821 agreed with him, pointing out that there are certain moments "in an old established play which an audience is wont to look forward to, and the omission of which it will not easily permit'. This attention to what the audience would or would not permit was much more urgent in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than now. Actors were at the mercy of their patrons, immediately and physically. Tate Wilkinson remembered that in the 1760s it was common for botles or orange peel to be thrown on to the stage if someone in the gallery happened not to be pleased. He compliments London audiences for handing such people over to the constable, but in the provinces the theatres were often places of uproar.s If an actor was bad enough, he did not stand a chance. Lacy, for example, as Richmond in one of Garrick's last performances of <2Richard III,>2 used "such an outre/ motion of his right arm' which was so "awkward and disgusting' that his auditors "hissed and endeavoured to interrupt him'.s The pit was traditionally the actor's tribunal, with the gallery just as vociferous, if not as judicious. The avid, educated playgoer would very often sit in the pit, and although it did not always live up to its reputation -- "the <2Breeding>2 of <2Porters>2 and the <2Silence>2 of <2Fishwomen>2 is superior to what I have <2sometimes>2 observed in this Part of the Theatre's -- the excitement and expectation there was something that "pittites' would write about afterwards. The reviewer for the <2Champion>2 (25 May 1817) remembering a Kemble night gives the feeling of it: How eagerly did we press forward as the bars of the door clanked! How ardently did we wrestle with our enthusiastic neighbours! . . . our seat in the pit was doubly dear to us since it was earned by the sweat of our brow. The theatre did then look to us like a happy place; it <2was>2 one. The misty obscurity, -- the callings of parted friends, -- the solitary cold servants. . . the humming joy of the newly filled gallery, -- and the fruit women, -- the dark green curtain, -- all these were glorious! Then the gradual lighting, and rising of the lamps, -- the warmth which sat in all eyes, -- the rustling of the playbills, -- the first bell, -- the music, -- the second bell, and the slowly ascending curtain! Charles Lamb talks of the particular pleasure audiences took in comparing actors in certain well-known moments of a play: two Hamlets in the closet scene, two Richards in the tent scene.s As we have seen, the managements at Covent Garden and Drury Lane would run actor against actor. One management would stage a contest between two actors in the 56 same play, Othello, of course, being a favourite for that. <2The London>2 <2Magazine>2 (January 1823) describes the atmosphere on such a night: The resolute playgoers were on their appointed benches, near the orchestra -- wiping their red glowing faces in the misty pit, and looking in a sort of wonder at the cold formal people who came into the house and the boxes, in treason as it were, to the true spirit of the night... The lights arose, gilding the green of the curtain. The very scent of the theatre became more fragrant, -- "that mixture of orange peel and oil', as Matthews so well describes it. But, by the same token, that excited self-confident audience could give more clamorous encouragement than an actor would dream of today. The retrospective description in <2The London Magazine>2 (November 1821) of Macready's own experience when he first played Richard (not in his own version), illustrates both the terror and the reward: At the commencement of the play he had three difficulties to overcome: his own diffidence and extreme agitation; the prejudices of the public against a <2second-rater>2 (for in sad truth he was considered little better); and the unhooded opposition of Kean's partisans, aptly cognomated from their odious howling "THE WOLVES'. The house filled early; and it was evidently the crisis of Mr Macready's fate. At first it seemed to go off rather flatly -- it was a new kind of Richard and they did not know what to make of it: but at length a test of intellect and feeling offered -- mouths were opened and bodies leaned forwards -- a low hush! -- "Good, it will do, by ----!' burst from an old amateur near us; up went the applause, around, above and below! The burden fell from Macready's mind -- the roofing of terrible suspense fell in, and the vanquishing flame burst high. . . in the Tower scene, during the "smothering', the pit rose simultaneously perforce, cheering and waving their hats and handkerchiefs. . . So Macready's caution in introducing a new Richard, that is in a new text, was well-advised. Cibber's Richard had become so entrenched in the popular imagination, to hear his "points' was so much the object of going to a performance, that a complete restoration of Shakespeare would have been a disaster. As it was, the play was coolly received. The <2idea>2 of a restoration was pleasing in itself, Genest reports, and the first two acts went well, but "in the 3rd Act the Bishop of Ely made his exit in so ludicrous a manner, that it threw a damp on the rest of the play'.s The reviewer for <2Gold's London Magazine and Theatrical Inquisitor>2 (April 1821) 57 thought the play a "tolerable success' but he felt that Macready was "comparatively inanimate'. "He was but half a villain.' That was the most obvious difference. Even in Macready's watered-down version, Richard is not the solo turn that he is in Cibber. Though Margaret, according to Genest, "made the greatest impression' (in spite of being given only her first scene) and Egerton as Clarence was "much applauded', Macready judged that the experiment would not work for much longer, and took it off after the second night. When Charles Kean came to consider what text he should choose for his revival at the Princess's Theatre in 1854, he decided after "mature consideration', against all the scholarly and critical arguments, to retain Cibber because that version "is most intimately associated with the traditionary admiration of the public for these renowned and departed actors'. It was therefore in the service of the most famous piece of theatrical inauthenticity that he consulted his antiquarians and heraldic experts, his Meyrick on Ancient Armour and his Pugin on Ecclesiastical ornament and costume.s But in spite of appearances, Macready's capitulation to public taste, and Charles Kean's elaborate embalming of it, marked the beginning of the end for Cibber. <1The Decline of Cibber and the Second>1 <1Shakespearian Experiment>1 During the 1840s three kinds of production were mounted which demonstrated the changing climate. Actors continued to play Cibber's version, most notably Charles Kean at the Haymarket in June 1840 and at Drury Lane in January 1844. But although one reads polite reviews, no actor appears during those years to match Edmund Kean or Macready. Audiences were becoming politer in any case, and by 1857 the change was marked enough for Cole to remark that "modern audiences are less easily worked up to strong demonstration than they were at the beginning of the present century. . . they sit for the most part in silent admiration. . . the stalls, boxes, and even the pit are too genteel to clap their hands; and the Olympian deities are awed into silence by their isolation and the surrounding chill'.s Without any real enthusiasm to keep the play alive and changing' tradition was beginning to atrophy. <2The Times>2 (22 February 1854) reviewing Charles Kean's revival at the Princess's Theatre noticed that though Richard "is not so familiar with the British public as he was twenty years ago, he is expected to make certain traditional points or his audience will not be satisfied. . . he has even a prescribed mode of pulling up his glove while he orders, in a peculiar voice, the decapitation of [Buckingham]'. What was new, and this only served to stifle it further, was 58 the idea that the play could be "a valuable school of antiquarian instruction, and a living lecture on the past'.s Having reached this silly-serious point, it was inevitable that a burlesque should have been mounted with enormous success while Charles Kean was playing Richard at Drury Lane. <2Kinge Richard ye Third or ye Battel of>2 <2Bosworth>2 by Charles Selby ran for sixty nights at the Strand in 1844 and was later produced in New York, where two years later Charles Kean also appeared in a lavish production of the straight play. The parody, in rhyming couplets, satirizes the stage traditions that had accumulated round Cibber's version. Cibber's points are hilariously mangled. For example "The North! Why, what do they do in the North, / When they should serve their Sovereign in the West', first made famous by Garrick becomes "The sow sow east! What do they in the sow sow east, / When they're wanted in the nor nor west.' "Off with his head. So much for Buckingham' is preempted by the bungling messenger who says "My liege the Duke of Buckingham is taken / And we've cut his head off.' The business, too, is a parody of traditlonal acting practices. Take for example Edmund Kean's change of voice from fierce to sweet at the moment when news is brought of Edward IV's illness. In Cibber the man is rudely interrupted before his message is out with Richard's "Be gone, Fellow -- I'm not at leisure', but after the message he is addressed as "Friend'.s Kean's transition had passed into custom. The actor of the burlesque goes one further. He <2"raises a foot to kick him',>2 and then <2"altering his manner to>2 <2extreme politeness. . . takes out a purse and gives him a fourpenny piece and>2 <2shakes his hand with great affection.>2 ' The stage directions instruct Richard to change smiles into frightful grimaces, to tremble and start and flourish his sword. His pronunciation in the spider simile is lengthened out in imitation of the stagy exaggerations used by Charles Kean: "Unless some kind friend will upon them [two daddy long-legs] trr-ead, / They'll crr-awl, and crr-awl, till they scrr-atch me out of bed.' The very familiarity which Macready and Charles Kean dared not disappoint had bred a friendly kind of contempt. Perhaps as an answer to the impasse that those two kinds of production together represented, Samuel Phelps, the manager of Sadler's Wells, repeated in 1845 Macready's experiment. This time however the restoration was more thorough (though like any other director he made his cuts and trans- positions), Cibber being completely discarded. The result was a success. The critics no longer complained. Instead they rejoiced in the arrival of a new character, Margaret. <2The Athenaeum>2 (25 February 1854), castigating Charles Kean for reviving Cibber in 1854 after Phelps' success, went so far as to call her "the grand central figure in the picture. . . the wild and weird Queen Margaret'. Mrs Warner in 1845 and Miss Glynn in 1849, when 59 Phelps repeated the production, were his Margarets and each received at least as much attention as Phelps himself. So fearful was Miss Glynn in her cursing scene that according to <2The Athenaeum>2 (24 March 1849) Phelps "quailed before her dilated and determined gaze. . . [and] became suddenly imperfect in his text'. The most refreshing thing in the reviews of Phelps' production is the amount of space given to aspects of the play other than the characterization of the hero. Phelps himself, though he was speaking different lines, made no radical alteration to Richard. He was a good workmanlike actor, and, according to the <2News of the World>2 (20 February 1845) avoided "throwing himself into galvanistic fits when under more than ordinary excitement'. What really interested this reviewer was the atmosphere that Phelps as director had managed to create on stage by means of lighting, sound, scenery and "the earnestness of every actor employed'. The last act is singled out, and especially the tents scene (two tents for the first time in at least 150 years). The stage was faintly lit by two flaming cressets standing before the tent doors whilst a "deep stillness' was preserved. The ghosts, introduced on stage "by some ingenious process', were only ever "dimly visible to the audience'. Then after they had disappeared, the silent obscurity gradually gave way to dawn, the distant sound of bugles, the faint roll of drums, and the gradually growing hum of preparation. Whether or not Phelps sank to his knees, shook convulsively and started at Catesby's entrance seems not to have mattered to the reviewer. Strangely, after the generally warm reception of Shakespeare's play, Phelps returned to Cibber. It was said that he could not find another actress to match Mary Amelia Warner and Isabella Dallas Glynn as Margaret. It was not until Charles Calvert's production in Manchester in September 1870 that Shakespeare's text was heard again. In the interval the play became an oddity. Charles Kean's attempt to make it respectable by spending enormous sums on it were only moderately successful. His New York production in 1846 cost him $10,000 and the terrible thought is said to have struck him half-way through in the Green Room of the Park Theatre that the exercise was pointless: "My dear Ellen,' he was overheard saying to his wife, "these costly equipments are after all destructive of the actor's vocation; the people are so engrossed with looking at the scenery and dresses that they have no time to think of the acting. I feel I have nothing to do but to walk on the stage and offagain.'s Both in New York and in London in 1854 his costumes and scenery filled the columns of his reviews. He took every opportunity to have huge processions -- seventy- two people following Henry VI's corpse for example; he had nineteen changes of scenery; in the battle a flight of real arrows was shot across the stage. 60 But his runs were comparatively short, while, on the other hand Astley's amphitheatre in 1856 was filled almost nightly for months with an equestrian extravaganza featuring White Surrey and his heroic exploits on the field of battle. The playbills, about two-and-a-half feet long, announce in black and red and numerous different type faces that "riderless steeds gallop to and fro over the Plain; the gallant charger ""White Surrey'', while bearing his Royal master, Falls dead in the field -- the stage is covered with DYING AND DEAD HORSES while the Tout Ensemble produces an effect such as never yet has been attempted by any Stud of Horses in the World -- the whole forming a Grand and Startling Representation.' As one paper put it, "whenever the text makes allusion to horses, horses illustrate the text'.s There was some attempt to act the play in the ordinary sense as well, and one reviewer, rather priggishly, thought the experiment commendable because it taught those who were in general accustomed to """inexplicable dumb show and noise''. . . to think and feel under the influence of a master mind'.s The improving, utilitarian zeal of the period was indefatigable. This was the first horseback version of the play in England, but in the United States <2Richard III>2 had long been a spectator sport. In 1826 the last two acts had been equestrianized at the Lafayette Amphitheatre in New York, and so had the last act in 1840 at the Bowery.s J.B. Booth was said to have done it on horseback in Philadelphia.s In 1851 the St James's Theatre in London followed what had also been an American practice, in putting on the two Bateman sisters, Kate and Ellen, who were then six and eight years old, as Richard and Richmond: "a nuisance by no means proportioned to the size of its perpetrators', wrote Henry Morley sourly.s In the 1820s and 1830s in America that sort of performance had been fashionable: small boys and women had taken the part of Richard fairly frequently, and once a mother and son had done Elizabeth and Richard at the Park Theatre, New York (June 1832). Alice Wood mentions a Charlotte Crampton, an equestrienne, as Richard on horseback, performing "wonderful feats with her trained horses' in the last act.s In this way the play was beginning to drop out of the straight, respectable theatre. Even Barry Sullivan, the most famous English Richard of the 1860s, and popular after that time outside London until his death in 1891, could count as a spectator sport. Shaw called him a "splendidly monstrous performer' for whom "there was hardly any part sufficiently heroic for him to be natural in it'. His Richard, Shaw wrote in another place, was "an exhibition not a play'.s Dutton Cook, reviewing his revival at Drury Lane in February 1868, ascribed the audience's enjoyment to an "amused interest' in the scenes and points which were "held in such extravagant estimation in times past'. Sometimes the 61 amusement would develop into "a certain irreverent disposition to regard ""Off with his head'' and similar despotic explosions somewhat in the light of jests'.s Less sophisticated audiences loved him, and he would fight at the end encouraged by shouts of "Go on, Barry!' from the gallery.s195 When Frank Benson in 1886 took Shakespeare's <2Richard III>2 to Belfast where Barry Sullivan had given it in the only version he ever played -- Cibber's -- the audience was baffled: "the clamour in the regions above grew apace until Mr Benson thought it expedient to step forward and explain the discrepancy. The house settled down to enjoy the performance, but not before one of ""the gods'' had jocosely suggested that they should ""Send for Barry''.'s <1Shakespeare Finally Restored>1 There begins to emerge in the 1860s and 1870s an educated middle-class audience large enough to have its tastes consulted separately from the tastes of other classes. In 1776 a reviewer in the May issue of <2The London>2 <2Magazine>2 could describe Drury Lane on a crowded Garrick night as being "brilliant' and "perspiring', the house being packed with "people of fashion and. . . mob'. George William Curtis, in <2Harper's Magazine,>2 December 1863, describes going to see Edwin Forrest in New York and in the same evening stepping into a performance by Edwin Booth (Junius's son). Forrest "brawny and exaggerated' was playing with "a palpable physical effect' to a "packed and moved crowd of unrefined people', while Booth, "pale, thin and intellectual' played to a middle-class audience more attentive than moved, quiet, not overflowing, and expecting all his finer points.s The queue at the pit door at Covent Garden in 1821, which could land the elbow of a "roundabout dame from the Minories' in the ribs ofa "smartly dressed young man's contrasts sharply with the queue in the pit passage to the Lyceum in the 1880s and 1890s described by Bram Stoker as mostly "young ladies and gentleman' waiting on "camp-stools'.s If <2Richard III>2 was to be played at all to this kind of audience it had to be dissociated from the exaggerated grimacing and barnstorming that had come to belong to it almost by right. The first step in that direction was of course the restoration of Shakespeare, since all the abuses of actors were thought to be Cibber's fault. Charles Calvert was first in the field in Manchester in September 1870, with a restoration fuller than the more famous restorations of Edwin Booth and Irving after him. Admittedly he was more interested in scenery, costumes and crowds than in anything else, and Shakespeare's play gave him more material to work with. On the first night the performance lasted 62 more than four hours.s Nevertheless his acting scaled Richard down. The <2Manchester Guardian>2 (6 September 1870) said that he avoided all "chopping sentences and dreadful leggy struttings', and at moments dropped to a domesticated drawing-room level which seemed startlingly new at the time: "as for instance in his reception of the jeers and upbraidings of Margaret when he sits in his chair, and leisurely counts off on his fingers the old queen's catalogue of sins'. The reviewer felt he was almost "too bland'; perhaps Calvert read the notice because by 10 September the <2Salford Weekly News>2 was able to report that he had "got rid of a conversational unemphatic method of delivery'. It was difficult to judge how far to humanize Richard's manner, but a foretaste of how Irving, Booth and later Mansfield, were to approach the humanizing of his character is given in the same review: "we like him best when touched with remorse, for then even his strong spirit begins to bend and well nigh breaks, especially when he wakes from his fearful vision'. That was to be the cliche/ of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The insensitive might write rudely to Mansfield, who carried the theme of Richard's remorse further than anyone else, "Give us more hump',s but the new orthodoxy was to put Richard through the moral mill and give him a glimpse of Heaven. The eighteenth-century sensibility had wanted to find a cause for Richard's villainy and some conscience in him, both of which Cibber's version provides for; but it had been content to let him go to Hell in his own way, even if, by the early nineteenth century, the road to Hell had seemed pervesely splendid. The shift in opinion is stated unequivocally by William Winter, a fulsome and conventional critic who idolized Edwin Booth, and who edited for him his "restored' version of <2Richard III.>2 He considered the gaiety of Macready's Richard to have been based entirely on Cibber's hero "who is not at any moment until the Dream scene shown as a man capable of sensibility. . . whereas Shakespeare's <2Richard.>2 . . has made it clearly evident that he is conscious of his wickedness, apprehensive of its punishment, and therefore vulnerable to retribution'.s Macready blamed Cibber for his unShakespearian compunction; now Winter blames him for his lack of it. In both cases Shakespeare is invoked in order to reinforce the predilections of the age. Until this time, Richard's conscience had always been seen in contrast to Macbeth's. Thomas Whately in <2Remarks on Some of the Characters of>2 <2Shakespeare>2 published posthumously in 1785 and written fifteen years before, had said that whereas Macbeth could not either by confidence or despair silence the cries of his conscience, Richard "throughout the whole progress of his reiterated crimes, is not once daunted by danger, discouraged by the difficulties, nor disconcerted by the accidents attending them, nor ever shocked either at the idea or the reflection'. Like Lamb, 63 Hazlitt and Macready after him, Whately noticed that "an extraordinary gaiety of heart shows itself upon those occasions which to Macbeth seem most awful'.s His piece was published again in 1808 and in 1839, and as late as 1856 the same ideas were put forward in an essay by James Stonehouse.s But in 1877 T.H. Hall Caine took up the theme and confounded the distinction: "Richard is really eternally struggling against maddening remorse, which in the recession of his reason, rises to prominence.' He and Macbeth are on common ground. Irving's acceptance of Richard's estimate of himself as a villain disappointed Hall Caine: the only thing that he felt to be truly Shakespearian was Irving's crucifix business in the dream soliloquy: "To see this scene enacted by Mr Irving as he clings convulsively to the crucifix, and the heart-racking lines are imbued with the soul of a great actor, is at once to pity the awful isolation which is as real to Richard as if it were the nature of things, and no longer to doubt that Richard is deceiving himself to the very throat when he says he is striving to lead the murderous Macchiavel to school 's Lamb had flirted with the idea of Shakespeare's Richard as a man of feeling, but the note of moral sentiment only becomes rapturous during the last quarter of the century. What others had been alarmed or delighted at not finding in Shakespeare becomes the very thing for which he is distinguished. As it happened, some of what was new, particularly the emphasis on Richard's conscience, could have been more easily accommodated in Cibber's version. Booth had, in fact, played Cibber's Richard many times before, but Winter found that, even in Cibber's version, his interpretation was "Shakespearian', a representation "above all. . . [of] a human being capable of remorse and redeemed from hellish depravity by that capability of human nature'.s Mansfield's Richard was, according to Winter, acted with less genius, but its moral sentiment was again impeccably "Shakespearian'.s He went further than Booth, attempting to show the passage of twelve years which historically elapsed between the beginning and the end of the play, and with that passage the growth of Richard's moral sense. By the coronation scene he was already afflicted with the horrors and by the ghost scene he was crossing himself. <1Irving's Richard and Its Influence>1 Irving's interpretation attempted to get the best of both worlds, and in so doing fell, or so some people thought, between two stools. His lightness of touch in the earlier part of the play would have been given its proper scope only by Shakespeare. On the other hand his "pathetically sublime ending', 64 as Shaw called it in the <2Saturday Review>2 (December 1896) was got in spite of Shakespeare, two important lines at the end of the dream soliloquy being cut: "Nay wherefore should they? Since that I myself / Find in myself no pity for myself.'s While both these Richards were praised by some, there were others who took offence at one or other of them. Joseph Knight objected to the affectation of Irving's acting in the second half, just as Shaw had objected to the sentiment; writing of the earlier production of 1877 he said that when "danger rouses the more heroical temper of Richard' Irving fell into "the old extravagance' of grimace and gesture, and "lengthened out the syllables of words until they seemed interminable' s Among those who admired his "sublime' Richard, one discovers a curious mixture of feelings, typical of the period. On the one hand Richard is brought within the moral fold, on the other he is found to be manfully beyond it. There is a misty-eyed uprightness about both views: whether "clinging convulsively to the cross' as Hall Caine would have it, or "daringly defiant alike of man and of God' as F.A. Marshall saw him, Irving's Richard filled the eyes or stiffened the lips of the same sort of Englishman. The bugle note sounds in the ears of F.A. Marshall when he says: "one cannot help feeling what a brave scoundrel he is . . . that if once he were secure in the position he had gained by such audacious criminality, he would make a splendid ruler of men'.s And the organ swells for Richard Dickins as he describes his sensations in the last scene: "But as we listen to the shouts of victory' our thoughts are not with the triumphant Richmond, but the dead Richard -- the great criminal, the reviled cripple, the dauntless warrior, the loving son -- and we wonder what the destiny of that brilliant genius might have been. . . What the bitterness of such a life must have been. . . can only be known to Him to Whom all hearts are open, and from whom no secrets are hid. . . we are not absolutely without hope as we murmur that despairing prayer of the last Plantagenet King -- ""Have mercy Jesu'' 's Irving's production did not seriously shift Cibber's emphasis from the chief character. The soliloquies were gone, of course, but Irving did what he could without them to focus attention upon himself at the end of an act. At the conclusion of III.7, for example, he did not exit, but stood midstage receiving the shouts of the multitude -- "Long live King Richard, England's worthy king' -- and the curtain dropped quicldy just as he shot a triumphant look at Buckingham over the top of his prayer-book.s Poel, austere Elizabethanist that he was, thought this modern practice of "working his scene up to a striking picture upon which the curtain may fall' was "sensational and stagey'.s J.F. Nisbet, the critic on <2The Times>2 wrote of the "curious effect which I have never seen before at the Lyceum where so high a standard of excellence is maintained', namely that "in the 65 presence of this colossal Plantagenet villain all the other dramatis personae are dwarfed to nothingness'.s But no one felt this to be unShakespearian. Even Shaw wrote that there was only room for "one real part' and if the others with their "historic titles and splendid robes' had "sufficient address not to absolutely contradict the dramatist's suggestion of them' the audience would believe in the courtly background that they were there to provide.s Irving's Shakespeare was aristocratic Cibber, with historic references pared away and the rest of the cast neutralized so as to give Irving as clear a field as possible to present his own special character study. In spite of his more solemn admirers, Irving's legacy to the part was frivolity. Although he had done, very beautifully and historically, what his public expected of him, and had, after all, revived Shakespeare's play, he had pricked the bubble as surely as Barry Sullivan had in 1868. Irving himself could straddle both worlds: he could familiarly drop his handkerchief on the floor before kneeling to ask his mother's blessing and still carry off the crucifix business. But for the next, more hardbitten generation, the pathetic sublime was elusive. It was the handkerchief line of business that stuck. Balliol Holloway, the best known English Richard of the 1920s, took that kind of detail to the point of buffoonery, or so thought <2The Times>2 critic, who, on January 24 1927, described him "completing his toilet with his dagger, and. . . [shaking] hands after he has won the coveted throne in the manner of a professional footballer'. But there is a fundamental uncertainty of feeling about the play which drove actors into a corner. On the one hand there is the slightly superior insistence, as the same reviewer put it, that the play is "Marlowian', that it has no "half-tones', that it is a "boy's play' in Agate's words, and on the other there is the general wish that actors should show "the passion and the tragedy of Richard III'.s The result is that during the 1920s and 1930s Richard flattened out -- not, it seems, because of any new philosophy about the part, but out of what looks like embarrassment. If anyone took the limelight it was Margaret. Genevie\ve Ward, who had been Irving's Margaret in his second revival in 1896 and had been the one subordinate character to attract some attention, had continued to play the part for Frank Benson at his Stratford summer festivals and was at the Old Vic in 1921 with Robert Atkins as Richard. She was an opera-singer manque/e, and her imprecating elocution, which had made her of the old school even in the 1890s, was marvelled at in the 1920s. Edith Evans, though very young for Margaret in 1925, took up the part in Genevie\ve Ward's style and impressed Herbert Farjeon with her "gigantically hewn fragment of acting on the epic scale. . . not pitched in the key of realism. . . but in the key of heroism'.s The tradition that had been half-exploded in Richard's case, was still new in Margaret's. 66 In the United States, however, a romantic and wholly unembarrassed enthusiasm for the Great Lucifer view of Richard survived. On 6 March 1920 at the Plymouth Theatre, New York, John Barrymore, following tradition, chose Richard in which to make his Shakespearean de/but. The critic on the <2New York Times>2 (8 March 1920) thought that "if Richard was worth playing at all he is worth playing for all the greatness there is in him'. Barrymore, in his view, had just that "titanic quality' of a "Heaven- challenging giant standing outside and above the pygmy mortals with whose destinies he toys so lightly'. Barrymore followed Mansfield in showing Richard's gradual progress from youth to middle-aged madness and degeneration, and he started even further back with the first scene of <2Henry VI Part 3>2. The performance did not finish until one o'clock in the morning, but the audience was ecstatic. The notion that Richard might be done without psychological or moral ballast died hard in the States. In 1953 Alec Guinness at the Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival disappointed the <2New York Times>2 (15 July 1953) by taking the first two acts "in a light witty key of subtle persiflage'. He called the performance "shallow and frivolous', lacking the "rude elementary, concentrated power of an Elizabethan acting piece'. <1The Modern Richard v. Wolfit and Olivier>1 Almost as if to rescue the play for contemporary interest, Tyrone Guthrie attempted to produce Emlyn Williams as a casebook Richard suffering from maternal deprivation and sibling rivalry. The programme note is a truly desperate effort to bring Richard into fashion. <2The Times>2 review on 3 November 1937 acknowledges the difficulty. The play has become unpopular, it says, for the age is analytical and prefers "to study the more contradictory impulses of Richard II' to the "deliberate highly theatrical villainy of the Crookback'. People are inclined to look for "two sorts of evil or for political error' in someone who commits so many crimes. "An interesting pallor' is more attractive to actors than "a tremendous scowl'. Emlyn Williams seems not to have had the courage of Guthrie's convictions. The theory was uncertainly interpreted. To Agate in <2The Sunday Times>2 (7 November 1937) he seemed rightly "Saturday nightish' though not aristocratic enough. To Ivor Brown in <2The Observer>2 of the same day, the play was "over-subtilized and underlit'. <2The Times>2 felt that the performance was largely an outflanking operation, with Williams just ahead of his audience in laughing at this demoded tragic villain. The <2Daily Express>2 (3 November 1937) thought him simply "homely', "Off with his head' being spoken as one might ask for a penny busfare. On the other 67 hand, Darlington on <2The Telegraph>2 of the same day thought that Williams was "a horrid mass of intertwining complexes'. The production was not uninteresting, but it did nothing to change the minds of the critics in thinking that the play was properly a magnificent vehicle for ostentatious one-man acting. Margaret had had her fling when Edith Evans played her, but no other Margaret had come up to that. Throughout the period the rest of the cast, and the ideas in the play, cause scarcely a comment. The Second World War simplified notions of evil and gave the play back its old life. In January 1942, at the Strand Theatre, Donald Wolfit opened with a characterization that had been confessedly influenced by Hitler: "the more I studied [Richard] the greater grew his resemblance to Hitler. . . My wig of long red hair with a cowlick over the forehead gave a most curious resemblance, in an impressionistic way, to the Fu%hrer.'s The relief was evident. Agate in <2The Sunday Times>2 (18 January 1942) noted that he had about as much pathos as the "champion bull at the Royal Agricultural Show' but no one seems to have minded. In twenty years the old call for poetry, passion and pathos had given way to the other call for sheer noise, and the critics were only too grateful for a bit of thunder. "The whole pageant of fifteenth century England is in the red of his robes, and the stern superbity of his armour, which the actor has the <2voice>2 to carry'. Ironically the very qualities for which Shakespeare's play was revived, refinement, intellect and morality, were largely ignored the moment that the play had come into its own. The first performance since Irving to arouse whole-hearted enthusiasm sounds like a full-blooded Cibber performance. The same thought seems to have been in Charles Cochran's mind when he wrote to Agate after Olivier's hit in the part. In a postscript he says "Shaw told me Barry Sullivan's Richard III was terrific. I think Wolfit's is grand. . ' s If Wolfit could be coupled with Sullivan, Olivier suggested Irving, or at least the first part of Irving's Richard. In a BBC interview with Kenneth Tynans he made the connection explicit: "I had heard old actors imitating Henry Irving; and so I did, right away, an imitation of these old actors imitating Henry Irving's voice.' This was, Agate observed in <2The Sunday>2 <2Times>2 (17 September 1944) "a high shimmering tenor', and he also noticed "a great deal of Irving. . . in the bite and devilry. . . the sardonic impudence, the superb emphases, the sheer malignity and horror of it'. That cynical amusement that Irving started, and that so shocked some of his contemporaries, Olivier was able to complete. To be "amused' and "delighted' as Hobson was,s no longer seemed a betrayal, and when Olivier refused, as Agate said in his review, to "crook a finger at pathos' on "There is no creature loves me', no voice was raised in protest. On the contrary what seemed in Irving an abandonment of the grand manner 68 seemed in Olivier the resumption of it. So ordinary had been the intervening Richards (Wolfit apart) that Olivier's startling charisma was enough to put him, according to Hobson, among the greatest actors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.s What was immediately exciting about him was his sheer theatricality. He dared to "grab the limelight', as Hobson put it, throwing modesty "and all that farrago' to the winds.s Darlington felt it strongly the moment he entered with "so deliberate a use of stage methods to make a stage effect that I believe one of the ""hard-boiled'' audiences of the 'twenties would have broken into nervous titters at the sight of it'.s With the spectacle of unexplained evil no longer incredible or shocking, the whole emphasis of the play shifted finally on to Richard's finished villainy. We read about his monstrous nose, based on Disney's Big Bad Wolf, of his voice, his walk. His most talked of business showed what his effect was on other people in the play not how he felt himself. The most admired Richards of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries developed the private moments. Olivier's Richard had no inwardness. His soliloquies were deliberate addresses to the audience. This last was unusual enough for Agate in his review to be taken aback. The "cultivation of a closer illusion' had turned Richard's soliloquies into self-communings. Actually to step out of the picture like that, to tip the wink, so to speak, was the one thing he criticized in Olivier's performance. Wolfit, too, had been able to concentrate on the objective man, and the result had been tremendous but monolithic. Olivier was more subtle and detailed, a serpent more than anything, Agate said. For the first time since such things have been described, we have a completely icy Richard: his effect said Agate was as of a "polar blast'. But somehow he made the blast exhilarating rather than numbing. His fascination with evil was itself fascinating. Trewin writing in <2Punch>2 (27 September 1944) felt an "unholy magnetism'. Later actors, following his chill amorality, have often seemed merely insipid. If Olivier caught the note of Shakespeare's Richard in pushing questions of motive and remorse to the peripheries of the piece, the point of the idea was blunted by a production which neglected it in the play as a whole. The "polar blast' blew only in Richard's charmed circle. Sybil Thorndyke as Margaret poured her acid in the one scene she was allowed, but the rest of the cast was, according to Darlington, "little more than chorus',s and a "bandboxy' one at that, thought Agate. For Richard's nastiness to matter beyond the excitement of good theatre, it must seep into the atmosphere around him. While the part was approached subjectively as it was in the best performances of Cibber's version and in the late nineteenth-century performances of Shakespeare, it mattered less that attention was 69 concentrated exclusively on Richard. But when Richard is presented as a monstrous fact, a fait accompli, the solitary spectacle of it is a wonder, a nightmare, an extraordinary phenomenon, but, without a context, it is unrelated to anything that might make it more than good theatre. The nearest many post-war theatre-goers may have come to the excitingly horrible sensations described by those who saw Olivier in his stage version was at a performance of the version by the Georgian Rustaveli Company which toured the West in 1979-80. In it, the seedy grotesque evil of Richard was everywhere, down to the very coffin-bearers. The slouching figures of Richard's all-purpose gangster henchmen, moving about to the banal and infinitely sinister tinkle of cafe/ music, were as evil as Richard himself. As it happened, the actor playing Richard, with his baggy face like a cross between a handsome frog and a baked apple, suave and monstrous together, would have eclipsed any ordinary company. But the production had the actors to spawn a world of Richards, fat, thin, male, female, clowns, gangsters. They were all of the same tribe, Richard and Edward for once really brothers. By means that had nothing to do with realism and illusion, one was transported into a region of irredeemable degeneracy. Before anything like that balance could be found, the play had to escape its reputation of being merely a foil for the chief actor -- an approach ill-served by Shakespeare. Heavy cuts of course were and are usual, but the feeling expressed by Agate reviewing Holloway in <2The Sunday Times>2 (11 October 1925) that the production had "too much tail', is echoed again and again in later years. The women rarely rise above his crushing description in <2The Contemporary Theatre,>2 March 1925, of the Duchess of York having the air of "a widow who has spent her life brooding in the bay window of a villa overlooking the cemetary at Kensal Green'. V.S. Pritchett, reviewing William Gaskill's production in the <2New Statesman>2 (2 June 1961) put his finger on it as far as the women were concerned when he said that they inevitably sounded merely "vinegarish' when the ideas of the play, its world of anarchy tempered by superstition, are neglected. John Burrel producing Olivier did not address himself to this problem, and Olivier made so great a personal success that there was no room for criticism. His successors, however, were left in an impasse. Either they lowered their profiles and got lost in the undergrowth, or they attempted a virtuoso Richard and invited odious comparisons. The tendency in England and the United States was, intentionally or not, to continue the pre-war habit of cutting him down to size. There was a colour of justification for this in that cruelty and violence were acknowledged as a common part of political and social life. Perhaps, too, the real horrors that were known about totalitarian governments had taken 70 the wind out of Richard's sails. By comparison with genocide his murders were harmless enough. Richard's inhumanity no longer seemed the privilege of prodigious talents. Where psychoanalysis had failed on its own to modernize Richard, a general sense of political disillusion might add its weight. The idea was useful to actors who wanted to escape Olivier's flamboyant shadow, and in theory it relieved the play of its frivolous reputation. But as there was no strong sense in these productions of the sort of world that might make their grey Richards "normal', the critics only felt what they had lost. To <2The Times>2 (25 March 1953) Marius Goring's "realistic imagination' seemed simply to be unsuited to the part. He "had a habit of appearing only one of a group of nobles' and that, according to the standard view of the period, was a measure of his failure. No one imagined that the nobles themselves might be more than undergrowth. As it happened, the show did not pass unstolen, because Harry Andrews did a Richard with Buckingham. As Kenneth Tynan put it: "Richard . . . is generally regarded as a one-man show. I had never realized until I saw the new Stratford production that the man in question was the Duke of Buckingham . . . Richard in effect abdicated, and Harry Andrews walked off with the play.'s Ivor Brown reviewing in <2The Observer>2 (29 March 1953) resigned himself to the fact that it was not to be an evening with Jack the Ripper when he saw the family tree in the programme. Nevertheless, he could not feel that the "comprehensible picture of the warring factions' that resulted and "the modernly acted' Richard was an enthralling substitute. Again, in 1961, <2The Times>2 (25 May 1961) took the point that Christopher Plummer's matter-of-factness was meant to signify that "we live in a violent age', but the review is polite at best. <1Power Politics and the Influence of Jan Kott>1 The production that gathered the pale disillusion of these decades into a deliberate "line' on the play was the version by Peter Hall and John Barton which formed part of their historical cycle entitled the <2Wars of the Roses.>2 The play had not been seen in England in conjunction with the <2Henry VI>2 trilogy since Frank Benson had presented them all, or at least parts of them, at the summer festivals in Stratford during the first decade of the century. Yeats saw them and said of the whole festival experience that "partly because of a spirit in the place, and partly because of the way play supports play, the theatre has moved me as it has never done before' s The idea had been put forward long before: <2The Athenaeum>2 suggested on 25 February 1854 that the "entire series' should be "placed on the stage in due order as a national spectacle', and acknowledged that "the plan' had 71 "already been more than once proposed'. In 1953 Douglas Seale at the Old Vic directed Barry Jackson's Birmingham Repertory Company very successfully in all three parts of <2Henry VI,>2 throwing out a hint at the end by bringing the curtain down on the first few lines of Richard's opening soliloquy in <2Richard III.>2 At last, as part of the quatercentenary offerings, the challenge was taken up -- but how differently from the imagination of <2The Athenaeum.>2 No longer could the series be seen as "noble'. The pageant-of-history approach that had always clung to the histories was rudely broken. It was Peter Hall's conviction expressed in an interview with Frank Cox in <2Plays and>2 <2Players>2 (May 1964) that this sequence was really "a horrific analysis of power politics and violence' and everything was done to emphasize in a realistic way the brutalities that are undeniably there: Henry VI's corpse really spurted blood, and his ensanguined body urged itself upon the audience during Richard's courtship of Lady Anne; the heads executed during the earlier part of the series were spiked upon the walls by the beginning of <2Richard III>2 -- and they always looked like heads said Eric Shorter in <2The Daily Telegraph>2 (21 August 1963). Clarence was drowned on stage not within and you could hear "the splash of his crying body's The bodies of Clarence's murderers were seen later, at the beginning of III.7, apparently broken on torture wheels.s Richard's leather-clad bully- boys marched about everywhere, in step, and with a crunching sound that made an all too obvious connection with the SS.s The set, props and furniture designed by John Bury were almost entirely constructed of metal: "even now one can recall the scrape of a broadsword across a steel surface' wrote Michael Billington in <2The Times>2 (12 December 1970). The walls of the set were like "iron-clad lock-gates' which opened and swivelled.s Within this world Richard was deliberately dwarfed. The choice of Ian Holm -- short, boyish, pleasant-faced -- reflected the whole philosophy of the production. Iain Shaw in the <2Tribune>2 (24 January 1964) called it almost Marxist; it could also be called Tudor. In the jargon of the first, he was the product of his environment, in that of the second he was a judgement on his times. Either way he loses said Peter Roberts in <2Plays>2 <2and Players>2 (June 1964) "something of his independent Macchiavellian stature'. Buckingham drew strength from his diminution, and certain textual changes gave a literal meaning to Richard's ironic remark: "I as a child will go by thy direction.' As Richard became less of a "part', he became more of a "person'.s The paranoia that other Richards had tried for was developed by Ian Holm to the point of "sudden blinkings and working jaw-muscles'. He was "clearly mad to the audience, utterly sane to his contemporaries', said Roger Gellert in the <2New Statesman>2 (17 January 1964). By the Elizabeth 72 persuasion scene he was desperate and sinking into a decline; the twitches, thought Peter Roberts in <2Plays and Players>2 (October 1963) were particularly well managed. He went into battle "distraught and dis- pirited's groaning inside his outsize helmet and reeling about the stage. """A horse, A horse!'' was weak as well as terrible and mad, and his death pangs were prolonged close to the audience at the centre of a vast empty stage.'s To many, especially those who "had eagerly cowered before Sir Lawrence Olivier' said Lambert in the same review, all this was a disappointment. Ian Holm "fails totally to develop into Satanic magnitude' said <2The Times>2 (21 August 1963), he "remains a high-spirited minor', "crooning to himself at the end "like a baby inside his visor'. "Magnitude', "volume' is what they wanted. John Russell Brown missed the "intimation of tragedy' at the end: there was "little scope for anything but aversion'. On the other hand there were those who found his very "insignificance' terrifying: "When every prop and every confrontation is designed to dwarf him, his midget monarch develops an insect insanity which scarifies us like the sight of an ant with its feet on the button of the H bomb.'s In thus drawing <2Richard III>2 within the pattern set by the <2Henry VI>2 plays -- as distinct from just showing it after them -- Peter Hall admitted that he owed much to the views put forward by the Polish writer, Jan Kott in <2Shakespeare our Contemporary:>2s that history proceeds according to the principle of "The Grand Mechanism', which throws up and casts down indifferently an endless succession of power-seekers. The productions which most impressed Jan Kott were Jessner's in Berlin in 1920 and one that he saw in Warsaw in 1960. Richard there was played by Woszczerowicz as the very embodiment of the Grand Mechanism, its heartlessness conveyed by a laughter so transcendant that it seemed almost to constitute a philosophy. He "was smaller than all the other characters: he has to look up in order to look them in the face. He is a figure of fun. He knows it; he knows everything.' "The Most terrifying kind of tyrant is he who has recognised himself for a clown, and the world for a gigantic buffoonery.' In the end, of course, he descends from his cold region, but Kott does not talk of growing disintegration and madness; simply the swift frightened transition from godlike clown to butchered pig. Then, as a last promise of the continuing historical process, the new Henry VII talking of "peace, forgiveness, justice' suddenly "gives a crowing sound like Richard's, and for a second time the same sort of grimace twists his face'.s The bleak ideological purity of that was of course not reproduced by Peter Hall, but they both stood ostensibly on the same anti-heroic, deterministic side of the fence. Yet there is a fundamental difference. Though the heroic "party' would not have recognized it, Ian Holm's childishness and collapse at the end were a symptom of a very English 73 preoccupation with the moral fate of individuals, and as earnest as Irving's, though harsher. The desire to be powerful is fatuous not magnificent, Holm suggested, <2therefore>2 tyrants die miserably and alone, not heroically. The moral logic of that is a far cry from Kott's historical logic. A production which pursued anti-heroism still further than Hall's, and met with as much shocked reaction, took place in 1967 at the Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, directed by John Hirsch with Alan Bates as Richard. Here Richard degenerated from a flamboyant individualist in the early scenes into so helpless a victim by the end, that in the fight he actually gave Richmond the dagger with which to kill him. Richmond's victory is thus transformed into a hole-in-the-corner murder-cum-suicide, not "the fair fight' between St George and the Dragon "where force is used on the side of good to counter murder on the side of evil', as one disappointed critic put it.s This, and the device of intercutting the two oration speeches so as to emphasize the eternal sameness of political propaganda, brings the production closer to Kott's historical pessimism than any other prominent Western performance. Yet, regardless of how far Western productions take history along Kott's mechanistic path, there is a fundamental difference in style between the production he described and these. The description of Woszczerowicz suggests a highly theatrical, idiosyncratic manner deriving, possibly, from what we would recognise as <2commedia dell'arte>2 extravagance: He has a broad face, untidy hair, and wears a soiled and torn tunic. "Woszcer' might thus begin the part of Sganarelle: with the same make- up, the same tone, the same laughter. He stands there with legs wide apart, and his withered left arm hanging down . . . Woszczerowicz speaks about peace -- laughing. This misshapen dwarf starts with tomfoolery. And again" "all his attitudes are those of a clown; the sly cruel ones, as well as the gestures of love and power'.s But Kott's ideas, received into the style that in general characterizes our Shakespearian actors, become dry and lifeless. Peter Hall and Ian Holm took enough from the personal, psychologically analytical approach which is native to us to find a richness (at least so many thought) which owed nothing to Kott. Alan Bates and his producer Hirsch, wrote Walter Kerr in the <2New York Times>2 (14 June 1967), pursued "the impersonal and fatalistic' to the bitter end, and yet within the limits of naturalistic acting they deprived the play of "independent voices, of sounds, rich enough and varied enough to engage us deeply'. The "hard sense of goose-stepping history' where "Death is part of logic, a necessary digit in an equation', is not by itself watchable. Where Kott's influence has been more fruitful is in the vivid modernity 74 he brings to the practicalities of the power game. The messenger's knock on Hastings' door at four in the morning for example: "it is the hour when decisions in high places have been taken. . . but it is also the hour when one can still save onesel f by leaving one's home. . . Who has not been awakened in this way at 4 a.m., at least once in his life?' Certain small moments are vividly familiar to Kott: the fragment of the council scene before Richard's entrance, or the little scrivener's scene, which so often gets cut or goes for nothing.s The practices of fraudulent populism -- the public relations exercises, the rubber-stamping yes-men, the rent-a-crowds -- have become fascinating to a generation suspicious of politicians, and Kott's recognition that in writing about them Shakespeare is our contemporary has given a sharper thrust to the play. Michael Bogdanov's production at the Young Vic in 1979, which introduced the play by quoting passages from Kott's book, drew much of its life from that kind of detail: the optimistic citizen at II.3 quoting his lines from the official govern- ment organ, for example, and the cameraman rushing up to take a picture of Richard shaking the Mayor's hand. Such moments gave definition to the rest of the play. Richard's wickedness was seen as part of public life. Stanley telephoning nervously from a public telephone box, obviously tailed, and explaining hurriedly why he has to appear to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, was suddenly real; one felt his fear. Forrest, or perhaps it was Rivers, refusing a drink and swallowing down milk; one felt his duodenal ulcer. Richard himself hardly needed to be individualized: he was reflected in everything around him. <1Two Traditions>1 Kott's practical observations have travelled well; but his sublime Buffoon has not. The tendency in England is towards psychological, analytical acting -- a tradition which Olivier and Wolfit both stood aside from in Richard -- or if not that towards schoolboy farce. The Buffoon may stand sornewhere in the background but the childish Richards that have been acted since Ian Holm's are really attempts to explain him rather than to put him beyond explanation. Where there is some context to give soil to Richard's psychology, as there was in the <2Wars of the Roses,>2 the approach can work: "King Richard. . . is what he is not only because of his deformity, but because he has grown up in a world where blood is the only valid argument.'s That fact had been demonstrated; a modern audience might almost have been expected to look out for symptoms. To explain him point-blank presents almost insuperable problems. He is impossible. He is too unhesitating, and is too pleased with himself. If chronic 75 immaturity is the explanation, to put it across in so extreme a form, from a standing start, so to speak, is a hazardous undertaking. Either a production can, like that of Terry Hands' with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1970, work itself up into a "lurid poetic parable's with pranks and slapstick in order to create a crazy child's world in which such nonsense makes sense; or, as in Christopher Morahan's production with the National Theatre Company in 1979 starring John Wood, it can hope to get by on the ingenuity of Richard's characterization alone, leaving the rest of the play to look after itself. For although Morahan worked hard at horrors, with onstage executions and channels in the floor running red, the play outside Richard's part had only brief moments of definition. Neither production could believe in itself entirely. B.A. Young, commenting in <2The Financial Times>2 (16 April 1970) on the manner in which Terry Hands managed the end of the courtship scene with Lady Anne, for example, wrote, "It's all rather ridiculous one feels Mr Hands saying, so why not show them how ridiculous it is.' Similarly John Wood appeared to many critics to be mocking his Richard at least in the first half: "every hypocritical line was topped off by a sardonic glee that would have alerted the most unwary dupe' wrote Robert Cushman in <2The Observer>2 (7 October 1979). The interpretation itself -- of Richard as a prodigious child -- was admired: "he tells us more and more about the character' wrote Michael Billington in <2The Guardian>2 (5 October 1979) and Benedict Nightingale thought it "a calculated, consistent and, in spite of excesses, defensible interpretation'.s Although John Wood may have partly succeeded, he was trying for analytical explanation with intransigent material. And however consistent and defensible, the exercise cannot on its own take care of the play's first requirement: that Richard should unnerve us. Whether he is magnificent or weak, or whether he makes himself felt mainly by reflection, scarcely matters. In John Wood's case, something was missing. Many critics thought it was the old Satanic grandeur; the cry went up for more serious malignancy and darker tragedy. Milton Shulman in the <2Evening Standard>2 (5 October 1979) called him a "performing flea', which need not itself have mattered if there had been an H-bomb for him to have had his feet on. Others called him "a Satanic pupetteer. . . not a full-grown hell-hound',s a satirical Richard, not a villainous one'.s Some were simply irritated and put his limitations down to his "Morecambe and Wise' tricks and funny voices; others were prepared to make the connection between Wood's lightweight Richard and his characterization as a whole. Richard was to him fundamentally frivolous: "nothing is serious to him' wrote B.A. Young, in <2The Financial Times>2 (5 October 1979). The very insights that Wood offered deprived Richard of his sting. 76 The critics of the 1920s and 1930s recoiled from analytical interpretations on the grounds that the play was roaring melodrama. Perhaps reservations about such interpretations can be made without undermining the play so drastically. The actors that have been remembered longest as Richard in modern times have simply claimed belief -- they have not attempted to persuade, or make a case. They have not been "known' in the sense that one knows someone in a novel. They have been apprehended. The only things that people have been able to say about them are the way they have been made up, and have walked, the faces and gestures they have made. No one remembers being enlightened. In the theatre it was a matter of what Trewin, reviewing Wolfit, called "communicable gusto'.s Regardless of whether these Richards have been heroic or anti-heroic, comic or tragic, the sort of acting that has made them possible has been very physical. In England it has seemed almost outrageous. Olivier would have made audiences in the 1920s titter. When Chkivadze of the Rustaveli Company did his extraordinary toad impersonation some said that he would not have got away with it in English: the fact of a foreign language saved him from the rational expectations of a western audience. The ground is hazardous; it is within a hair's breadth of burlesque. And yet Richard any other way is as precarious, with a smaller reward at stake: if in soliciting our understanding he fails, then he becomes incredible, and if he succeeds he becomes merely a more or less interesting deviant. What Sturua, the director of the Rustaveli Company, showed was that a monstrous Richard properly puts the onus on the rest of the play to make him matter. In doing so, he threw into powerful prominence all those parts of it which with a subjective Richard are so intractable: the rigid symmetries and ironies and prophecies. He took great liberties with the texts and the cast, cutting, transposing, and intercutting. He introduced a court jester, and made Margaret into the sort of rehearsal manager of the play's deterministic world, reading out the directions and sometimes prompting from the copy. The effect of these changes was never to dilute Shakespeare's formalism. For example, Buckingham taunts the condemned Hastings with the words "we know each other's faces, for our hearts. . .' and is in turn taunted with the same words when his own execution falls due. The device of repeating words in a new context is Shakespeare's, but Sturua was more succinct. Or take his simultaneous scenes: Clarence described his dream at the very moment that Richard was ordering his assassination, and Hastings assured Stanley of Catesby's loyalty while Buckingham was giving Catesby his instructions on how to double-cross Hastings. The perfect irony of that is quite in Shakespeare's spirit. The Fool was introduced at Richard's assumption of power and 77 from then until the end of the play he shadowed the king, grinning and tiptoeing behind him. With the unyielding mockery of Shakespeare's formalism thus heightened all round him, Richard's own unyielding monstrousness was not only acceptable, it was somehow hideously possible. Of course it was Chkivadze's performance that attracted the most attention: "His Richard, like Olivier's, wrote Steve Grant in <2The Observer>2 (26 August 1979) "is a creature of terrifying physicality . . . a swaggering Napoleonic toad . . . the mouth evil in its pencil thin arrogance, the eyes bulging, the compact top- heavy body stalking the landscape, hands behind back or twisting round a swordstick, half clown, half psychopath . . . This is a dramatic realization which reaches out and grabs you by the throat'. But it would have been insupportable without Sturua's Shakespearian perception of the landscape in which such people stalk. As it was, J.W. Lambert seeing only the gestures -- "he rolled his eyes, puffed out his cheeks . . . scuttled and roared relentlessly. . . like a demented cement-mixer', thought the evening no more than "an exercise in camp black cornedy'.s What saved it from camp was its belief in itself: the outrageous acting was a comment on the hideousness of human depravity, not a wink at the audience to signify that the whole thing was a joke. In the end Richard died neither heroically, nor anti-heroically, but to our enormous relief. <1RICHARD III>1 <2The scene: England>2 <1Characters in the Play>1 KING EDWARD IV EDWARD, Prince of Wales, <2afterwards>2 King Edward V <2sons to the King>2 RICHARD, Duke of York GEORGE, Duke of Clarence RICHARD, Duke of Gloucester, <2brothers to the King>2 <2afterwards>2 King Richard III A Young Son of Clarence <2(Edward,>2 <2Earl of Warwick)>2 HENRY, Earl of Richmond, <2afterwards>2 King Henry VII CARDINAL BOURCHIER, Archbishop of Canterbury THOMAS ROTHERHAM, Archbishop of York JOHN MORTON, Bishop of Ely DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM DUKE OF NORFOLK EARL OF SURREY, <2his son>2 LORD RIVERS, <2brother to King Edward's Queen>2 MARQUESS OF DORSET <2and>2 LORD GREY, <2her sons>2 EARL OF OXFORD LORD HASTINGS LORD STANLEY, <2called also>2 Earl of Derby LORD LOVEL SIR THOMAS VAUGHAN SIR RICHARD RATCLIFFE SIR WILLIAM CATESBY SIR JAMES TYRREL SIR JAMES BLUNT SIR WALTER HERBERT SIR ROBERT BRAKENBURY, <2Lieutenant of the Tower>2 85 86 SIR WILLIAM BRANDON CHRISTOPHER URSWICK, <2a priest>2 LORD MAYOR OF LONDON SHERIFF OF WILTSHIRE HASTINGS, <2a pursuivant>2 TRESSEL <2and>2 BERKELEY' <2gentlemen attending on>2 <2the Lady Anne>2 ELIZABETH, <2Queen to King Edward IV>2 MARGARET, <2widow of King Henry VI>2 DUCHESS OF YORK, <2mother to King Edward IV, Clarence>2 <2and Gloucester>2 LADY ANNE, <2widow of Edward Prince of Wales, son to King>2 <2Henry VI; afterwards married to the Duke of Gloucester>2 A Young Daughter of Clarence <2(Margaret Plantagenet, Countess>2 <2 of Salisbury)>2 Ghosts, <2of Richard's victims>2 Lords, Gentlemen <2and>2 Attendants; Priest, Scrivener, Page, Bishops, Aldermen, Citizens, Soldiers, Messengers, Murderers, Keeper 87 <1ACT I>1 <1Scene 1>1 <2Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester, solus>2 89 RICHARD Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sons of York; And all the clouds that loured upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths; 5 Our bruise/d armss hung up for monuments;s Our stern alarumss changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.s Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front; And now, instead of mounting barbe/ds steeds 10 To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; 15 I, that am rudelys stamped, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time 20 Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable 90 That dogs bark at me as I halt* by them; Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, 25 Unless to spy my shadow in the sun, And descants on mine own deformity: And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determine/d to prove a villain, 30 And hate the idle pleasures of these days. Plots have I laid, inductions* dangerous, By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams, To set my brother Clarence and the king In deadly hate the one against the other: 35 And if King Edward be as true and just As I am subtle, false and treacherous, This day should Clarence closely be mewed* up, About a prophecy, which says that G Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be. 40 Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here Clarence comes. <2Enter Clarence, guarded, and Brakenbury[Lieutenant of the Tower]>2 Brother, good day: what means this arme/d guard That waits upon your grace? 91 CLARENCE His majesty, Tenderings my person's safety, hath appointed This conduct to convey me to the Tower. 45 RICHARD Upon what cause? CLARENCE Because my name is George. RICHARD Alack, my lord, that fault is none of yours; He should, for that, commit your godfathers: O, belike his majesty hath some intent That you shall be new-christened in the Tower. 50 But what's the matter, Clarence? may I know? CLARENCE Yea, Richard, when I know; for I protest As yet I do not: but, as I can learn, He hearkens after prophecies and dreams; And from the cross-row* plucks the letter G, 55 And says a wizard told him that by G His issue disinherited should be; And, for my name of George begins with G, It follows in his thought that I am he. 92 These, as I learn, and such like toyss as these 60 Have moved his highness to commit me now. RICHARD Why, this it is, when men are ruled by women: 'Tis not the king that sends you to the Tower; My Lady Grey* his wife, Clarence, 'tis she That temperss him to this extremity. 65 Was it not she and that good man of worship, Anthony Woodville, her brother there, That made him send Lord Hastings to the Tower, From whence this present day he is delivered? We are not safe, Clarence; we are not safe. 70 CLARENCE By heaven, I think there's no man is secure, But the queen's kindred and night-walking heralds,s That trudge betwixt the king and Mistress Shore. Heard ye not what an humble suppliant Lord Hastings was to her for his delivery? 75 RICHARD Humbly complaining to her deitys Got my lord chamberlain* his liberty. I'll tell you what; I think it is our way, If we will keep in favour with the king, To be her mens and wear her livery: 80 The jealous o'erworn widows and herself, Since that our brother dubbed them gentlewomen, Are mighty gossips* in this monarchy. BRAKENBURY I beseech your graces both to pardon me; His majesty hath straitlys given in charge 85 That no man shall have private conference, Of what degree* soever, with his brother. RICHARD Even so; an'ts please your worship, Brakenbury, You may partake of any thing we say: We speak no treason, man: we say the king 90 Is wise and virtuous, and his noble queen Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous; We say that Shore's wife hath a pretty foot, A cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue; And that the queen's kindred are made gentle-folks: 95 How say you, sir? can you deny all this? 93 BRAKENBURY With this, my lord, myself have nought* to do. RICHARD Naughts to do with Mistress Shore! I tell thee, fellow, He that doth naught with her, excepting one, Were best he do it secretly alone. 100 BRAKENBURY What one, my lord? RICHARD Her husband, knave: wouldst thou betray me? BRAKENBURY I do beseech your grace to pardon me, and withal Forbear your conference with the noble duke. CLARENCE We know thy charge, Brakenbury, and will obey. 105 RICHARD We are the queen's abjects,s and must obey. Brother, farewell: I will unto the king; And whatsoe'er you will employ me in, Were it to call King Edward's widow sister, I will perform it to enfranchise you. 110 Meantime, this deep disgrace in brotherhood Touches me deeper than you can imagine. CLARENCE I know it pleaseth neither ofus well. RICHARD Well, your imprisonment shall not be long; I will deliver you, or else lie for* you: 115 Meantime, have patience. CLARENCE I must perforce. Farewell. <2Exit Clarence [with Brakenbury and Guard]>2 RICHARD Go tread the path that thou shalt ne'er return, Simple, plain Clarence! I do love thee so, That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven, If heaven will take the present at our hands. 120 But who comes here? the new-delivered Hastings? 94 <2Enter Lord Hastings>2 HASTINGS Good time of day unto my gracious lord! RICHARD As much unto my good lord chamberlain! Well are you welcome to the open air. How hath your lordship brooked* imprisonment? 125 HASTINGS With patience, noble lord, as prisoners must: But I shall live, my lord, to give them thanks That were the cause of my imprisonment. RICHARD No doubt, no doubt; and so shall Clarence too; For they that were your enemies are his, 130 And have prevailed as much on him as you. HASTINGS More pity that the eagles should be mewed, While kites and buzzards prey at liberty. RICHARD What news abroad? HASTINGS No news so bad abroad as this at home; 135 The king is sickly, weak and melancholy, And his physicians fear him* mightily. RICHARD Now, by Saint John, this news is bad indeed. O, he hath kept an evil diet* long, And overmuch consumed his royal person: 140 'Tis very grievous to be thought upon. Where is he, in his bed? HASTINGS He is. RICHARD Go you before, and I will follow you. <2Exit Hastings>2 He cannot live, I hope; and must not die, 145 Till George be packed with post-horse* up to heaven. I'll in, to urge his hatred more to Clarence, 95 With lies well steeled with weighty arguments; And, if I fail not in my deep intent, Clarence hath not another day to live: 150 Which done, God take King Edward to his mercy, And leave the world for me to bustle in! For then I'll marry Warwick's youngest daughter. s What though I killed her husband and her father? The readiest way to make the wench amends 155 Is to become her husband and her father: The which I will; not all so much for love, As for another secret close intent, By marrying her which I must reach unto. But yet I run before my horse to market:s 160 Clarence still breathes; Edward still lives and reigns: When they are gone, then must I count my gains. <2Exit>2 <1Scene 2>1 <2Enter the corpse of King Henry the Sixth, with>2 <2Halberds>2s<2to guard it; Lady A nne being the mourner,>2 <2[attended by Tressel and Berkeley]>2 97 ANNE Set down, set down your honourable load -- If honour may be shrouded in a hearse -- Whilst I awhile obseqiouslys lament Th'untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster. s Poor key-cold figure ofa holy king, 5 Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster, Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood, Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost, To hear the lamentations of poor Anne, Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughtered son, 10 Stabbed by the selfsame hand that made these wounds! Lo, in these windowss that let forth thy life I pour the helplesss balm of my poor eyes. Cursed be the hand that made these fatal holes! Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it! 15 Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence! More direful hap betides that hated wretch, That makes us wretched by the death of thee, Than I can wish to wolves -- to spiders, toads, Or any creeping venomed thing that lives! 20 If ever he have child, abortives be it, Prodigious,s and untimely brought to light, Whose ugly and unnatural aspect May fright the hopeful mother at the view; 98 And that be heir to his unhappiness! 25 If ever he have wife, let her be made More miserable by the life of him, Than I am made by my poor lord and thee!s Come, now towards Chertsey with your holy load, Taken from Paul's to be interre/d there; 30 And still, as* you are weary of the weight, Rest you, whiles I lament King Henry's corse. <2Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester>2 RICHARD Stay, you that bear the corse, and set it down. ANNE What black magician conjures up this fiend, To stop devoted charitable deeds? 35 RICHARD Villains, set down the corse; or, by Saint Paul, I'll make a corse of him that disobeys. GENTLEMAN My lord, stand back, and let the coffin pass. RICHARD Unmannered dog! stand thou, when I command: Advance thy halberd higher than my breast, 40 Or, by Saint Paul, I'll strike thee to my foot, And spurn upons thee, beggar, for thy boldness. ANNE What, do you tremble? are you all afraid? Alas, I blame you not; for you are mortal, And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil. 45 99 Avaunt,s thou dreadful minister of hell! Thou hadst but power over his mortal body, His soul thou canst not have; therefore, be gone. RICHARD Sweet saint, for charity, be not so curst.s ANNE Foul devil, for God's sake, hence, and trouble us not; 50 For thou has made the happy earth thy hell, Filled it with cursing cries and deep exclaims. If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds, Behold this patterns of thy butcheries. 100 O, gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry's wounds 55 Open their congealed mouths and bleed afresh. Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity; For 'tis thy presence that exhaless this blood From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells; Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural, 60 Provokes this deluge most unnatural. O God, which this blood mad'st, revenge his death! O earth, which this blood drink'st, revenge his death! Either heaven with lightning strike the murderer dead, Or earth, gape open wide and eat him quick,s 65 As thou dost swallow up this good king's blood, Which his hell-governed arm hath butchered! RICHARD Lady, you know no rules of charity, Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses. ANNE Villain, thou know'st no law of God nor man: 70 No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. RICHARD But I know none, and therefore am no beast. ANNE O wonderful, when devils tell the truth! RICHARD More wonderful, when angels are so angry. Vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman, 75 Of these suppose/d crimes, to give me leave, By circumstance,s but to acquit myself. ANNE Vouchsafe, defused* infection of a man, For these known evils, but to give me leave, By circumstance, t'accuse thy curse/d self. 80 RICHARD Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have Some patient leisure to excuse myself. ANNE Fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make No excuse current,s but to hang thyself. 101 RICHARD By such despair, I should accuse myself. 85 ANNE And, by despairing, shouldst thou stand excused For doing worthy vengeance on thyself, Which didst unworthy slaughter upon others. RICHARD Say that I slew them not? ANNE Then say they were not slain. But dead they are, and, devilish slave, by thee. 90 RICHARD I did not kill your husband. ANNE Why, then he is alive. RICHARD Nay, he is dead; and slain by Edward's hand. ANNE In thy foul throat thou liest: Queen Margaret saw Thy murderous falchion* smoking in his blood; The which thou once didst bend against her breast 95 But that thy brothers beat aside the point. RICHARD I was provoke/d by her slanderous tongue, Which laid their guilt upon my guiltless shoulders. ANNE Thou wast provoke/d by thy bloody mind, Which never dreamt on aught but butcheries: 100 Didst thou not kill this king? RICHARD I grant ye. ANNE Dost grant me, hedgehog? then, God grant me too Thou mayst be damne/d for that wicked deed! O, he was gentle, mild, and virtuous! RICHARD The better for the King of heaven, that hath him. 105 ANNE He is in heaven, where thou shalt never come. 102 RICHARD Let him thank me, that holps 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. 1 10 ANNE Some dungeon. RICHARD Your bed-chamber. ANNE Ill rest betide the chamber where thou liest! RICHARD So will it, madam, till I lie with you. ANNE I hope so. RICHARD I know so. But, gentle Lady Anne, To leave this keen encounter of our wits, 115 And fall somewhat into a slower method, Is not the causer of the timelesss deaths Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward, As blameful as the executioner? ANNE Thou art the cause, and most accursed effect. 120 RICHARD Your beauty was the cause of that effect; Your beauty, which did haunt me in my sleep To undertake the death of all the world, So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom. ANNE If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide, 125 These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks. RICHARD These eyes could not endure sweet beauty's wreck; You should not blemish it, if I stood by: As all the world is cheere/d by the sun, So I by that; it is my day, my life. 130 103 ANNE Black night o'ershade thy day, and death thy life! RICHARD Curse not thyself, fair creature; thou art both. ANNE I would I were, to be revenged on thee. RICHARD It is a quarrel most unnatural, To be revenged on him that loveth you. 135 ANNE To be revenged on him that slew my husband. RICHARD He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband, Did it to help thee to a better husband. ANNE His better doth not breathe upon the earth 140 RICHARD He lives that loves you better than he could.s ANNE Name him. RICHARD Plantagenet. ANNE Why, that was he. RICHARD The selfsame name, but one of better nature. ANNE Where is he? RICHARD Here. <2She spitteth at him>2 Why dost thou spit at me? ANNE Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake! 145 RICHARD Never came poison from so sweet a place. ANNE Never hung poison on a fouler toad. Out of my sight! thou dost infect my eyes. 104 RICHARD Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine. ANNE Would they were basilisks,s to strike thee dead! 150 RICHARD I would they were, that I might die at once; For now they kill me with a living death. Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears, Shamed their aspects with store of childish drops: These eyes, which never shed remorseful tear, 1 55 No, when my father York and Edward wept, To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made When black-faced Clifford shook his sword at him; Nor when thy warlike father, like a child, Told the sad story of my father's death, 160 And twenty times made pause to sob and weep, That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks, Like trees bedashed with rain: in that sad time My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear; And what these sorrows could not thence exhale,s 165 Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping. I never sued to friend nor enemy; My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing words; But, now thy beauty is proposed my fee,s My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak. 170 <2She looks scornfully at him>2 Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it were made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt. If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive, Lo, here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword; Which if thou please to hide in this true breast, 175 And let the soul forth that adoreth thee, I lay it naked to the deadly stroke, 105 And humbly beg the death upon my knee. <2He lays his breast open: she offers at[it] with his sword>2 Nay, do not pause; for I did kill King Henry, But 'twas thy beauty that provoke/d me. 180 Nay, now dispatch; 'twas I that stabbed young Edward, But 'twas thy heavenly face that set me on. <2Here she lets fall the sword>2 Take up the sword again, or take up me. ANNE Arise, dissembler: though I wish thy death, I will not be thy executioner. 185 RICHARD Then bid me kill myself, and I will do it. ANNE I have already. RICHARD Tush, that was in thy rage: Speak it again, and, even with the word, This hand, which, for thy love, did kill thy love, Shall, for thy love, kill a far truer love; 190 To both their deaths shalt thou be accessary. ANNE I would I knew thy heart. 106 RICHARD 'Tis figured in my tongue. ANNE I fear me both are false. RICHARD Then never was man true. 195 ANNE Well, well, put up your sword. RICHARD Say, then, my peace is made. ANNE That shall you know hereafter. RICHARD But shall I live in hope? ANNE All men, I hope, live so. 200 RICHARD Vouchsafe to wear this ring. ANNE To take is not to give. <2[She puts on the ring]>2 RICHARD Look, how my ring encompasseth thy finger, Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart; Wear both of them, for both of them are thine. 205 And if thy poor devoted suppliant may But beg one favour at thy gracious hand, Thou dost confirm his happiness for ever. ANNE What is it? RICHARD That it would please thee leave these sad designs 210 107 To him that hath more cause to be a mourner, And presentlys repair to Crosby Place; Where, after I have solemnly interred At Chertsey monast'ry this noble king, And wet his grave with my repentant tears, 215 I will with all expedients duty see you: For divers unknown reasons, I beseech you, Grant me this boon. ANNE With all my heart; and much it joys me too, To see you are become so penitent. 220 Tressel and Berkeley, go along with me. RICHARD Bid me farewell. ANNE 'Tis more than you deserve; But since you teach me how to flatter you, Imagine I have said farewell already. <2Exeunt two, [Tressel and Berkeley] with Anne>2 RICHARD Sirs, take up the corse. GENTLEMAN Towards Chertsey, noble lord? 225 RICHARD No, to White-Friars; there attend my coming. <2Exit corse [with Halberds]>2 Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won? I'll have her; but I will not keep her long. What! I, that killed her husband and his father, 230 To take her in her heart's extremest hate, With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes, The bleeding witness of her hatred by; Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me, And I no friends to back my suit at all, 235 108 But the plain devil and dissembling looks, And yet to win her, all the world to nothing! Ha! Hath she forgot already that brave prince, Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since, 240 Stabbed in my angry mood at Tewksbury? A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman, Framed in the prodigality of nature, Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right royal, The spacious world cannot again afford: 245 And will she yet debase her eyes on me, That cropped the golden prime of this sweet prince, And made her widow to a woful bed? On me, whose all not equals Edward's moiety?s On me, that halt and am unshapen thus? 250 My dukedom to a beggarly denier,s I do mistake my person all this while: Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot, Myself to be a marvellous propers man. I'll be at charges for a looking-glass, 255 And entertains a score or two of tailors, To study fashions to adorn my body: Since I am crept in favour with myself, I will maintain it with some little cost. But first I'll turn yon fellow in his grave; 260 And then return lamenting to my love. Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, That I may see my shadow as I pass. <2Exit>2 109 <1Scene 3>1 <2Enter the Queen Mother [Elizabeth], Lord Rivers, [Marquess of>2 <2Dorset], and Lord Grey>2 RIVERS Have patience, madam; there's no doubt his majesty Will soon recover his accustomed health. GREY In that you brook it ill,s it makes him worsc: Therefore, for God's sake, entertain good comfort, And cheer his grace with quick and merry words. 5 QUEEN ELIZABETH If he were dead, what would betide ofs me? RIVERS No other harm but loss of such a lord. QUEEN ELIZABETH The loss of such a lord includes all harm. GREY The heavens have blessed you with a goodly son, To be your comforter when he is gone. 10 QUEEN ELIZABETH Oh, he is young, and his minority Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloucester, A man that loves not me, nor none of you. 110 RIVERS Is it concludeds he shall be protector? QUEEN ELIZABETH It is determined, not concluded yet: 15 But so it must be, if the king miscarry. <2Enter Buckingham and [Lord Stanley, Earl of] Derby>2 GREY Here come the lords of Buckingham and Derby. BUCKINGHAM Good time of day unto your royal grace! STANLEY God make your majesty joyful as you have been! QUEEN ELIZABETH The Countess Richmond,s good my Lord of Derby, 20 To your good prayer will scarcely say amen. Yet, Derby, notwithstanding she's your wife, I hate you not for her proud arrogance. STANLEY I do beseech you, either not believe 25 The envious slanders of her false accusers; Or, if she be accused in true report, Bear with her weakness, which, I think, proceeds From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice. QUEEN ELIZABETH Saw you the king today, my Lord of Derby? 30 STANLEY But now the Duke of Buckingham and I Are come from visiting his majesty. QUEEN ELIZABETH What likelihood of his amendment, lords? BUCKINGHAM Madam, good hope; his grace speaks cheerfully. QUEEN ELIZABETH God grant him health! Did you confer with him? 35 BUCKINGHAM Madam, we did: he desires to make atonement* Betwixt the Duke of Gloucester and your brothers, And betwixt them and my Lord Chamberlain; And sent to warns them to his royal presence. 111 QUEEN ELIZABETH Would all were well! but that will never be: 40 I fear our happiness is at the height. <2Enter Richard [and Lord Hastings]>2 RICHARD They do me wrong, and I will not endure it: Who are they that complain unto the king, That I, forsooth, am stern and love them not? By holy Paul, they love his grace but lightly 45 That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours. Because I cannot flatter and look fair, Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive and cog,s Duck with French nods and apish courtesy, I must be held a rancorous enemy. 50 Cannot a plain man live and think no harm, But thus his simple truth must be abused By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?s GREY To whom in all this presence speaks your grace? RICHARD To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace. 55 When have I injured thee? when done thee wrong? Or thee? or thee? or any of your faction? A plague upon you all! His royal grace -- Whom God preserve better than you would wish! -- Cannot be quiet scarce a breathing-while,s 60 But you must trouble him with lewds complaints. QUEEN ELIZABETH Brother of Gloucester, you mistake the matter. The king, of his own royal disposition, And not provoked by any suitor else; Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred, 65 Which in your outward actions shows itself Against my children, brothers, and myself, Makes him to send; that thereby he may gather The ground of your ill-will, and to remove it. 112 RICHARD I cannot tell: the world is grown so bad, 70 That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch: Since every Jack became a gentleman, There's many a gentle person made a Jack. QUEEN ELIZABETH Come, come, we know your meaning, brother Gloucester; You envy my advancement and my friends': 75 God grant we never may have need of you! RICHARD Meantime, God grants that I have need of you: Our brother is imprisoned by your means, Myself disgraced, and the nobility Held in contempt; whilst many fair promotions 80 Are daily given to ennoble those That scarce, some two days since, were worth a noble.s QUEEN ELIZABETH By Him that raised me to this carefuls height From that contented hap which I enjoyed, I never did incense his majesty 85 Against the Duke of Clarence, but have been An earnest advocate to plead for him. My lord, you do me shameful injury, Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.s RICHARD You may deny that you were not the cause 90 Of my Lord Hastings' late imprisonment. RIVERS She may, my lord, for -- RICHARD She may, Lord Rivers! why, who knows not so? She may do more, sir, than denying that: She may help you to many fair preferments; 95 And then deny her aiding hand therein, And lay those honours on your high deserts. What may she not? She may, yea, marry,s may she -- RIVERS What, marry, may she? RICHARD What, marry, may she! marry with a king, 100 A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too: Iwiss your grandam had a worser match. 113 QUEEN ELIZABETH My Lord of Gloucester, I have too long borne Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs: By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty 105 With those gross taunts I often have endured. I had rather be a country servant-maid Than a great queen, with this condition, To be so baited,s scorned and stormed at: <2Enter old Queen Margaret>2 Small joy have I in being England's queen. 110 QUEEN MARGARET <2[aside]>2 And lessened be that small, God, I beseech thee! Thy honour, states and seat is due to me. RICHARD What! threat you me with telling of the king? Tell him, and spare not: look, what I have said I will avouch in presence of the king: 1 15 I dare adventure* to be sent to the Tower. 'Tis time to speak; my pains are quite forgot. QUEEN MARGARET <2[aside]>2 Out, devil! I do remember them too well: Thou slewest my husband Henry in the Tower, And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury. 120 114 RICHARD Ere you were queen, yea, or your husband king, I was a pack-horse* in his great affairs; A weeder out of his proud adversaries, A liberal rewarder of his friends: To royalise his blood I spent mine own. 125 QUEEN MARGARET <2[aside]>2 Yea, and much better blood than his or thine. RICHARD In all which time you and your husband Grey Were factious for the house of Lancaster; And, Rivers, so were you. Was not your husband In Margaret's battle at Saint Alban's slain? 130 Let me put in your minds, if you forget, What you have been ere now, and what you are; Withal, what I have been, and what I am. QUEEN MARGARET <2[aside]>2 A murderous villain, and so still thou art. RICHARD Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick; 135 Yea, and forswore himself, -- which Jesu pardon! --* QUEEN MARGARET <2[aside]>2 Which God revenge! RICHARD To fight on Edward's party for the crown; And for his meed,s poor lord, he is mewed up. I would to God my heart were flint, like Edward's; 140 Or Edward's soft and pitiful, like mine: I am too childish-foolish for this world. QUEEN MARGARET <2[aside]>2 Hie thee to hell for shame, and leave the world, Thou cacodemon!s there thy kingdom is. RIVERS My Lord of Gloucester, in those busy days 145 Which here you urge to prove us enemies, We followed then our Lord, our lawful king: So should we you, ifyou should be our king. 115 RICHARD If I should be! I had rather be a pedlar: Far be it from my heart, the thought of it! 150 QUEEN ELIZABETH As little joy, my lord, as you suppose You should enjoy, were you this country's king, As little joy may you suppose in me, That I enjoy, being the queen thereof. QUEEN MARGARET <2[aside]>2 A little joy enjoys the queen thereof; 155 For I am she, and altogether joyless. I can no longer hold me patient. <2[She comes forward]>2 Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out In sharing that which you have pilleds from me! Which of you trembles not that looks on me? 160 If not, that I am queen, you bow like subjects, Yet that, by you deposed, you quake like rebels?s O gentle villain, do not turn away! RICHARD Foul wrinkled witch, what makest thou in my sight? QUEEN MARGARET Buts repetition of what thou has marred; 165 That I will make before I let thee go. RICHARD Wert thou not banished on pain of death? QUEEN MARGARET I was; but I do find more pain in banishment, Than death can yield me here by my abode. A husband and a son thou owest to me; 170 And thou a kingdom; all of you allegiance: The sorrow that I have, by right is yours, And all the pleasures you usurp are mine. RICHARD The curse my noble father laid on thee, When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper, 175 116 And with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes, And then, to dry them, gavest the duke a clout,s Steeped in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland, -- His curses, then from bitterness of soul Denounced against thee, are all fallen upon thee;s 180 And God, not we, hath plagued thy bloody deed. QUEEN ELIZABETH So just is God, to right the innocent. HASTINGS O, 'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe, And the most merciless that e'er was heard of! RIVERS Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported. 185 DORSET No man but prophesied revenge for it. BUCKINGHAM Northumberland, then present, wept to see it. QUEEN MARGARET What! were you snarling all before I came, Ready to catch each other by the throat, And turn you all your hatred now on me? 190 Did York's dread curse prevail so much with heaven, That Henry's death, my lovely Edward's death, Their kingdom's loss, my woful banishment, Could all but answer fors that peevish brat? Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven? 195 Why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses! If not by war, by surfeits die your king, As ours by murder, to make him a king! Edward thy son, which now is Prince of Wales, For Edward my son, which was Prince of Wales, 200 Die in his youth by like untimely violence! Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen, Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self! Long mayst thou live to wail thy children's loss; And see another, as I see thee now, 205 Decked in thy rights, as thou art stalled* in mine! Long die thy happy days before thy death; And, after many lengthened hours of grief, 117 Die neither mother, wife, nor England's queen! Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by, 210 And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son Was stabbed with bloody daggers: God, I pray him, That none of you may live your natural age, But by some unlooked accident cut off! RICHARD Have done thy charm, thou hateful withered hag! 215 QUEEN MARGARET And leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me. If heaven have any grievous plague in store Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee, 0, let thems keep it till thy sins be ripe, And then hurl down their indignation 220 On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace! The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul! Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest, And take deep traitors for they dearest friends! No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine, 225 Unless it be whilst some tormenting dream Affrights thee with a hell ofugly devils! Thou elvish-marked,s abortive, rooting hog! Thou that wast sealeds in thy nativity The slave of nature and the son of hell! 230 Thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb! Thou loathe/d issue of thy father's loins! Thou rag of honour! thou detested -- RICHARD Margaret. QUEEN MARGARET Richard! RICHARD Ha! QUEEN MARGARET I call thee not. RICHARD I cry thee mercy then, for I had thought 235 That thou hadst called me all these bitter names. QUEEN MARGARET Why, so I did; but looked for no reply. O, let me make the periods to my curse! 118 RICHARD 'Tis done by me, and ends in "Margaret'. QUEEN ELIZABETH Thus have you breathed your curse against yourself. 240 QUEEN MARGARET Poor painteds queen, vain flourishs of my fortune! Why strew'st thou sugar on that bottleds spider, Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about? Fool, fool! thou whet'st a knife to kill thyself. The time will come that thou shalt wish for me 245 To help thee curse that poisonous bunch-backed toad. HASTINGS False-boding woman, end thy frantic curse, Lest to thy harm thou move our patience. QUEEN MARGARET Foul shame upon you! you have all moved mine. RIVERS Were you well served, you would be taught your duty. 250 QUEEN MARGARET To serve me well, you all should do me duty, Teach me to be your queen, and you my subjects: O, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty! DORSET Dispute not with her; she is lunatic. QUEEN MARGARET Peace, master marquess, you are malapert:s 255 Your fire-new stamp* of honour is scarce current.s O, that your young nobility could judge What 'twere to lose it, and be miserable! They that stand high have many blasts to shake them; And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces. 260 RICHARD Good counsel, marry: learn it, learn it, marquess. DORSET It toucheth you, my lord, as much as me. RICHARD Yea, and much more: but I was born so high, Our aerys buildeth in the cedar's top, And dallies with the wind and scorns the sun. 265 119 QUEEN MARGARET And turns the sun to shade; alas! alas! Witness my son, now in the shade of death; Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath Hath in eternal darkness folded up. Your aery buildeth in our aery's nest. 270 O God, that seest it, do not suffer it; As it was won with blood, lost be it so! BUCKINGHAM Have done! for shame, if not for charity. QUEEN MARGARET Urge neither charity nor shame to me: Uncharitably with me have you dealt, 275 And shamefully by you my hopes are butchered. My charity is outrage, life my shame;s And in that shame still live my sorrow's rage! BUCKINGHAM Have done, have done. QUEEN MARGARET O princely Buckingham, I'll kiss thy hand, 280 In sign of league and amity with thee: Now fair befall thee and thy noble house! Thy garments are not spotted with our blood, Nor thou within the compass of my curse. BUCKINGHAM Nor no one here; for curses never pass 285 The lips of those that breathe them in the air. QUEEN MARGARET I'll not believe but they ascend the sky, And there awake God's gentle-sleeping peace. O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog! Look, when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites, 290 His venom tooth will rankle to the death: Have not to do with him, beware of him; Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him, And all their ministers attend on him. RICHARD What doth she say, my Lord of Buckingham? 295 BUCKINGHAM Nothing that I respect, my gracious Lord. 120 QUEEN MARGARET What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel? And soothe the devil that I warn thee from? O, but remember this another day, When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow, 300 And say poor Margaret was a prophetess. Live each of you the subjects to his hate, And he to yours, and all of you to God's! <2Exit>2 BUCKINGHAM My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses. RIVERS And so doth mine: I muses why she's at liberty. 305 RICHARD I cannot blame her: by God's holy mother, She hath had too much wrong; and I repent My part thereof that I have done to her. QUEEN ELIZABETH I never did her any, to my knowledge. RICHARD But you have all the vantage of her wrong. 310 I was too hot to do somebody good, That is too cold in thinking of it now. Marry, as for Clarence, he is well repaid; He is frankeds up to fatting for his pains: God pardon them that are the cause of it! 315 RIVERS A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion, To pray for them that have done scathes to us. RICHARD So do I ever: <2(speaks to himself)>2 being well advised: For had I cursed now, I had cursed myself. <2Enter Catesby>2 CATESBY Madam, his majesty doth call for you; 320 And for your grace; and you, my noble lords. QUEEN ELIZABETH Catesby, I come. Lords will you go with me? RIVERS Madam, we will attend your grace. <2Exeunt all but Richard>2 121 RICHARD I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl. The secret mischiefs that I set abroachs 325 I lay unto the grievous charge of others. Clarence, whom I indeed have laid in darkness, I do beweep to many simple gulls;s Namely, to Hastings, Derby, Buckingham; And say it is the queen and her allies 330 That stir the king against the duke my brother. Now, they believe it; and withal whet me To be revenged on Rivers, Dorset, Grey: But then I sigh; and, with a piece of Scripture, Tell them that God bids us do good for evil: 335 And thus I clothe my naked villany With odd old ends stolen out of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil. <2Enter two Murderers>2 But, soft! here come my executioners. How now, my hardy stout resolve/d mates! 340 Are you now going to dispatch this deed? FIRST MURDERER We are, my lord; and come to have the warrant, That we may be admitted where he is. RICHARD Well thought upon; I have it here about me. <2[He gives the warrant]>2 When you have done, repair to Crosby Place. 345 But, sirs, be sudden in the execution, Withal obdurate, do not hear him plead; For Clarence is well-spoken, and perhaps May move your hearts to pity, ifyou mark him. 122 FIRST MURDERER Tush! 350 Fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate; Talkers are no good doers: be assured We go to use our hands and not our tongues. RICHARD Your eyes drop millstones, when fools' eyes drop tears. I like you, lads: about your business straight. 355 Go, go, dispatch. FIRST MURDERER We will, my noble lord. <2Exeunt>2 <1Scene 4>1 <2Enter Clarence [and] Brakenbury>2 BRAKENBURY Why looks your grace so heavilys today? CLARENCE O, I have passed a miserable night, So full of ugly Sights, of ghastly dreams, That, as I am a Christian faithful man, I would not spend another such a night, 5 Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days, So full of dismal terror was the time! BRAKENBURY What was your dream? I long to hear you tell it. 123 CLARENCE Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower, And was embarked to cross to Burgundy; 10 And, in my company, my brother Gloucester, Who from my cabin tempted me to walk Upon the hatches.s Thence we looked toward England, And cited up a thousand fearful times, During the wars of York and Lancaster, 15 That had befallen us. As we paced along Upon the giddy footing of the hatches, Methought that Gloucester stumbled, and in falling, Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard, Into the tumbling billows of the main.s 20 Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown! What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears! What sights of ugly death within mine eyes! Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks; Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon; 25 Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalueds jewels, All scattered in the bottom of the sea: Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept, 30 As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems, Which wooed the slimy bottom of the deep, And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by. BRAKENBURY Had you such leisure in the time of death To gaze upon the secrets of the deep? 35 CLARENCE Methought I had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the enviouss flood Stopped in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast and wandering air; But smothered it within my panting bulk, 40 Which almost burst to belch it in the sea. BRAKENBURY Awaked you not with this sore agony? CLARENCE O no, my dream was lengthened after life; O, then began the tempest to my soul, Who passed, methought, the melancholy flood,s 45 124 With that grim ferryman* which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. The first that there did greet my stranger soul, Was my great father-in-law, renowne/d Warwick; Who cried aloud, "What scourge for perjury 50 Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?' And so he vanished. Then came wandering by A shadow* like an angel, with bright hair Dabbled in blood, and he shrieked out aloud, "Clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, 55 That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury: Seize on him, Furies, take him to your torments!' With that, methoughts, a legion of foul fiends Environed me about, and howle/d in mine ears Such hideous cries, that with the very noise 60 I trembling waked, and for a season after Could not believe but that I was in hell, Such terrible impression made the dream. BRAKENBURY No marvel, my lord, though it affrighted you; I promise you, I am afraid to hear you tell it. 65 CLARENCE O Brakenbury, I have done those things, Which now bear evidence against my soul, For Edward's sake; and see how he requites me! O God! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee, But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds, 70 Yet execute thy wrath in me alone; O, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children! I pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me; My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep. BRAKENBURY I will, my lord: God give your grace good rest! 75 <2[Clarence sleeps]>2 Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours, Makes the night morning and the noon-tide night. Princes have but their titles for their glories, An outward honour for an inward toil; And, for unfelt imagination,s 80 They often feel a world of restless cares: So that, betwixt their titles and low name, There's nothing differs but the outward fame. 125 <2Enter two Murderers>2 FIRST MURDERER Ho! who's here? BRAKENBURY In God's name what are you, and how came you hither? 85 FIRST MURDERER I would speak with Clarence, and I came hither on my legs. BRAKENBURY Yea, are you so brief? SECOND MURDERER 'Tis better, sir, than to be tedious. Show him our commission; talk no more. 90 <2[Brakenbury] readeth it>2 BRAKENBURY I am in this commanded to deliver The noble Duke of Clarence to your hands: I will not reason what is meant hereby, Because I will be guiltless of the meaning. Here are the keys, there lies the duke asleep: 95 I'll to the king; and signify to him That thus I have resigned my charge to you. FIRST MURDERER Do so, it is a point of wisdom: fare you well. <2Exit [Brakenbury]>2 SECOND MURDERER What, shall we stab him as he sleeps? 100 FIRST MURDERER No; then he will say 'twas done cowardly, when he wakes. SECOND MURDERER When he wakes! why fool, he shall never wake till the judgement-day. FIRST MURDERER Why, then he will say we stabbed him sleeping. 105 SECOND MURDERER The urging of that word judgement hath bred a kind of remorse in me. FIRST MURDERER What, art thou afraid? SECOND MURDERER Not to kill him, having a warrant for it; but to be damned for killing him, from which no warrant 1 10 can defend us. 126 FIRST MURDERER I thought thou hadst been resolute. SECOND MURDERER So I am, to let him live. FIRST MURDERER I'll back to the Duke of Gloucester, and tell him so. 115 SECOND MURDERER I pray thee, stay a while: I hope my holy humour will change; 'twas wont to hold me but while one would tell twenty. FIRST MURDERER How dost thou feel thyself now? SECOND MURDERER Faith, some certain dregs of conscience 120 are yet within me. FIRST MURDERER Remember our reward, when the deed is done. SECOND MURDERER 'Zounds, he dies: I had forgot the reward. FIRST MURDERER Where is thy conscience now? SECOND MURDERER In the Duke of Gloucester's purse. 125 FIRST MURDERER So when he opens his purse to give us our reward, thy conscience flies out. SECOND MURDERER Let it go; there's few or none will entertains it. FIRST MURDERER How if it comes to thee again? 130 SECOND MURDERER I'll not meddle with it: it is a dangerous thing: it makes a man a coward: a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; he cannot swear, but it checks him; he cannot lie with his neighbour's wife, but it detects him: it is a blushing shamefaced spirit that mutinies in a 135 man's bosom. It fills one full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold, that I found. It beggars any man that keeps it. It is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing, and every man that means to live well endeavours to trust to himself and to 140 live without it. FIRST MURDERER 'Zounds, it is even now at my elbow, persuading me not to kill the duke. SECOND MURDERER Take the devil in thy mind, and believe him not: he would insinuates with thee but to make thee 145 sigh. FIRST MURDERER Tut, I am strong-framed, he cannot prevail with me, I warrant thee. 127 SECOND MURDERER Spoke like a tall* fellow that respects his reputation. Come, shall we to this gear?s 150 FIRST MURDERER Take him over the costards with the hilts of thy sword, and then we will chop him in the malmsey- butts in the next room. SECOND MURDERER <2O>2 excellent device! make a sop* of him. FIRST MURDERER Hark! he stirs: shall I strike? 155 SECOND MURDERER No, first let's reason with him. CLARENCE Where art thou keeper? Give me a cup of wine. SECOND MURDERER You shall have wine enough, my lord, anon. CLARENCE In God's name, what art thou? SECOND MURDERER A man, as you are. 160 CLARENCE But not, as I am, royal. SECOND MURDERER Nor you, as we are, loyal. CLARENCE Thy voice is thunder, but thy looks are humble. FIRST MURDERER My voice is now the king's, my looks mine own. CLARENCE How darkly and how deadly dost thou speak! 165 Your eyes do menace me. Why look you pale? Who sent you hither? Wherefore do you come? BOTH To, to, to -- CLARENCE To murder me? BOTH Ay, ay. 170 CLARENCE You scarcely have the hearts to tell me so, And therefore cannot have the hearts to do it. Wherein, my friends, have I offended you? FIRST MURDERER Offended us you have not, but the king. CLARENCE I shall be reconciled to him again. 175 SECOND MURDERER Never, my lord; therefore prepare to die. 128 CLARENCE Are you called forth from out a world of men To slay the innocent? What is my offence? Where are the evidence that do accuse me? What lawful quest* have given their verdict up 180 Unto the frowning judge? or who pronounced The bitter sentence of poor Clarence' death? Before I be convict by course of law, To threaten me with death is most unlawful. I charge you, as you hope to have redemption 185 By Christ's dear blood shed for our grievous sins, That you depart and lay no hands on me: The deed you undertake is damnable. FIRST MURDERER What we will do, we do upon command. SECOND MURDERER And he that hath commanded is the king. 190 CLARENCE Erroneous vassal! the great King of kings Hath in the tables of his law commanded That thou shalt do no murder: and wilt thou then Spurn at his edict, and fulfil a man's? Take heed; for he holds vengeance in his hands, 195 To hurl upon their heads that break his law. SECOND MURDERER And that same vengeance doth he hurl on thee, For false forswearing, and for murder too: Thou didst receive the holy sacrament, To fight in quarrel of the house of Lancaster. 200 FIRST MURDERER And, like a traitor to the name of God, Didst break that vow; and with thy treacherous blade Unrip'dst the bowels of thy sovereign's son. SECOND MURDERER Whom thou wert sworn to cherish and defend. FIRST MURDERER How canst thou urge God's dreadful law to us, 205 When thou hast broke it in so dears degree? CLARENCE Alas! for whose sake did I that ill deed? For Edward, for my brother, for his sake: 129 Why, sirs, He sends ye not to murder me for this; 210 For in this sin he is as deep as I. If God will be revenge/d for this deed, O, know you yet, he doth it publicly: Take not the quarrel from his powerful arm; He needs no indirect nor lawless course 215 To cut off those that have offended him. FIRST MURDERER Who made thee then a bloody minister, When gallant-springings brave Plantagenet, That princely novice, was struck dead by thee? CLARENCE My brother's love, the devil, and my rage. 220 FIRST MURDERER Thy brother's love, our duty, and thy fault, Provoke us hither now to slaughter thee. CLARENCE O, if you love my brother, hate not me; I am his brother, and I love him well. If you be hired for meed, go back again, 225 And I will send you to my brother Gloucester, Who shall reward you better for my life, Than Edward will for tidings of my death. SECOND MURDERER You are deceived, your brother Gloucester hates you. CLARENCE O, no, he loves me, and he holds me dear: 230 Go you to him from me. BOTH Ay, so we will. CLARENCE Tell him, when that our princely father York Blessed his three sons with his victorious arm, And charged us from his soul to love each other, He little thought of this divided friendship: 235 Bid Gloucester think of this, and he will weep. FIRST MURDERER Ay, millstones; as he lessoned us to weep. CLARENCE O, do not slander him, for he is kind. FIRST MURDERER Right, 130 As snow in harvest. Thou deceivest thyself: 240 'Tis he that sent us hither now to slaughter thee. CLARENCE It cannot be; for when I parted with him, He hugged me in his arms, and swore, with sobs, That he would labour my delivery. SECOND MURDERER Why, so he doth, now he delivers thee 245 From this world's thraldom to the joys of heaven. FIRST MURDERER Make peace with God, for you must die, my lord. CLARENCE Hast thou that holy feeling in thy soul, To counsel me to make my peace with God, And art thou yet to thy own soul so blind, 250 That thou wilt war with God by murdering me? Ah, sirs, consider, he that set you on To do this deed will hate you for the deed. SECOND MURDERER What shall we do? CLARENCE Relent, and save your souls. Which of you, if you were a prince's son, 255 Being pents from liberty, as I am now, If two such murderers as yourselves came to you, Would not entreat for life? FIRST MURDERER Relent! 'tis cowardly and womanish. CLARENCE Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish. 260 My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks; O, if thine eye be not a flatterer, Come thou on my side, and entreat for me, As you would beg, were you in my distress: A begging prince what beggar pities not? 265 SECOND MURDERER Look behind you, my lord. FIRST MURDERER Take that, and that: if all this will not <2do, [Stabs him]>2 131 I'll drown you in the malmsey-butt within. <2Exit [with the body]>2 SECOND MURDERER A bloody deed, and desperately dispatched! How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands 270 Of this most grievous guilty murder done! <2Enter first Murderer>2 FIRST MURDERER How now! what mean'st thou, that thou help'st me not? By heavens, the duke shall know how slack thou art! SECOND MURDERER I would he knew that I had saved his brother! Take thou the fee, and tell him what I say; 275 For I repent me that the duke is slain. <2Exit>2 FIRST MURDERER So do not I: go, coward as thou art. Now must I hide his body in some hole, Until the duke take order for his burial: And when I have my meed, I must away; 280 For this will out, and then I must not stay. <2Exit>2 <1Scene 1>1 <2Flourish. Enter the King [Edward] sick, the Queen>2 <2[Elizabeth], Lord Marguess Dorset, Rivers, Hastings,>2 <2Catesby, Buckingham, [Grey, and others]>2 KING EDWARD Why, so: now have I done a good day's work. You peers, continue in this united league. I every day expect an embassage From my Redeemer to redeem me hence; And now in peace my soul shall part to heaven, 5 Since I have set my friends at peace on earth. Rivers and Hastings, take each other's hand, Dissemble* not your hatred, swear your love. RIVERS By heaven, my soul is purged from grudging hate, And with my hand I seal my true heart's love. 10 HASTINGS So thrive I, as I truly swear the like! KING EDWARD Take heed you dally* not before your king; Lest he that is the supreme King of kings Confound your hidden falsehood, and award Either of you to be the other's end. 15 HASTINGS So prosper I, as I swear perfect love! 133 RIVERS And I, as I love Hastings with my heart! KING EDWARD Madam, yourself are not exempt in this, Nor your son Dorset; Buckingham, nor you; You have been factious one against the other. 20 Wife, love Lord Hastings, let him kiss your hand; And what you do, do it unfeignedly. QUEEN ELIZABETH Here, Hastings; I will never more remember Our former hatred, so thrive I and mine! KING EDWARD Dorset, embrace him; Hastings love Lord marquess. 25 DORSET This interchange of love I here protest, Upon my part shall be inviolable. HASTINGS And so swear I, my lord. KING EDWARD Now, princely Buckingham, seal thou this league With thy embracements to my wife's allies, 30 And make me happy in your unity. BUCKINGHAM <2[to the Queen]>2 Whenever Buckingham doth turn his hate Upon your Grace, buts with all duteous love Doth cherish you and yours, God punish me With hate in those where I expect most love! 35 When I have most need to employ a friend, And most assure/d that he is a friend, Deep, hollow, treacherous and full of guile, Be he unto me! this do I beg of God, When I am cold in zeal to you or yours. <2[They] embrace>2 40 KING EDWARD A pleasing cordial, princely Buckingham, Is this thy vow unto my sickly heart. There wanteth now our brother Gloucester here, To make the perfect period of this peace. BUCKINGHAM And in good time, here comes Sir Richard Ratcliffe and 45 the noble duke. <2Enter Ratcliffe and [Richard Duke of] Gloucester>2 134 RICHARD Good morrow to my sovereign king and queen; And, princely peers, a happy time of day! KING EDWARD Happy indeed, as we have spent the day. Brother, we have done deeds of charity; Made peace of enmity, fair love of hate, 50 Between these swellings wrong-incense/d peers. RICHARD A blessed labour, my most sovereign liege: Amongst this princely heap,s if any here, By false intelligence, or wrong surmise, Hold me a foe; 55 If I unwittingly, or in my rage, Have aught committed that is hardly borne By any in this presence, I desire To reconcile me to his friendly peace: 'Tis death to me to be at enmity; 60 I hate it, and desire all good men's love. First, madam, I entreat true peace ofyou, Which I will purchase with my duteous service; Of you, my noble cousin Buckingham, If ever any grudge were lodged between us; 65 Of you, and you, Lord Rivers, and of Dorset, That all without desert* have frowned on me; Dukes, earls, lords, gentlemen; indeed, of all. I do not know that Englishman alive With whom my soul is any jot at odds, 70 More than the infant that is born tonight: I thank my God for my humility. QUEEN ELIZABETH A holy day shall this be kept hereafter: I would to God all strifes were well compounded.s My sovereign liege, I do beseech your Highness 75 To take our brother Clarence to your grace. 135 RICHARD Why, madam, have I offered love for this, To be so flouted in this royal presence? Who knows not that the noble duke is dead? <2They all start>2 You do him injury to scorn his corse. 80 KING EDWARD Who knows not he is dead! who knows he is? QUEEN ELIZABETH All-seeing heaven, what a world is this! BUCKINGHAM Look I so pale, Lord Dorset, as the rest? DORSET Ay, my good Lord; and no one in this presence But his red colour hath forsook his cheeks. 85 KING EDWARD Is Clarence dead? the order was reversed. RICHARD But he, poor soul, by your first order died, And that a winge/d Mercury did bear; Some tardy cripple bore the countermand, That came too lags to see him buried. 90 God grant that some, less noble and less loyal, Nearer in bloody thoughts, but not in blood,s Deserve not worse than wretched Clarence did, And yet go current* from suspicion! <2Enter [Stanley] Earl of Derby>2 STANLEY A boon, my sovereign, for my service done! 95 KING EDWARD I pray thee, peace: my soul is full of sorrow. STANLEY I will not rise, unless your highness grant. KING EDWARD Then speak at once, what is it thou demand'st. STANLEY The forfeit, sovereign, of my servant's life;s Who slew today a riotous gentleman 100 Lately attendant on the Duke of Norfolk. 136 KING EDWARD Have I a tongue to doom my brother's death, And shall that tongue give pardon to a slave? My brother slew no man; his fault was thought, And yet his punishment was cruel death. 105 Who sued to me for him? who, in my rage, Kneeled at my feet and bade me be advised? Who spake of brotherhood? who spake of love? Who told me how the poor soul did forsake The mighty Warwick, and did fight for me? 1 10 Who told me, in the field by Tewksbury, When Oxford had me down, he rescued me, And said "Dear brother, live, and be a king'? Who told me, when we both lay in the field Frozen almost to death, how he did lap me 115 Even in his own garments, and gave himself, All thin and naked, to the numb cold night? All this from my remembrance brutish wrath Sinfully plucked, and not a man of you Had so much grace to put it in my mind. 120 But when your carters or your waiting-vassals Have done a drunken slaughter, and defaced The precious image of our dear Redeemer, You straight are on your knees for pardon, pardon; And I, unjustly too, must grant it you: 125 <2[Stanley rises]>2 But for my brother not a man would speak, Nor I, ungracious, speak unto myself For him, poor soul. The proudest of you all Have been beholding to him in his life; Yet none of you would once plead for his life. 130 O God, I fear thy justice will take hold On me, and you, and mine, and yours for this! 137 Come, Hastings, help me to my closet.s Oh, poor Clarence! <2Exeunt some with King and Queen>2 RICHARD This is the fruit of rashness. Marked you not How that the guilty kindred of the queen 135 Looked pale when they did hear of Clarence's death? O, they did urge it still unto the king! God will revenge it. But come, let us in, To comfort Edward with our company. BUCKINGHAM We wait upon your grace. <2Exeunt>2 140 <1Scene 2>1 <2Enter the old Duchess of York, with the two children>2 <2of Clarence [Edward and Ma rgaret Pla ntagenet]>2 BOY Tell me, good grandam, is our father dead? DUCHESS OF YORK No, boy. BOY Why do you wring your hands, and beat your breast, And cry "O Clarence, my unhappy son'? 138 GIRL Why do you look on us, and shake your head, 5 And call us wretches, orphans, castaways, If that our noble father be alive? DUCHESS OF YORK My pretty cousins,s you mistake me much. I do lament the sickness of the king, As loath to lose him; not your father's death; 10 It were lost sorrow to wail one that's lost. BOY Then, grandam, you conclude that he is dead. The king my uncle is to blame for this: God will revenge it; whom I will importune With daily prayers all to that effect. 15 GIRL And so will I. DUCHESS OF YORK Peace, children, peace! the king doth love you well: Incapable* and shallow innocents, You cannot guess who caused your father's death. BOY Grandam, we can; for my good uncle Gloucester 20 Told me the king, provoke/d by the queen, Devised impeachments to imprison him: And when my uncle told me so, he wept, And hugged me in his arm, and kindly kissed my cheek; Bade me rely on him as on my father, 25 And he would love me dearly as his child. DUCHESS OFYORK Oh, that deceit should steal such gentle shapes, And with a virtuous visor* hide deep vice! He is my son; yea, and therein my shame; Yet from my dugs he drew not this deceit. 30 BOY Think you my uncle did dissemble, grandam? DUCHESS OF YORK Ay, boy. 139 BOY I cannot think it. Hark! what noise is this? <2Enter Queen [Elizabeth], with her hair about her ears;>2 <2Rivers and Dorset after her.>2 QUEEN ELIZABETH Oh, who shall hinder me to wail and weep, To chide my fortune and torment myself? 35 I'll join with black despair against my soul, And to myself become an enemy. DUCHESS OF YORK What means this scene of rudes impatience? QUEEN ELIZABETH To make an act of tragic violence: Edward, my lord, your son, our king, is dead. 40 Why grow the branches now the root is gone? Why wither not the leaves that want their sap? If you will live, lament; if die, be brief, That our swift-winge/d souls may catch the king's, Or, like obedient subjects, follow him 45 To his new kingdom of ne'er-changing night. DUCHESS OF YORK Ah, so much interest have I in thy sorrow As I had title* in thy noble husband! I have bewept a worthy husband's death, And lived by looking on his images: 50 But now two mirrors* of his princely semblance Are cracked in pieces by malignant death, And I for comfort have but one false glass, Which grieves me when I see my shame in him. 140 Thou art a widow; yet thou art a mother, 55 And hast the comfort of thy children left thee: But death hath snatched my husband from mine arms, And plucked two crutches from my feeble limbs, Edward and Clarence. <2O,>2 what cause have I, Thine being but a moiety* of my grief, 60 To overgo thy plaints and drown thy cries! BOY Good aunt, you wept not for our father's death. How can we aid you with our kindred tears? GIRL Our fatherless distress was left unmoaned; Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept! 65 QUEEN ELIZABETH Give me no help in lamentation; I am not barren to bring forth complaints: All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes, That I, being governed by the watery moon, May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world! 70 Oh for my husband, for my dear lord Edward! CHILDREN Oh for our father, for our dear lord Clarence! DUCHESS OF YORK Alas for both, both mine, Edward and Clarence! QUEEN ELIZABETH What stay had I but Edward? and he's gone. CHILDREN What stay had we but Clarence? and he's gone. 75 DUCHESS OF YORK What stays had I but they? and they are gone. QUEEN ELIZABETH Was never widow had so dear a loss. CHILDREN Were never orphans had so dear a loss. DUCHESS OF YORK Was never mother had so dear a loss. Alas, I am the mother of these moans! 80 Their woes are parcelled,s mine are general. She for an Edward weeps, and so do I; I for a Clarence weep, so doth not she: These babes for Clarence weep, and so do I; I for an Edward weep, so do not they: 85 141 Alas, you three, on me threefold distressed our all your tears! I am your sorrow's nurse, And I will pamper it with lamentations. DORSET Comfort, dear mother: God is much displeased That you take with unthankfulness his doing: 90 In common worldly things, 'tis called ungrateful, With dull unwillingness to repay a debt Which with a bounteous hand was kindly lent; Much more to be thus opposite withs heaven, For it requires the royal debt it lent you. 95 RIVERS Madam, bethink you, like a careful mother, Of the young prince your son: send straight for him; Let him be crowned; in him your comfort lives: Drown desperate sorrow in dead Edward's grave, And plant your joys in living Edward's throne. 100 <2Enter Richard Buckingham, [Stanley, Earl off Derby,>2 <2Hastings, and Ratcliffe>2 RICHARD Sister, have comfort: all of us have cause To wail the dimming of our shining star; But none can cure their harms by wailing them. Madam, my mother, I do cry you mercy; I did not see your grace: humbly on my knee 105 I crave your blessing. DUCHESS OF YORK God bless thee, and put meekness in thy mind, Love, charity, obedience, and true duty! 142 RICHARD <2Amen! [Aside]>2 and make me die a good old man! That is the butt-end of a mother's blessing: 110 I marvel why her grace did leave it out. BUCKINGHAM You cloudy princes and heart-sorrowing peers, That bear this heavy mutual load of moan, Now cheer each other in each other's love: Though we have spent our harvest of this king, 115 We are to reap the harvest of his son. The broken rancour of your high-swoln hearts, But lately splintered,s knit and joined together, Must gently be preserved, cherished, and kept: Me seemeth good that, with some little train,s 120 Forthwith from Ludlow the young prince be fetched Hither to London, to be crowned our king. RIVERS Why with some little train, my Lord of Buckingham? BUCKINGHAM Marry, my lord, lest, by a multitude, The new-healed wound of malice should break out; 125 Which would be so much the more dangerous, By how much the estate is greens and yet ungoverned: Where every horse bears* his commanding rein, And may direct his course as please himself, As well the fear of harms as harm apparent, 130 In my opinion, ought to be prevented. RICHARD I hope the king made peace with all of us; And the compact is firm and true in me. RIVERS And so in me; and so, I think, in all: Yet, since it is but green, it should be put 135 To no apparent likelihood of breach, Which haply by much company might be urged: Therefore I say with noble Buckingham, That it is meet so few should fetch the prince. 143 HASTINGS And so say I. 140 RICHARD Then be it so; and go we to determine Who they shall be that straight shall post to Ludlow. Madam, and you, my sister, will you go To give your censures* in this weighty business? QUEEN ELIZABETH <2and>2 DUCHESS OF YORK With all our hearts. 145 <2Exeunt. Manent Buckingham and Richard>2 BUCKINGHAM My lord, whoever journeys to the prince, For God's sake, let not us two stay behind; For, by the way, I'll sorts occasion, As index to the story we late talked of, To part the queen's proud kindred from the king. 150 RICHARD My other self, my counsel's consistory,s My oracle, my prophet! -- My dear cousin, 144 I, like a child, will go by thy direction. Towards Ludlow then, for we'll not stay behind. <2Exeunt>2 <1Scene 3>1 <2Enter one Citizen at one door and another at>2 <2the other>2 FIRST CITIZEN Neighbour, well met: whither away so fast? SECOND CITIZEN I promise you, I scarcely know myself: Hear you the news abroad? FIRST CITIZEN Ay, that the king id dead. SECOND CITIZEN Bad news, by'r lady, seldom comes the better: I fear, I fear 'twill prove a giddy world. 5 <2Enter another Citizen>2 THIRD CITIZEN Neighbours, God speed! FIRST CITIZEN Give you good morrow, sir. THIRD CITIZEN Does this news hold of good King Edward's death? SECOND CITIZEN Ay, sir, it is too true; God help the while! THIRD CITIZEN Then, masters, look to see a troublous world. FIRST CITIZEN No, no; by God's good grace his son shall reign. 10 145 THIRD CITIZEN Woe to that land that's governed by a child! SECOND CITIZEN In him there is a hope of government, That in his nonage, council under hl-m, And in his full and ripened years, himself, No doubt shall then, and till then, govern well.s 15 FIRST CITIZEN So stood the state when Henry the Sixth Was crowned in Paris but at nine months old. THIRD CITIZEN Stood the state so? No, no, good friends, God wot; For then this land was famously enriched With politics grave counsel; then the king 20 Had virtuous uncles to protect his grace. FIRST CITIZEN Why, so hath this, both by the father and mother. THIRD CITIZEN Better it were they all came by the father, Or by the father there were none at all; For emulation now, who shall be nearest, 25 Will touch us all too near, if God prevent not. O, full of danger is the Duke of Gloucester! And the queen's sons and brothers haught* and proud: And were they to be ruled, and not to rule, This sickly land might solaces as before. 30 FIRST CITIZEN Come, come, we fear the worst; all shall be well. THIRD CITIZEN When clouds appear, wise men put on their cloaks; When great leaves fall, the winter is at hand; When the sun sets, who doth not look for night? Untimely storms make men expect a dearth. 35 All may be well; but, if God sorts it so, 'Tis more than we deserve, or I expect. SECOND CITIZEN Truly, the souls of men are fill of dread: Ye cannot reason almost with a man That looks not heavily and full of fear. 40 THIRD CITIZEN Before the times of change, still is it so: By a divine instinct men's minds mistrust 146 Ensuing dangers; as, by proof, we see The waters swell before a boisterous storm. But leave it all to God. Whither away? 45 SECOND CITIZEN Marry, we were sent for to the justices. THIRD CITIZEN And so was I: I'll bear you company. <2Exeunt>2 <1Scene 4>1 <2Enter Arch bishop [of York, the] young [Duke of]>2 <2York, the Queen [Elizabeth], and the Duches [of York]>2 ARCHBISHOP Last night, I hear, they lay at Stony-Stratford; At Northampton will they be tonight: Tomorrow, or next day, they will be here. DUCHESS OF YORK I long with all my heart to see the prince: I hope he is much grown since last I saw him. 5 QUEEN ELIZABETH But I hear, no; they say my son of York Hath almost overta'en him in his growth. 147 YORK Ay, mother; but I would not have it so. DUCHESS OF YORK Why, my young cousin, it is good to grow. YORK Grandam, one night, as we did sit at supper, I0 My uncle Rivers talked how I did grow More than my brother: "Ay,' quoth my uncle Gloucester, "Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace:' And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast, Because sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste. 15 DUCHESS OF YORK Good faith, good faith, the saying did not hold In him that did object the same to thee: He was the wretched'st thing when he was young, So long a-growing and so leisurely, That, if this rule were true, he should be gracious. 20 ARCHBISHOP Why, madam, so, no doubt, he is. DUCHESS OF YORK I hope so too; but yet let mothers doubt. YORK Now, by my troth, if I had been remembered, I could have given my uncle's grace a flout,s To touch his growth nearer than he touched mine. 25 DUCHESS OF YORK How, my young York? I pray thee, let me hear it. YORK Marry, they say my uncle grew so fast That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old: 'Twas full two years ere I could get a tooth. Grandam, this would have been a biting jest. 30 DUCHESS OF YORK I pray thee, pretty York, who told thee this? YORK Grandam, his nurse. DUCHESS OF YORK His nurse! why, she was dead ere thou wert born. YORK If 'twere not she, I cannot tell who told me. QUEEN ELIZABETH A parlouss boy; go to, you are too shrewd. 35 148 ARCHBISHOP Good madam, be not angry with the child. QUEEN ELIZABETH Pitchers have ears. <2Enter a Messenger>2 ARCHBISHOP Here comes a messenger. What news? MESSENGER Such news, my lord, as grieves me to unfold. QUEEN ELIZABETH How fares the prince? MESSENGER Well, madam, and in health. 40 DUCHESS OF YORK What is thy news then? MESSENGER Lord Rivers and Lord Grey are sent to Pomfret, With them Sir Thomas Vaughan, prisoners. DUCHESS OF YORK Who hath committed them? MESSENGER The mighty dukes, Gloucester and Buckingham. ARCHBISHOP For what offence? 45 MESSENGER The sum of all I can, I have disclosed; Why or for what these nobles were committed Is all unknown to me, my gracious lord. QUEEN ELIZABETH Ay me, I see the downfall of our house! The tiger now hath seized the gentle hind; 50 Insulting tyranny begins to jets Upon the innocent and aweless throne: Welcome, destruction, death, and massacre! I see, as in a map, the end of all. DUCHESS OF YORK Accursed and unquiet wrangling days, 55 How many of you have mine eyes beheld! My husband lost his life to get the crown; And often up and down my sons were tossed, For me to joy and weep their gain and loss: And being seated,s and domestic broils 60 149 Clean over-blown, themselves, the conquerors, Make war upon themselves; brother to brother, Blood to blood, self against self: O, preposterouss And frantic outrage, end thy damne/d spleen;* Or let me die, to look on death no more! 65 QUEEN ELIZABETH Come, come, my boys; we will to sanctuary. Madam, farewell. DUCHESS OF YORK I'll go along with you. QUEEN ELIZABETH You have no cause. ARCHBISHOP My gracious lady, go; And thither bear your treasure and your goods. For my part, I'll resign unto your grace 70 The seal I keep: and so betide to me As well I tender you and all of yours! Come, I'll conduct you to the sanctuary. <2Exeunt>2 <1ACT III>1 <1Scene 1>1 <2The trumpets sound. Enteryoung Prince>2 <2[Edward], the Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham,>2 <2Cardinal [Bourchier, Catesby, with others]>2 BUCKINGHAM Welcome, sweet prince, to London, to your chamber.s RICHARD Welcome, dear cousin, my thoughts' sovereign, The weary way hath made you melancholy. 151 PRINCE EDWARD No, uncle, but our crosses* on the way Have made it tedious, wearisome, and heavy. 5 I want more uncles here to welcome me. RICHARD Sweet prince, the untainted virtue of your years Hath not yet dived into the world's deceit: No more can you distinguish of a man Than of his outward show; which, God he knows, 10 Seldom or never jumpeths with the heart. Those uncles which you want were dangerous; Your grace attended to their sugared words, But looked not on the poison of their hearts: God keep you from them, and from such false friends! 15 PRINCE EDWARD God keep me from false friends! but they were none. RICHARD My lord, the mayor of London comes to greet you. <2Enter Lord Mayor [and his train]>2 LORD MAYOR God bless your grace with health and happy days! PRINCE EDWARD I thank you, good my lord; and thank you all. I thought my mother and my brother York 20 Would long ere this have met us on the way: Fie, what a slug* is Hastings, that he comes not To tell us whether they will come or no! <2Enter Lord Hastings>2 BUCKINGHAM And, in good time here comes the sweating lord. 152 PRINCE EDWARD Welcome, my lord: what, will our mother come? 25 HASTINGS On what occasion, God he knows, not I, The queen your mother and your brother York Have taken sanctuary: the tender prince Would fain have come with me to meet your grace, But by his mother was perforce withheld. 30 BUCKINGHAM Fie, what an indirect and peevishs course Is this of hers! Lord Cardinal, will your grace Persuade the queen to send the Duke of York Unto his princely brother presently? If she deny, Lord Hastings, go with him, 35 And from her jealous arms pluck him perforce. CARDINAL BOURCHIER My Lord of Buckingham, if my weak oratory Can from his mother win the Duke of York, Anon expect him here; but if she be obdurate To mild entreaties, God in heaven forbid 40 We should infringe the holy privilege Of blessed sanctuary! not for all this land Would I be guilty of so deep a sin. BUCKINGHAM You are too senseless-obstinate, my lord, Too ceremoniouss and traditional: 45 Weigh it but with the grossness of this age, You break not sanctuary in seizing him. The benefit thereof is always granted To those whose dealings have deserved the place, And those who have the wit to claim the place: 50 This prince hath neither claimed it nor deserved it; And therefore, in mine opinion, cannot have it: Then, taking him from thence that is not there, You break no privilege nor charter there. Oft have I heard of sanctuary men; 55 But sanctuary children ne'er till now. 153 CARDINAL BOURCHIER My lord, you shall o'er-rule my mind for once. HASTINGS I go, my lord. PRINCE EDWARD Good lords, make all the speedy haste you may. 60 <2[Exeunt Cardinal and Hastings]>2 Say, uncle Gloucester, if our brother come, Where shall we sojourn till our coronation? RICHARD Where it seems best unto your royal self. If I may counsel you, some day or two Your highness shall repose you at the Tower: 65 Then where you please, and shall be thought most fit For your best health and recreation. PRINCE EDWARD I do not like the Tower, of any place. Did Julius Caesar build that place, my lord? BUCKINGHAM He did, my gracious lord, begin that place; 70 Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified.s PRINCE EDWARD Is it upon record, or else reported Successively from age to age, he built it? BUCKINGHAM Upon record, my gracious lord. PRINCE EDWARD But say, my lord, it were not registered, 75 Methinks the truth should live from age to age, As 'twere retailed to all posterity, Even to the general all-ending day. RICHARD <2[Aside]>2 So wise so young, they say, do never live long. 154 PRINCE EDWARD What say you, uncle? 80 RICHARD I say, without characters,s fame lives long. <2[Aside]>2 Thus, like the formal Vice,* Iniquity, I moralize two meanings in one word. PRINCE EDWARD That Julius Caesar was a famous man; With whats his valour did enrich his wit, 85 His wit set down to make his valour live: Death makes no conquest of this conquerer; For now he lives in fame, though not in life. I'll tell you what, my cousin Buckingham, -- BUCKINGHAM What, my gracious lord? 90 PRINCE EDWARD An if I live until I be a man, I'll win our ancient right in France again, Or die a soldier, as I lived a King. RICHARD <2[Aside]>2 Short summers lightly have a forward spring. <2Enter young York, Hastings, Cardinal [Bourchier]>2 BUCKINGHAM Now, in good time, here comes the Duke of York. 95 PRINCE EDWARD Richard of York! how fares our loving brother? YORK Well, my dread lord; so must I call you now. PRINCE EDWARD Ay, brother, to our grief, as it is yours: 155 Too late he died that might have kept that title, Which by his death hath lost much majesty. 100 RICHARD How fares our cousin, noble Lord of York? YORK I thank you, gentle uncle. <2O,>2 my lord, You said that idle* weeds are fast in growth: The prince my brother hath outgrown me far. RICHARD He hath, my lord. YORK And therefore is he idle? 105 RICHARD <2O,>2 my fair cousin, I must not say so. YORK Then he is more beholding to you than I. RICHARD He may command me as my sovereign; But you have power in me as in a kinsman. YORK I pray you uncle, give me this dagger. 110 RICHARD My dagger, little cousin? with all my heart. PRINCE EDWARD A beggar, brother? YORK Of my kind uncle, that I know will give; And being but a toy,s which is no grief to give. RICHARD A greater gift than that I'll give my cousin. 115 YORK A greater gift! O, that's the sword to it. 156 RICHARD Ay, gentle cousin, were it light enough. YORK O, then, I see, you will part but with light gifts; In weightier things you'll say a beggar nay. RICHARD It is too heavy for your grace to wear. 120 YORK I weigh it lightly, were it heavier. RICHARD What, would you have my weapon, little lord? YORK I would, that I might thank you as you call me. RICHARD How? YORK Little. 125 PRINCE EDWARD My Lord of York will still be crosss in talk: Uncle, your grace knows how to bear with him. YORK You mean, to bear me, not to bear with me: Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me; Because that I am little, like an ape, 130 He thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders.* BUCKINGHAM <2[Aside]>2 With what a sharp-provided* wit he reasons! To mitigate the scorn he gives his uncle, He prettily and aptly taunts himself: So cunning and so young is wonderful. 135 RICHARD My lord, will't please you pass along? Myself and my good cousin Buckingham Will to your mother, to entreat of her 157 To meet you at the Tower and welcome you. YORK What, will you go unto the Tower, my lord? 140 PRINCE EDWARD My lord protector needs will have it so. YORK I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower. RICHARD Why, what should you fear? YORK Marry, my uncle Clarence' angry ghost: My grandam told me he was murdered there. 145 PRINCE EDWARD I fear no uncles dead. RICHARD Nor none that live I hope. PRINCE EDWARD An if they live, I hope I need not fear. But come, my lord; and with a heavy heart, Thinking on them, go I unto the Tower. 150 <2A sennet. Exeunt Prince [Edward], York, Hastings>2 <2[Bourchier and others]. Manent Richard,>2 <2Buckingham [and Catesby].>2 BUCKINGHAM Think you, my lord, this little prating York Was not incense/ds by his subtle mother To taunt and scorn you thus opprobriously? 158 RICHARD No doubt, no doubt: O, 'tis a parlous boy; Bold, quick, ingenious, forward, capable: 155 He is all the mother's, from the top to toe. BUCKINGHAM Well, let them rest. Come hither, Catesby. Thou art sworn as deeply to effect what we intend, As closely to conceal what we impart: Thou know'st our reasons urged upon the way; 160 What think'st thou? is it not an easy matter To make William Lord Hastings of our mind, For the instalment of this noble duke In the seat royal of this famous isle? CATESBY He for his father's sake so loves the prince, 165 That he will not be won to aught against him. BUCKINGHAM What think'st thou then of Stanley? what will he? CATESBY He will do all in all as Hastings doth. BUCKINGHAM Well, then, no more but this: go, gentle Catesby, And, as it were far off, sound thou Lord Hastings, 170 How he doth stand affected to our purpose; And summon him tomorrow to the Tower, To sit abouts the coronation. If thou dost find him tractable to us, Encourage him, and show him all our reasons: 175 If he be leaden, icy-cold, unwilling, Be thou so too; and so break offyour talk, And give us notice of his inclination: For we tomorrow hold divided* councils, Wherein thyself shalt highly be employed. 180 159 RICHARD Commend me to Lord William: tell him, Catesby, His ancient knot of dangerous adversaries Tomorrow are let blood at Pomfret-castle; And bid my friend, for joy of this good news, Give Mistress Shore one gentle kiss the more. 185 BUCKINGHAM Good Catesby, go, effect this business soundly. CATESBY My good lords both, with all the heed I may. RICHARD Shall we hear from you, Catesby, ere we sleep? CATESBY You shall my lord. RICHARD At Crosby Place, there shall you find us both. 190 <2Exit Catesby>2 BUCKINGHAM Now, my lord, what shall we do, if we perceive Lord Hastings will not yield to our complots?s RICHARD Chop off his head, man; somewhat we will do: And, look, when I am king, claim thou of me The earldom of Hereford, and the moveabless 195 Whereof the king my brother stood possessed. BUCKINGHAM I'll claim that promise at your grace's hands. RICHARD And look to have it yielded with all willingness. 160 Come, let us sup betimes, that afterwards We may digest our complots in some form. <2Exeunt>2 200 <1Scene 2>1 <2Enter a Messenger to the door of Hastings>2 MESSENGER What, ho! my lord! HASTINGS <2[Within]>2 Who knocks at the door? MESSENGER A messenger from the Lord Stanley. <2Enter Lord Hastings>2 HASTINGS What is't o'clock? MESSENGER Upon the stroke of four. 5 HASTINGS Cannot my lord Stanley sleep these tedious nights? MESSENGER So it should seem by that I have to say. First, he commends him to your noble lordship. HASTINGS And then? MESSENGER And then he sends you word 10 He dreamt tonight the boars had razed his helm:s Besides, he says there are two councils held; 161 And that may be determined at the one Which may make you and him to rue at the other. Therefore he sends to know your lordship's pleasure, 15 If presently you will take horse with him, And with all speed post with him toward the north, To shun the danger that his soul divines. HASTINGS Go, fellow, go, return unto thy lord; Bid him fear not the separated councils: 20 His honour and myself are at the one, And at the other is my servant Catesby; Where nothing can proceed that toucheth us, Whereof I shall not have intelligence. Tell him his fears are shallow, wanting instance:s 25 And for his dreams, I wonder he is so fonds To trust the mockery of unquiet slumbers: To fly the boar before the boar pursues, Were to incense the boar to follow us, And make pursuit where he did mean no chase. 30 Go, bid thy master rise and come to me; And we will both together to the Tower, Where, he shall see, the boar will use us kindly. MESSENGER My gracious lord, I'll tell him what you say. <2Exit>2 <2Enter Catesby>2 CATESBY Many good morrows to my noble lord! 35 HASTINGS Good morrow, Catesby; you are early stirring: What news, what news, in this our tottering state? CATESBY It is a reeling world indeed, my lord; And I believe 'twill never stand upright Till Richard wear the garland of the realm. 40 HASTINGS How! wear the garland! dost thou mean the crown? 162 CATESBY Ay, my good lord. HASTINGS I'll have this crown* of mine cut from my shoulders, Ere I will see the crown so foul misplaced. But canst thou guess that he doth aim at it? 45 CATESBY Ay, on my life, and hopes to find you forward Upon his party for the gain thereof: And thereupon he sends you this good news, That this same very day your enemies, The kindred of the Queen, must die at Pomfret. 50 HASTINGS Indeed, I am no mourner for that news, Because they have been still mine enemies: But, that I'll give my voice on Richard's side, To bar my master's heirs in true descent, God knows I will not do it, to the death. 55 CATESBY God keep your lordship in that gracious mind! HASTINGS But I shall laugh at this a twelve-month hence, That they who brought me in my master's hate, I live to look upon their tragedy. I tell thee, Catesby, -- 60 CATESBY What, my lord? HASTINGS Ere a fortnight make me elder, I'll send some packing that yet think not on it. CATESBY 'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord, When men are unprepared and look not for it. 65 HASTINGS O monstrous, monstrous! and so falls it out With Rivers, Vaughan, Grey: and so 'twill do With some men else, who think themselves as safe As thou and I; who, as thou know'st, are dear To princely Richard and to Buckingham. 70 CATESBY The princes both make high account of you; <2[Aside]>2 For they account his head upon the bridge.* 163 HASTINGS I know they do; and I have well deserved it. <2Enter Lord Stanley [Earl of Derby]>2 Come on, come on; where is your boar-spear, man? Fear you the boar, and go so unprovided? 75 STANLEY My lord, good morrow; good morrow, Catesby: You may jest on, but, by the holy rood,s I do not like these several councils, I. HASTINGS My lord, I hold my life as dear as you do yours; 80 And never in my life, I do protest, Was it more precious to me than 'tis now: Think you, but that I know our state secure, I would be so triumphant as I am? STANLEY The lords at Pomfret, when they rode from London, 85 Were jocund and supposed their state was sure, And they indeed had no cause to mistrust; But yet, you see, how soon the day o'ercast. This sudden stab of rancour I misdoubt: Pray God, I say, I prove a needless coward! 90 What, shall we toward the Tower? the day is spent. HASTINGS Come, come, have with you. Wot you what, my lord? Today the lords you talk of are beheaded. STANLEY They, for their truth, might better wear their heads, Than some that have accused them wear their hats. 95 But come, my lord, let us away. <2Enter a Pursuivants [also named Hastings]>2 HASTINGS Go on before; I'll talk with this good fellow. <2Exeunt Lord Stanley and Catesby>2 164 How now, sirrah! how goes the world with thee? PURSUIVANT The better that your lordship please to ask. HASTINGS I tell thee, man, 'tis better with me now, 100 Than when I met thee last where now we meet: Then was I going prisoner to the Tower, By the suggestion of the queen's allies; But now, I tell thee -- keep it to thyself -- This day those enemies are put to death, I05 And I in better state than e'er I was. PURSUIVANT God hold it, to your honour's good content! HASTINGS Gramercy, fellow: there, drink that for me. <2Throws him his purse>2 PURSUIVANT God save your lordship. <2Exit Pursui-vant>2 <2Enter a Priest>2 PRIEST Well met, my lord; I am glad to see your honour. 110 HASTINGS I thank thee, good Sir John, with all my heart. I am in debt for your last exercise;* Come the next Sabbath, and I will content you. <2He whispers in his ear>2 <2Enter Buckingham>2 BUCKINGHAM What, talking with a priest, lord chamberlain? Your friends at Pomfret, they do need the priest; 115 Your honour hath no shriving works in hand. HASTINGS Good faith, and when I met this holy man, Those men you talk of came into my mind. What, go you toward the Tower? BUCKINGHAM I do, my lord; but long I shall not stay: 120 I shall return before your lordship thence. 165 HASTINGS 'Tis like enough, for I stay dinner there. BUCKINGHAM <2[Aside]>2 And supper too, although thou know'st it not. Come, will you go? HASTINGS I'll wait upon your lordship. <2Exeunt>2 <1Scene 3>1 <2Enter Sir Richard Ratcliffe, with Halberds,>2 <2carrying the nobles [Rivers, Grey and Vaughan]>2 <2to death at Pomfret>2 RATCLIFFE Come, bring forth the prisoners. RIVERS Sir Richard Ratcliffe, let me tell thee this: Today shalt thou behold a subject die For truth, for duty, and for loyalty. GREY God keep the prince from all the pack ofyou! 5 A knot you are of damned blood-suckers. VAUGHAN You live that shall cry woe for this hereafter. RATCLIFFE Dispatch; the limit of your lives is out. RIVERS O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison, Fatal and ominous to noble peers! 10 Within the guilty closure of thy walls Richard the second here was hacked to death; 166 And, for more slander to thy dismal seat, We give thee up our guiltless blood to drink. GREY Now Margaret's curse is fall'n upon our heads, 15 When she exclaimed on Hastings, you, and I, For standing by when Richard stabbed her son. RIVERS Then cursed she Hastings, then cursed she Buckingham, Then cursed she Richard. O, remember, God, To hear her prayers for them, as now for us! 20 And for my sister and her princely sons, Be satisfied, dear God, with our true blood, Which, as thou know'st, unjustly must be spilt. RATCLIFFE Make haste; the hour of death is expiate.s RIVERS Come, Grey, come, Vaughan, let us all embrace: 25 And take our leave, until we meet in heaven. <2Exeunt>2 <1Scene 4>1 <2Enter Buckingha m, [Stanley, Earl of] Derby, Hastings,>2 <2Bishop of Ely, Norfolk, Ratcliffe, Lovel, with others,>2 <2at a table>2 HASTINGS My lords, at once: the cause why we are met Is, to determine of the coronation. In God's name, speak: when is the royal day? BUCKINGHAM Are all things fitting for that royal time? 167 STANLEY It is, and wants but nomination.s BISHOP OF ELY Tomorrow then I judge a happy day. BUCKINGHAM Who knows the lord protector's mind herein? Who is most inward with the noble duke? BISHOP OF ELY Your grace, we think, should soonest know his mind. BUCKINGHAM Who, I, my lord! We know each other's faces, 10 But for your hearts, he knows no more of mine Than I of yours; Nor I no more of his, than you of mine. Lord Hastings, you and he are near in love. HASTINGS I thank his grace, I know he loves me well: 15 But, for his purpose in the coronation, I have not sounded him, nor he delivered His gracious pleasure any way therein: But you, my noble lords, may name the time; And in the duke's behalf I'll give my voice, 20 Which, I presume, he'll take in gentle part. <2Enter [Richard, Duke of] Gloucester>2 BISHOP OF ELY Now in good time, here comes the duke himself. RICHARD My noble lords and cousins all, good morrow. I have been long a sleeper; but, I hope, My absence doth neglects no great designs, 25 168 Which by my presence might have been concluded. BUCKINGHAM Had not you come upon your cue, my lord, William Lord Hastings had pronounced your part, -- I mean, your voice, -- for crowning of the king. RICHARD Than my Lord Hastings no man might be bolder; 30 His lordship knows me well, and loves me well. HASTINGS I thank your grace. RICHARD My Lord of Ely! BISHOP OF ELY My lord? RICHARD When I was last in Holborn, I saw good strawberries in your garden there: I do beseech you send for some of them. 35 BISHOP OF ELY Marry, and will, my lord, with all my heart. <2Exit Bishop>2 RICHARD Cousin of Buckingham, a word with you. <2[Drawing him aside]>2 Catesby hath sounded Hastings in our business, And finds the testy gentleman so hot, As he will lose his head ere give consent 40 His master's son, as worshipfully he terms it, Shall lose the royalty of England's throne. BUCKINGHAM Withdraw you hence, my lord, I'll follow you. <2Exeunt [Richard and Buckingham]>2 STANLEY We have not yet set down this day of triumph. 169 Tomorrow, in mine opinion, is too sudden; 45 For I myself am not so well provided As else I would be, were the day prolonged.s <2Enter the Bishop of Ely>2 BISHOP OF ELY Where is my lord protector? I have sent for these strawberries. HASTINGS His grace looks cheerfully and smooth today; There's some conceits or other likes him well, 50 When he doth bid good morrow with such spirit. I think there's never a man in Christendom That can less hide his love or hate than he; For by his face straight shall you know his heart. STANLEY What of his heart perceive you in his face 55 By any livelihood* he showed today? HASTINGS Marry, that with no man here he is offended; For, were he, he had shown it in his looks. STANLEY I pray God he be not, I say. <2Enter Richard and Buckingham>2 RICHARD I pray you all, tell me what they deserve 60 That do conspire my death with devilish plots 170 Of damne/d 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 noble presence 65 To doom the offenders, whatsoever they be: I say, my lord, they have deserve/d death. RICHARD Then be your eyes the witness of their evil: See how I am bewitched; behold, mine arm Is like a blasted sapling, withered up: 70 And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch, Consorted with that harlot strumpet Shore, That by their witchcraft thus have marked me. HASTINGS 171 Off with his head! Now, by Saint Paul I swear, I will not dine until I see the same. Lovel and Ratcliffe, look that it be done: The rest that love me, rise and follow me. <2Exeunt>2 80 <2Manent Lovel and Ratcliffe with the Lord Hastings>2 HASTINGS Woe, woe for England! not a whit for me; For I, too fond, might have prevented this. Stanley did dream the boar did raze his helm; But I disdained it, and did scorn to fly: Three times today my foot-cloths horse did stumble, 85 And started when he looked upon the Tower, As loath to bear me to the slaughter-house. O, now I want the priest that spake to me: I now repent I told the pursuivant, As 'twere triumphing at mine enemies, 90 How they at Pomfret bloodily were butchered, And I myself secure in grace and favour. O Margaret, Margaret, now thy heavy curse Is lighted on poor Hasting's wretched head! RATCLIFFE Dispatch, my lord; the duke would be at dinner: 95 Make a short shrift; he longs to see your head. HASTINGS O momentary grace of mortal men, Which we more hunt for than the grace of God! Who builds his hopes in air ofyour fair looks,s Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, 100 Ready, with every nod, to tumble down Into the fatal bowels of the deep. LOVEL Come, come, dispatch; 'tis bootlesss to exclaim. HASTINGS O bloody Richard! miserable England! 172 I prophesy the fearfull'st time to thee 105 That ever wretched age hath looked upon. Come, lead me to the block; bear him my head: They smile at me that shortly shall be dead. <2Exeunt>2 <1Scene 5>1 <2Enter Richard [Duke of Gloucester] and Buckingham,>2 <2in rotten armour, marvellous ill-favoured>2 RICHARD Come, cousin, canst thou quake, and change thy colour, Murder thy breath in middle of a word, And then begin again, and stop again, As if thou wert distraught and mad with terror? BUCKINGHAM Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian, 5 Speak and look back, and pry on every side, Tremble and start at wagging of a straw, Intendings deep suspicion: ghastly looks Are at my serwice, like enforce/d smiles; And both are ready in their offices, 10 At any time, to grace my stratagems. But what, is Catesby gone? RICHARD He is; and see, he brings the mayor along. 173 <2Enter the Mayor and Catesby>2 BUCKINGHAM Lord Mayor, -- RICHARD Look to the drawbridge there! 15 BUCKINGHAM Hark! a drum. RICHARD Catesby, o'erlooks the walls. BUCKINGHAM Lord mayor, the reason we have sent -- RICHARD Look back, defend thee, here are enemies. BUCKINGHAM God and our innocency defend and guard us! 20 RICHARD Be patient, they are friends, Ratcliffe and Lovel. <2Enter Lovel and Ratcliffe, with Hastings' head>2 LOVEL Here is the head of that ignoble traitor, The dangerous and unsuspected Hastings. RICHARD So dear I loved the man, that I must weep. I took him for the plainest harmless creature 25 That breathed upon this earth a Christian; Made him my book, wherein my soul recorded The history of all her secret thoughts: So smooth he daubed his vice with show of virtue That, his apparent open guilt omitted, 30 I mean, his conversations with Shore's wife, He lived from all attainder of suspect.s BUCKINGHAM Well, well, he was the covert'st sheltered traitor. Would you imagine, or almost believe, Were't not that, by great preservation, 35 We live to tell it you, the subtle traitor 174 This day had plotted, in the council-house To murder me and my good Lord of Gloucester? MAYOR What, had he so? RICHARD What, think you we are Turks or infidels? 40 Or that we would, against the form of law, Proceed thus rashly to the villain's death, But that the extreme peril of the case, The peace of England and our persons' safety, Enforced us to this execution? 45 MAYOR Now fair befall you! he deserved his death; And you, my good lords both, have well proceeded, To warn false traitors from the like attempts. BUCKINGHAM I never looked for better at his hands, After he once fell in with Mistress Shore. 50 Yet had we not determined he should die, Until your lordship came to see his death; Which now the loving haste of these our friends, Somewhat against our meaning, have prevented:s Because, my lord, we would have had you heard 55 The traitor speak and timorously confess The manner and the purpose of his treason; That you might well have signified the same Unto the citizens, who haply may Misconstrue us in him and wail his death. 60 MAYOR But, my good lord, your grace's words shall serve, Ass well as I had seen, and heard him speak: And doubt you not, right noble princes both, But I'll acquaint our duteous citizens With all your just proceedings in this cause. 65 RICHARD And to that end we wished your lordship here, To avoid the censures of the carping world. BUCKINGHAM But since you come too late of our intents, Yet witness what you hear we did intend: And so, my good lord mayor, we bid farewell. 70 <2Exit Mayor>2 175 RICHARD Go after, after, cousin Buckingham. The mayor towards Guildhall hies him in all post: There, at your meet'st advantage of the time,s Infer* the bastardy of Edward's children: Tell them how Edward put to death a citizen, 75 Only for saying he would make his son Heir to the crown, meaning indeed his house, Which, by the sign thereof, was terme/d so.s Moreover, urge his hateful luxurys And bestial appetite in change of lust;s 80 Which stretched unto their servants, daughters, wives, Even where his raging eye or savage heart, Without control, listed to make his prey. Nay, for a need, thus far come near my person: Tell them, when that my mother went with child 85 Of that unsatiate Edward, noble York, My princely father, then had wars in France; And, by just computation of the time, Found that the issue was not his begot; Which well appeare/d in his lineaments, 90 Being nothing like the noble duke my father: But touch this sparingly, as 'twere far off; Because you know, my lord, my mother lives. BUCKINGHAM Fear not, my lord, I'll play the orator, As if the golden fees for which I plead 95 Were for myself: and so, my lord, adieu. RICHARD If you thrive well, bring them to Baynard's Castle; Where you shall find me well accompanied With reverend fathers and well-learned bishops. BUCKINGHAM I go; and towards three or four o'clock 100 Look for the news that the Guildhall affords. <2Exit Buckingham>2 176 RICHARD Go, Lovel, with all speed to Doctor Shaw: <2[To Catesby]>2 Go thou to Friar Penker; bid them both Meet me within this hour at Baynard's Castle. <2Exeunt [Lovel and Catesby]>2 Now will I in, to take some privy order, 105 To draw the brats of Clarence out of sight; And to give notice, that no manner of person At any time have recourse unto the princes. <2Exit>2 <1Scene 6>1 <2Enter a Scrivener, with a paper in his hand>2 SCRIVENER This is the indictment of the good Lord Hastings; Which in a set hand fairly is engrossed,s That it may be this day read o'er in Paul's. And mark how well the sequel hangs together; Eleven hours I spent to write it over, 5 For yesternight by Catesby was it brought me; The precedent* was full as long a-doing: And yet within these five hours Hastings lived, Untainted, unexamined, free, at liberty. Here's a good world the while! Who is so gross,s 10 That seeth not this palpable device? Yet who's so bold, but says he sees it not? Bad is the world; and all will come to nought, When such ill dealing must be seen in thought. <2Exit>2 177 <1Scene 7>1 <2Enter Richard [Duke of Gloucester] and Buckingham,>2 <2at several doors>2 RICHARD How now, my lord, what say the citizens? BUCKINGHAM Now, by the holy mother of our Lord, The citizens are mum, and speak not a word. RICHARD Touched you the bastardy of Edward's children? 178 BUCKINGHAM I did; with his contract with Lady Lucy, 5 And his contract by deputy in France;s The insatiate greediness of his desires, And his enforcement* of the city wives; His tyranny for trifles; his own bastardy, As being got, your father then in France, 10 And his resemblance, being not like the duke: Withal I did infer your lineaments, Being the right idea of your father, Both in your form and nobleness of mind; Laid open all your victories in Scotland, 15 Your discipline in war, wisdom in peace, Your bounty, virtue, fair humility; Indeed left nothing fitting for your purpose Untouched or slightly handled in discourse: And when mine oratory grew to an end, 20 I bid them that did love their country's good Cry "God save Richard, England's royal king!' RICHARD Ah! and did they so? BUCKINGHAM No, so God help me, they spake not a word; But, like dumb statue%s or breathing stones, 25 Gazed each on other, and looked deadly pale. Which when I saw, I reprehended them; And asked the mayor what meant this wilful silence: His answer was, the people were not used To be spoke to but by the Recorder.s 30 Then he was urged to tell my tale again: "Thus saith the duke, thus hath the duke inferred;' But nothing spake in warrant from himself.* When he had done, some followers of mine own At the lower end of the hall hurled up their caps, 35 And some ten voices cried "God save King Richard!' And thus I took the vantage of those few, "Thanks gentle citizens and friends!' quoth I, 179 "This general applause and cheerful shout Argues your wisdoms and your love to Richard;' 40 And even here brake off, and came away. RICHARD What tongueless blocks were they! would they not speak? BUCKINGHAM No, by my troth, my lord. RICHARD Will not the mayor then and his brethren come? BUCKINGHAM The mayor is here at hand: intends some fear; 45 Be not you spoke with, but by mighty suit: And look you get a prayer-book in your hand, And stand betwixt two churchmen, good my lord; For on that ground* I'll make a holy descant: And be not easily won to our request; 50 Play the maid's part, still answer nay, and take it. RICHARD I go; and if you plead as well for them As I can say nay to thee for myself, No doubt we'll bring it to a happy issue. BUCKINGHAM Go, go up to the leads;s the lord mayor knocks. 55 <2Exit [Richard]>2 <2Enter the Mayor [Aldermen] and Citizens>2 Welcome, my lord: I dance attendance here; I think the duke will not be spoke withal. <2Enter Catesby>2 180 Here comes his servant: how now, Catesby, What says he? CATESBY My lord, he doth entreat your grace To visit him tomorrow or next day: 60 He is within, with two right reverend fathers, Divinely bent to meditation; And in no worldly suit would he be moved, To draw him from his holy exercise. BUCKINGHAM Return, good Catesby, to thy lord again; 65 Tell him, myself, the mayor and aldermen, In deep designs and matters of great moment, No less importing than our general good, Are come to have some conference with his grace. CATESBY I'll signify so much unto him straight. <2Exit>2 70 BUCKINGHAM Ah, ha, my lord, this prince is not an Edward! He is not lolling on a lewd love-bed, But on his knees at meditation; Not dallying with a brace of courtezans, 181 But meditating with two deep divines; 75 Not sleeping, to engrosss his idle body, But praying, to enrich his watchful soul: Happy were England, would this virtuous prince Take on himself the sovereignty thereof But, sure, I fear, we shall ne'er win him to it. 80 MAYOR Marry, God forbid his grace should say us nay! BUCKINGHAM I fear he will. <2Enter Catesby>2 How, now, Catesby, what says his grace? CATESBY My lord, He wonders to what end you have assembled Such troops of citizens to speak with him, 85 His grace not being warned thereof before: My lord, he fears you mean no good to him. BUCKINGHAM Sorry I am my noble cousin should Suspect me, that I mean no good to him: By heaven, I am come in perfect love to him; 90 And so once more return and tell his grace. <2Exit [Catesby]>2 When holy and devout religious men Are at their beads, 'tis hard to draw them thence, So sweet is zealous contemplation. <2Enter Richard aloft, between two Bishops.>2 <2[Catesby returns]>2 182 MAJOR See, where he stands between two clergymen! 95 BUCKINGHAM Two props of virtue for a Christian prince, To stay* him from the fall of vanity: And, see, a book of prayer in his hand, True ornaments to know a holy man. Famous Plantagenet, most gracious prince, 100 Lend favourable ears to our request; And pardon us the interruption Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal. RICHARD My lord, there needs no such apology: I rather do beseech you pardon me, 105 Who, earnest in the service of my God, Deferred the visitation of my friends. But, leaving this, what is your grace's pleasure? BUCKINGHAM Even that, I hope, which pleaseth God above, And all good men of this ungoverned isle. 110 RICHARD I do suspect I have done some offence That seems disgracious in the city's eyes, And that you come to reprehend my ignorance. BUCKINGHAM You have, my lord: would it might please your grace, At our entreaties, to amend that fault! 1 15 RICHARD Else wherefore breathe I in a Christian land? 183 BUCKINGHAM Then know, it is your fault that you resign The supreme seat, the throne majestical, The sceptered office of your ancestors, Your state of fortune and your due of birth, 120 The lineal glory of your royal house, To the corruption of a blemished stock; Whilst, in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts, Which here we waken to our country's good, This noble isle doth want her proper limbs; 125 Her face defaced with scars of infamy, Her royal stock graft* with ignoble plants, And almost shouldereds in the swallowing gulf Of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion. Which to recure,s we heartily solicit 130 Your gracious self to take you on the charge And kingly government of this your land; Not as protector, steward, substitute, Or lowly factor for another's gain; But as successively, from blood to blood, 135 Your right of birth, your empery, your own, For this, consorted with the citizens, Your very worshipful and loving friends, And by their vehement instigation, In this just suit come I to move your grace. 140 RICHARD I know not whether to depart in silence, Or bitterly to speak in your reproof, Best fitteth my degree or your condition: If not to answer, you might haply think Tongue-tied ambition, not replying, yielded 145 To bear the golden yoke of sovereignty, Which fondly you would here impose on me; If to reprove you for this suit of yours So seasoned with your faithful love to me, Then, on the other side, I checked my friends. 150 Therefore, to speak, and to avoid the first, And then, in speaking, not to incur the last, 184 Definitively thus I answer you. Your love deserves my thanks, but my desert Unmeritable shuns your high request. 155 First, if all obstacles were cut away And that my path were even to the crown, As my ripe revenue and due by birth; Yet so much is my poverty of spirit, So mighty and so many my defects, 160 That I would rather hide me from my greatness, Being a bark to brook no mighty sea, Than in my greatness covet to be hid, And in the vapour of my glory smothered. But, God be thanked, there's no need of me, 165 And much I need to help you, if need were; The royal tree hath left us royal fruit, Which, mellowed by the stealing hours of time, Will well become the seat of majesty, And make, no doubt, us happy by his reign. 170 On him I lay what you would lay on me, The right and fortune of his happy stars; Which God defend that I should wring from him! BUCKINGHAM My lord, this argues conscience in your grace; But the respectss thereof are nice* and trivial, 175 All circumstances well considered. You say that Edward is your brother's son: So say we too, but not by Edward's wife; For first he was contract to Lady Lucy -- Your mother lives a witness to that vow -- 180 And afterward by substitute betrothed To Bona, sister to the King of France. These both put by, a poor petitioner, A care-crazed mother to a many sons, A beauty-waning and distresse/d widow, 185 Even in the afternoon of her best days, Made prize and purchase* of his lustful eye, Seduced the pitch and height of his degree To base declension and loathed bigamy:* By her, in his unlawful bed, he got 190 This Edward, whom our manners term the prince. More bitterly could I expostulate, Save that, for reverence to some alive, 185 I give a sparing limit to my tongue. Then, good my lord, take to your royal self 195 This proffered benefit of dignl-ty; If not to bless us and the land withal, Yet to draw forth your noble ancestry From the corruption of abusing times, Unto a lineal true-derive/d course. 200 MAYOR Do, good my lord, your citizens entreat you. BUCKINGHAM Refuse not, mighty lord, this proffered love. CATESBY O, make them joyful, grant their lawful suit! RICHARD Alas, why would you heap these cares on me? I am unfit for state and majesty: 205 I do beseech you, take it not amiss; I cannot nor I will not yield to you. BUCKINGHAM If you refuse it, -- as in love and zeal, Loath to depose the child, your brother's son; As well we know your tenderness of heart 2 10 And gentle, kind, effeminates remorse, Which we have noted in you to your kin, And egallys indeed to all estates,s -- Yet whether you accept our suit or no, Your brother's son shall never reign our king; 215 But we will plant some other in the throne, To the disgrace and downfall of your house: And in this resolution here we leave you. Come, citizens: "zounds! I'll entreat no more. RICHARD O, do not swear, my lord of Buckingham. 220 <2Exeunt [Buckingham, Mayor,>2 <2Aldermen and Citizens]>2 CATESBY Call them again, my lord, and accept their suit: 186 ANOTHER Do, good my lord, lest all the land do rue it. RICHARD Would you enforce me to a world of care? Well, call them again. I am not made of stone, But penetrable to your kind entreaties, 225 Albeit against my conscience and my soul. <2Enter Buckingham and the rest>2 Cousin of Buckingham, and sage, grave men, Since you will buckle fortune on my back, To bear her burthen, whether I will or no, I must have patience to endure the load: 230 But if black scandal or foul-faced reproach Attend-the sequel of your imposition, Your mere enforcement shall acquittance mes From all the impure blots and stains thereof; For God he knows, and you may partly see, 235 How far I am from the desire thereof. MAYOR God bless your grace! we see it, and will say it. RICHARD In saying so, you shall but say the truth. BUCKINGHAM Then I salute you with this kingly title: Long live Richard, England's royal king! 240 MAYOR <2and>2 CITIZENS Amen. BUCKINGHAM Tomorrow will it please you to be crowned? RICHARD Even when you please, since you will have it so. BUCKINGHAM Tomorrow then we will attend your grace: 187 And so most joyfully we take our leave. 245 RICHARD Come, let us to our holy task again. Farewell, good cousin; farewell, gentle friends. <2Exeunt>2 <1ACT IV>1 <1Scene 1>1 <2Enter Queen Mother [Elizabeth], Duchess of York,>2 <2Marquess Dorset at one door; [Anne] Duchess of>2 <2Gloucester at another door, [leading Lady Margaret>2 <2Plantagenet, Clarence's you ng daughter]>2 DUCHESS OF YORK Who meets us here? my nieces Plantagenet Led in the hand of her kind aunt of Gloucester? Now, for my life, she's wandering to the Tower, On pure heart's love to greet the tender princes. Daughter, well met. ANNE God give your graces both 5 A happy and a joyful time of day! QUEEN ELIZABETH As much to you, good sister! Whither away? ANNE No farther than the Tower, and, as I guess, Upon the like devotion as yourselves, To gratulates the gentle princes there. 10 QUEEN ELIZABETH Kind sister, thanks: we'll enter all together. <2Enter the Lieutenant [Brakenbury]>2 And, in good time, here the lieutenant comes. Master lieutenant, pray you, by your leave, How doth the prince, and my young son of York? 189 BRAKENBURY Right well, dear madam. By your patience, 1 5 I may not suffer you to visit them; The king hath straitly charged the contrary. QUEEN ELIZABETH The king! who's that? BRAKENBURY I mean the lord protector. QUEEN ELIZABETH The lord protect him from that kingly title! Hath he set bounds betwixt their love and me? 20 I am their mother; who should keep me from them? DUCHESS OF YORK I am their father's mother; I will see them ANNE Their aunt am I in law, in love their mother: Then bring me to their sights; I'll bear thy blame, And take thy office from thee, on my peril. 25 BRAKENBURY No madam, no; I may not leave it so: I am bound by oath, and therefore pardon me. <2Exit Lieutenant>2 <2Enter [Lord] Sta nley [Earl of Derby]>2 STANLEY Let me but meet you, ladies, one hour hence, And I'll salute your grace of York as mother, And reverend looker on, of two fair queens. 30 <2[To Anne]>2 Come, madam, you must straight to Westminster, There to be crowne/d Richard's royal queen. QUEEN ELIZABETH <2O,>2 cut my laces in sunder, that my pent heart May have some scope to beat, or else I swoon With this dead-killing news! 35 ANNE Despiteful tidings! O unpleasing news! 190 DORSET Be of good cheer: mother, how fares your grace? QUEEN ELIZABETH O Dorset, speak not to me, get thee hence! Death and destruction dog thee at the heels; Thy mother's name is ominous to children. 40 If thou wilt outstrip death, go cross the seas, And live with Richmond, from the reach of hell: Go, hie thee, hie thee from this slaughter-house, Lest thou increase the number of the dead; And make me die the thrall of Margaret's curse, 45 Nor mother, wife, nor England's counted* queen. STANLEY Full of wise care is this your counsel, madam. Take all the swift advantage of the hours; You shall have letters from me to my sons In your behalf to meet you on the way. 50 Be not ta'en tardy by unwise delay. DUCHESS OF YORK O ill-dispersing wind of misery! O my accurse/d womb, the bed of death! A cockatrices hast thou hatched to the world, Whose unavoided eye is murderous. 55 STANLEY Come, madam, come; I in all haste was sent. ANNE And I in all unwillingness will go. I would to God that the inclusive verges Of golden metal that must round my brow Were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brain! 60 Anointed let me be with deadly venom, And die, ere men can say, God save the queen! QUEEN ELIZABETH Go, go, poor soul, I envy not thy glory; To feed my humour, wish thyself no harm. ANNE No! why? When he that is my husband now 65 Came to me, as I followed Henry's corse, When scarce the blood was well washed from his hands 191 Which issued from my other angel husband, And that dear saint which then I weeping followed; O, when, I say, I looked on Richard's face, 70 This was my wish: "Be thou,' quoth I, "accursed, For making me, so young, so old a widow! And, when thou wed'st, let sorrow haunt thy bed; And be thy wife -- ifany be so mad -- More miserable by the life of thee 75 Than thou hadst made me by my dear lord's death!' Lo, ere I can repeat this curse again, Even in so short a space, my woman's heart Grossly grew captive to his honey words, And proved the subject of my own soul's curse, 80 Which ever since hath kept my eyes from rest; For never yet one hour in his bed Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep, But with his timorous dreams was still awaked. Besides, he hates me for my father Warwick; 85 And will, no doubt, shortly be rid of me. QUEEN ELIZABETH Poor heart, adieu! I pity thy complaining. ANNE No more than from my soul I mourn for yours. DORSET Farewell, thou woful welcomer of glory! ANNE Adieu, poor soul, that takest thy leave of it! 90 DUCHESS OF YORK <2[To Dorset]>2 Go thou to Richmond, and good angels guard thee! <2[To Anne]>2 Go thou to Richard, and good angels guard thee! <2[To Queen Elizabeth]>2 Go thou to sanctuary, and good thoughts possess thee! I to my grave, where peace and rest lie with me! Eighty odd years of sorrow have I seen, 95 And each hour's joy wracked with a week ofteen.s QUEEN ELIZABETH Stay, yet look back with me unto the Tower. Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes Whom envy hath immured within your walls! Rough cradle for such little pretty ones! 100 192 Rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow For tender princes, use my babies well! So foolish sorrow bids your stones farewell. <2Exeunt>2 <1Scene 2>1 <2Sound a Sennet. Enter Richard, in pomp, [crowned];>2 <2 Buckingham, Catesby, Ratcliffe, Lovel[a Page,>2 <2 and others]>2 KING RICHARD Stand all apart. Cousin of Buckingham! BUCKINGHAM My gracious sovereign? KING RICHARD Give me thy hand. <2Here he ascendeth the throne>2 <2Sound>2 Thus high, by thy advice And thy assistance is king Richard seated: But shall we wear these honours for a day? 5 Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them? BUCKINGHAM Still live they, and for ever may they last! KING RICHARD O Buckingham, now do I play the touch,* To try if thou be current gold indeed: Young Edward lives: think now what I would say. 10 BUCKINGHAM Say on, my loving lord. KING RICHARD Why, Buckingham, I say, I would be king. BUCKINGHAM Why, so you are, my thrice renowned liege. 194 KING RICHARD Ha! am I king? 'tis so: But Edward lives. BUCKINGHAM True, noble prince. KING RICHARD O bitter consequence, 15 That Edward still should live true noble prince! Cousin, thou wert not wont to be so dull: Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead; And I would have it suddenly performed. What sayest thou? speak suddenly; be brief. 20 BUCKINGHAM Your grace may do your pleasure. KING RICHARD Tut, tut, thou art all ice' thy kindness freezeth: Say, have I thy consent that they shall die? BUCKINGHAM Give me some breath, some little pause, my lord, Before I positively speak herein: 25 I will resolve your grace immediately. <2Exit Buckingham>2 CATESBY <2[Aside]>2 The king is angry: see, he gnaws the lip. KING RICHARD I will converse with iron-witted fools And unrespectives boys: none are for me That look into me with considerates eyes: 30 High-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect. Boy! PAGE My lord? KING RICHARD Know'st thou not any whom corrupting gold Would tempt unto a close exploits of death? 35 PAGE My lord, I know a discontented gentleman, Whose humble means match not his haughty mind: Gold were as good as twenty orators, And will, no doubt, tempt him to any thing. KING RICHARD What is his name? 195 PAGE His name, my lord, is Tyrrel. 40 KING RICHARD I partly know the man: go, call him hither. <2Exit[Page]>2 The deep-revolving witty* Buckingham No more shall be the neighbour to my counsel: Hath he so long held out with me untired, And stops he now for breath? Well, be it so. 45 <2Enter Stanley[Earl of Derby]>2 How now! what news with you? STANLEY Know, my loving lord, The Marquess Dorset, as I hear, is fled To Richmond in the parts where he abides. <2[Stands apart]>2 KING RICHARD Come hither, Catesby. Rumour it abroad That Anne, my wife, is grievous sick: 50 I will take order for her keeping close. Inquire me out some mean poor gentleman, Whom I will marry straight to Clarence' daughter: The boy is foolish, and I fear not him. Look how thou dream'st! I say again, give out 55 That Anne my queen is sick, and like to die: About it; for it stands me much upon,* To stop all hopes whose growth may damage me. <2[Exit Catesby]>2 I must be married to my brother's daughter, Or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass. 60 Murder her brothers, and then marry her! Uncertain way of gain! But I am in So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin: Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye. <2Enter[Page, with] Tyrrel>2 196 Is thy name Tyrrel? 65 TYRREL James Tyrrel, and your most obedient servant. KING RICHARD Art thou, indeed? TYRREL Prove me, my gracious sovereign. KING RICHARD Darest thou resolve to kill a friend of mine? TYRREL Ay, my lord; But I had rather kill two enemies. 70 KING RICHARD Why, there thou hast it: two deep enemies, Foes to my rest and my sweet sleep's disturbers Are they that I would have thee deal upon: Tyrrel, I mean those bastards in the Tower. TYRREL Let me have open means to come to them, 75 And soon I'll rid you from the fear of them. KING RICHARD Thou sing'st sweet music. Hark, come hither, Tyrrel: Go, by this token: rise, and lend thine ear: <2Whispers>2 There is no more but so: say it is done, And I will love thee, and prefer* thee too. 80 TYRREL 'Tis done, my gracious lord. KING RICHARD Shall we hear from thee, Tyrrel, ere we sleep? TYRREL Ye shall, my lord. <2[Exit]>2 <2Enter Buckingham>2 BUCKINGHAM My lord, I have considered in my mind 197 The late demand that you did sound me in. 85 KING RICHARD Well, let that pass. Dorset is fled to Richmond. BUCKINGHAM I hear that news, my lord. KING RICHARD Stanley, he is your wife's son: well, look to it. BUCKINGHAM My lord, I claim your gift, my due by promise, For which your honour and your faith is pawned; 90 The earldom of Hereford and the moveables The which you promised I should possess. KING RICHARD Stanley, look to your wife: if she convey Letters to Richmond, you shall answer it. BUCKINGHAM What says your highness to my just demand? 95 KING RICHARD As I remember, Henry the Sixth Did prophesy that Richmond should be king, When Richmond was a little peevish boy. A king, perhaps, perhaps, -- BUCKINGHAM My lord! 100 KING RICHARD How chance the prophet could not at that time Have told me, I being by, that I should kill him? BUCKINGHAM My lord, your promise for the earldom, -- KING RICHARD Richmond! When last I was at Exeter, The mayor in courtesy showed me the castle, 105 198 And called it Rougemont: at which name I started, Because a bard of Ireland told me once, I should not live long after I saw Richmond. BUCKINGHAM My lord! KING RICHARD Ay, what's o'clock? 110 BUCKINGHAM I am thus bold to put your grace in mind Of what you promised me. KING RICHARD Well, but what's o'clock? BUCKINGHAM Upon the stroke often. KING RICHARD Well, let it strike. BUCKINGHAM Why let it strike? KING RICHARD Because that, like a Jack, thou keep'st the stroke 115 Betwixt thy begging and my meditation.s I am not in the giving vein today. BUCKINGHAM Why, then resolve me whether you will or no. KING RICHARD Tut, tut, Thou troublest me; I am not in the vein. 120 <2Exit[with all but Buckingham]>2 BUCKINGHAM Is it even so? rewards he my true service With such deep contempt? made I him king for this? 199 O, let me think on Hastings, and be gone To Brecknock, while my fearful head is on! <2Exit>2 <1Scene 3>1 <2Enter Tyrrel>2 TYRREL The tyrannous and bloody act is done, The most arch deed of piteous massacre That ever yet this land was guilty of. Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn To do this ruthless piece of butchery, 5 Although they were flesheds villains, bloody dogs, Melted with tenderness and kind compassion Wept like two children in their deaths' sad stories. "Lo, thus,' quoth Dighton, "lay those tender babes:' "Thus, thus,' quoth Forrest, "girdling one another 10 Within their innocent alablasters arms: Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, Which in their summer beauty kissed each other. A book of prayers on their pillow lay; Which once,' quoth Forrest, "almost changed my mind; 15 But O! the devil' -- there the villain stopped; Whilst Dighton thus told on: "We smothere/d The most replenishe/d* sweet work of nature That from the prime creation e'er she framed.' Thus both are gone* with conscience and remorse; 20 200 They could not speak; and so I left them both, To bring this tidings to the bloody king. And here he comes. <2Enter King Richard>2 All hail, my sovereign liege! KING RICHARD Kind Tyrrel, am I happy in thy news? TYRREL If to have done the thing you gave in charge 25 Beget your happiness, be happy then, For it is done, my lord. KING RICHARD But didst thou see them dead? TYRREL I did, my lord. KING RICHARD And buried, gentle Tyrrel? TYRREL The chaplain of the Tower hath buried them; But how or in what place I do not know. 30 KING RICHARD Come to me, Tyrrel, soon at after supper, And thou shalt tell the process of their death. Meantime, but think how I may do thee good, And be inheritor of thy desire. Farewell till then. <2Exit Tyrrel>2 35 The son of Clarence have I pent up close; His daughter meanly have I matched in marriage; The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom, And Anne my wife hath bid the world good night. Now, for I know the Britains Richmond aims 40 At young Elizabeth, my brother's daughter, 201 And, by that knot, looks proudly on the crown, To her go I, a jolly thriving wooer. <2Enter Ratcliffe>2 RATCLIFFE My lord! KING RICHARD Good news or bad, that thou comest in so bluntly? 45 RATCLIFFE Bad news, my lord: Ely is fled to Richmond; And Buckingham, backed with the hardy Welshmen, Is in the field, and still his power increaseth. KING RICHARD Ely with Richmond troubles me more near Than Buckingham and his rash-levied army. 50 Come, I have learned that fearful commenting Is leaden servitor to dull delay; Delay leads impotent and snail-paced beggary: Then fiery expedition be my wing, Jove's Mercury, and herald for a king! 55 Come, muster men: my counsel is my shield; We must be brief when traitors brave the field. <2Exeunt>2 <1Scene 4>1 <2Enter old Queen Margaret>2 QUEEN MARGARET So, now prosperity begins to mellow And drop into the rotten mouth of death. Here in these confines slily have I lurked, To watch the waning of mine enemies. A dire inductions am I witness to, 5 202 And will to France, hoping the consequence* Will prove as bitter, black, and tragical. Withdraw thee' wretched Margaret: who comes here? <2[Queen Margaret retires]>2 <2Enter the Queen [Elizabeth] and the Duchess of York>2 QUEEN ELIZABETH Ah, my young princes! ah, my tender babes! My unblown flowers, new-appearing sweets!s 10 If yet your gentle souls fly in the air, And be not fixed in doom perpetual, Hover about me with your airy wings, And hear your mother's lamentation! QUEEN MARGARET <2[Aside]>2 Hover about her; say, that right for right 15 Hath dimmed your infant morn to age/d night. DUCHESS OF YORK So many miseries have crazed my voice, That my woe-wearied tongue is still and mute. Edward Plantagenet, why art thou dead? QUEEN MARGARET <2[Asi-de]>2 Plantagenet doth quits Plantagenet, 20 Edward for Edward pays a dying debt.s QUEEN ELIZABETH Wilt thou, O God, fly from such gentle lambs, And throw them in the entrails of the wolf? When didst thou sleep when such a deed was done? QUEEN MARGARET <2[Aside]>2 When holy Harry died, and my sweet son. 25 DUCHESS OF YORK Blind sight, dead life, poor mortal-livings ghost, Woe's scene, world's shame, grave's due by life usurped, Brief abstract* and record of tedious days, Rest thy unrest on England's lawful earth. <2[Sits down]>2 Unlawfully made drunk with innocent blood! 30 203 QUEEN ELIZABETH O, that thou wouldst as well afford a grave As thou canst yield a melancholy seat! Then would I hide my bones, not rest them here. O, who hath any cause to mourn but I? <2[Sits down by her]>2 QUEEN MARGARET <2[Comes forward]>2 If ancient sorrow be most reverend, 35 Give mine the benefit of seniory, And let my woes frown on the upper hand. If sorrow can admit society, <2[Sits down with them]>2 Tell o'er your woes again by viewing mine: I had an Edward, till a Richard killed him; 40 I had a Harry, till a Richard killed him: Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard killed him; Thou hadst a Richard* till a Richard killed him. DUCHESS OF YORK I had a Richard* too, and thou didst kill him; I had a Rutland too, thou holp'st to kill him. 45 QUEEN MARGARET Thou hadst a Clarence too, and Richard killed him. From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death: That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes, To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood, 50 That foul defacer of God's handiwork, That excellents grand tyrant of the earth, That reigns in galle/d eyes of weeping souls, Thy womb let loose, to chase us to our graves. 204 O upright, just, and true-disposing God, 55 How do I thank thee, that this carnals cur Preys on the issue of his mother's body, And makes her pew-fellows with others' moan! DUCHESS OF YORK O Harry's wife, triumph not in my woes! God witness with me, I have wept for thine. 60 QUEEN MARGARET Bear with me; I am hungry for revenge, And now I cloy me with beholding it. Thy Edward he is dead, that stabbed my Edward; Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward; Young York he is but boot,s because both they 65 Match not the high perfection of my loss: Thy Clarence he is dead that killed my Edward; And the beholders of this tragic play, The adulterates Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey, Untimely smothered in their dusky graves. 70 Richard yet lives, hell's black intelligencer,* Only reserved their factor,* to buy souls And send them thither: but at hand, at hand, Ensues his piteous and unpitied end: Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray, 75 To have him suddenly conveyed away. Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray, That I may live to say, The dog is dead! QUEEN ELIZABETH O, thou didst prophesy the time would come That I should wish for thee to help me curse 80 That bottled spider, that foul bunch-backed toad! QUEEN MARGARET I called thee then vain flourish of my fortune; I called thee then poor shadow, painted queen; The presentation of but what I was; The flattering indexs of a direful pageant; 85 One heaved a-high, to be hurled down below; A mother only mocked with two sweet babes; A dream of what thou wert, a garish flag, To be the aim of every dangerous shot; A sign of dignity, a breath, a bubble; 90 A queen in jest, only to fill the scene. Where is thy husband now? where be thy brothers? 205 Where be thy two sons? wherein dost thou joy? Who sues, and kneels, and cries "God save the queen'? Where be the bending peers that flattered thee? 95 Where be the thronging troops that followed thee? Declines all this, and see what now thou art: For happy wife, a most distresse/d widow; For joyful mother, one that wails the name; For queen, a very caitiff crowned with care; 100 For one being sued to, one that humbly sues; For she that scorned at me, now scorned of me; For she being feared of all, now fearing one; For she commanding all, obeyed of none. Thus hath the course of justice wheeled about, 105 And left thee but a very prey to time; Having no more but thought of what thou wert, To torture thee the more, being what thou art. Thou didst usurp my place, and dost thou not Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow? 110 Now thy proud neck bears half my burthened yoke; From which even here I slip my weary neck, And leave the burthen of it all on thee. Farewell, York's wife, and queen of sad mischance: These English woes will make me smile in France. 115 QUEEN ELIZABETH O thou well skilled in curses, stay awhile, And teach me how to curse mine enemies! QUEEN MARGARET Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the days; Compare dead happiness with living woe; Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were, 120 And he that slew them fouler than he is: Betterings thy loss makes the bad causer worse: Revolving this will teach thee how to curse. QUEEN ELIZABETH My words are dull; O, quicken them with thine! QUEEN MARGARET Thy woes will make them sharp and pierce like mine. 125 <2Exit[Queen] Margaret>2 DUCHESS OF YORK Why should calamity be full of words? QUEEN ELIZABETH Windy attorneys to their client woes, 206 Airy succeeders of intestates joys, Poor breathing orators of miseries! Let them have scope: though what they do impart 138 Help not at all, yet do they ease the heart. DUCHESS OF YORK If so, then be not tongue-tied: go with me, And in the breath of bitter words let's smother My damne/d son, which thy two sweet sons smothered. I hear his drum: be copious in exclaims. 135 <2Enter King Richard, marching, with drums and trumpets>2 KING RICHARD Who intercepts my expedition? DUCHESS OF YORK O, she that might have intercepted thee, By strangling thee in her accurse/d womb, From all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done! QUEEN ELIZABETH Hidest thou that forehead with a golden crown, 140 Where should be branded, if that right were right, The slaughter of the prince that oweds that crown, And the dire death of my poor sons and brothers? Tell me, thou villain slave, where are my children? 207 DUCHESS OF YORK Thou toad, thou toad, where is thy brother Clarence? 145 And little Ned Plantagenet, his son? QUEEN ELIZABETH Where is the gentle Rivers, Vaughan, Grey? DUCHESS OF YORK Where is kind Hastings? KING RICHARD A flourish, trumpets! strike alarum, drums! Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women 150 Rail on the Lord's anointed: strike, I say! <2Flourish. Alarums>2 Either be patient, and entreat me fair, Or with the clamorous report of war Thus will I drown your exclamations. DUCHESS OF YORK Art thou my son? 155 KING RICHARD Ay, I thank God, my father, and yourself. DUCHESS OF YORK Then patiently hear my impatience. KING RICHARD Madam, I have a touch of your condition, Which cannot brook the accent of reproof. DUCHESS OF YORK O, let me speak! KING RICHARD Do then; but I'll not hear. 160 DUCHESS OF YORK I will be mild and gentle in my speech. KING RICHARD And brief, good mother; for I am in haste. DUCHESS OF YORK Art thou so hasty? I have stayed for thee, God knows, in anguish, pain and agony. KING RICHARD And came I not at last to comfort you? 165 DUCHESS OF YORK No, by the holy rood, thou know'st it well, 208 Thou camest on earth to make the earth my hell. A grievous burthen was thy birth to me; Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy; Thy school-days frightful, desperate, wild, and furious, 170 Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous, Thy age confirmed, proud, subtle, bloody, treacherous; More mild, but yet more harmful, kind in hatred: What comfortable hour canst thou name, That ever graced me in thy company? 175 KING RICHARD Faith, none, but Humphrey Hour,s that called your grace To breakfast once forth of my company. If I be so disgracious in your sight, Let me march on, and not offend your grace. Strike up the drum. DUCHESS OF YORK I prithee, hear me speak. 180 KING RICHARD You speak too bitterly. DUCHESS OF YORK Hear me a word; For I shall never speak to thee again. KING RICHARD So. DUCHESS OF YORK Either thou wilt die, by God's just ordinance, Ere from this way thou turn a conqueror, 185 Or I with griefand extreme age shall perish And never look upon thy face again. Therefore take with thee my most heavy curse; Which, in the day of battle, tire thee more Than all the complete armour that thou wear'st! 190 My prayers on the adverse party fight; And there the little souls of Edward's children Whisper the spirits of thine enemies, And promise them success and victory. Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end; 195 Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend. <2Exit>2 QUEEN ELIZABETH Though far more cause, yet much less spirit to curse 209 Abides in me; I say amen to all. KING RICHARD Stay, madam; I must speak a word with you. QUEEN ELIZABETH I have no moe sons of the royal blood 200 For thee to murder: for my daughters, Richard, They shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens; And therefore level* not to hit their lives. KING RICHARD You have a daughter called Elizabeth, Virtuous and fair, royal and gracious. 205 QUEEN ELIZABETH And must she die for this? O, let her live, And I'll corrupt her manners, stain her beauty; Slander myselfas false to Edward's bed; Throw over her the veil of infamy: So she may live unscarred of bleeding slaughter, 210 I will confess she was not Edward's daughter. KING RICHARD Wrong not her birth, she is of royal blood. QUEEN ELIZABETH To save her life, I'll say she is not so. KING RICHARD Her life is only safest in her birth. QUEEN ELIZABETH And only in that safety died her brothers. 215 KING RICHARD Lo, at their births good stars were opposite. QUEEN ELIZABETH No, to their lives bad friends were contrary. KING RICHARD All unavoideds is the doom of destiny. 210 QUEEN ELIZABETH True, when avoided graces makes destiny: My babes were destined to a fairer death, 220 If grace had blessed thee with a fairer life. KING RICHARD You speak as if that I had slain my cousins. QUEEN ELIZABETH Cousins indeed; and by their uncle cozeneds Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life. Whose hand soever lanced their tender hearts, 225 Thy head, all indirectly, gave direction: No doubt the murderous knife was dull and blunt, Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart, To revel in the entrails of my lambs. Buts that stills use of grief makes wild grief tame, 230 My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys, Till that my nails were anchored in thine eyes; And I, in such a desperate bay of death, Like a poor bark, of sails and tackling reft, Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom. 235 KING RICHARD Madam, so thrive I in my enterprise, And dangerous success of bloody wars, As I intend more good to you and yours, Than ever you or yours were by me wronged! QUEEN ELIZABETH What good is covered with the face of heaven, 240 To be discovered, that can do me good? KING RICHARD The advancement of your children, gentle lady. QUEEN ELIZABETH Up to some scaffold, there to lose their heads? KING RICHARD No, to the dignity and height of honour, The high imperial types of this earth's glory. 245 QUEEN ELIZABETH Flatter my sorrows with report of it; Tell me what state, what dignity, what honour, Canst thou demises to any child of mine? KING RICHARD Even all I have, yea, and myself and all, Will I withal endow a child of thine; 250 211 So in the Lethe of thy angry soul Thou drown the sad remembrance of those wrongs, Which thou supposest I have done to thee. QUEEN ELIZABETH Be brief, lest that the process of thy kindness Last longer telling than thy kindness' date. 255 KING RICHARD Then know, that from my soul I love thy daughter. QUEEN ELIZABETH My daughter's mother thinks it with her soul. KING RICHARD What do you think? QUEEN ELIZABETH That thou dost love my daughter froms thy soul: So from.s thy soul's love didst thou love her brothers; 260 And froms my heart's love I do thank thee for it. KING RICHARD Be not so hasty to confound my meaning: I mean, that with my soul I love thy daughter, And mean to make her queen of England. QUEEN ELIZABETH Say then, who dost thou mean shall be her king? 265 KING RICHARD Even he that makes her queen: who should be else? QUEEN ELIZABETH What, thou? KING RICHARD I, even I: what think you of it, madam? QUEEN ELIZABETH How canst thou woo her? KING RICHARD That would I learn ofyou, As one being best acquainted with her humour. 270 QUEEN ELIZABETH And wilt thou learn of me? KING RICHARD Madam, with all my heart. QUEEN ELIZABETH Send to her, by the man that slew her brothers, A pair of bleeding hearts; thereon engrave 212 "Edward' and "York'; then haply she will weep: Therefore present to her, -- as sometime Margaret 275 Did to thy father, steeped in Rutland's blood, -- a handkerchief; which, say to her, did drain The purple sap from her sweet brother's body, And bid her dry her weeping eyes therewith. If this inducement force her not to love, 280 Send her a story of thy noble acts; Tell her thou madest away her uncle Clarence, Her uncle Rivers; yea, and, for her sake, Madest quick conveyance with her good aunt Anne. KING RICHARD Come, come, you mock me; this is not the way 285 To win your daughter. QUEEN ELIZABETH There is no other way; Unless thou couldst put on some other shape, And not be Richard that hath done all this. KING RICHARD Say that I did all this for love of her. QUEEN ELIZABETH Nay, then indeed she can not choose but hate thee, 290 Having bought love with such a bloody spoil. KING RICHARD Look, what is done cannot be now amended: Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes, Which after-hours give leisure to repent. If I did take the kingdom from your sons, 295 To make amends, I'll give it to your daughter. If I have killed the issue of your womb, To quicken your increase, I will beget Mine issue of your blood upon your daughter: A grandam's name is little less in love 300 Than is the doting title of a mother; They are as children but one step below, Even of your metal,s of your very blood; Of all one pain, save for a night of groans Endured ofs her, for whom you bid like sorrow. 305 Your children were vexation to your youth, But mine shall be a comfort to your age. 213 The loss you have is but a son being king, And by that loss your daughter is made queen. I cannot make you what amends I would, 310 Therefore accept such kindness as I can. Dorset your son, that with a fearful soul Leads discontented steps in foreign soil, This fair alliance quickly shall call home To high promotions and great dignity: 315 The king, that calls your beauteous daughter wife, Familiarly shall call thy Dorset brother; Again shall you be mother to a king, And all the ruins of distressful times Repaired with double riches of content. 320 What! we have many goodly days to see! The liquid drops of tears that you have shed Shall come again, transformed to orient pearl, Advantaging their loan with interest Often times double gain of happiness. 325 Go then, my mother, to thy daughter go; Make bold her bashful years with your experience; Prepare her ears to hear a wooer's tale; Put in her tender heart the aspiring flame Of golden sovereignty; acquaint the princess 330 With the sweet silent hours of marriage joys: And when this arm of mine hath chastised The petty rebel, dull-brained Buckingham, Bound with triumphant garlands will I come, And lead thy daughter to a conqueror's bed; 335 To whom I will retails my conquest won, And she shall be sole victress, Caesar's Caesar. QUEEN ELIZABETH What were I best to say? her father's brother Would be her lord? or shall I say, her uncle? Or, he that slew her brothers and her uncles? 340 Under what title shall I woo for thee, That God, the law, my honour and her love, Can make seem pleasing to her tender years? KING RICHARD Infer fair England's peace by this alliance. QUEEN ELIZABETH Which she shall purchase with still lasting war. 345 KING RICHARD 214 Say that the king, which may command, entreats. QUEEN ELIZABETH That at her hands which the king's King forbids. KING RICHARD Say, she shall be a high and mighty queen. QUEEN ELIZABETH To wail the title, as her mother doth. KING RICHARD Say, I will love her everlastingly. 350 QUEEN ELIZABETH But how long shall that title "ever' last? KING RICHARD Sweetly in force unto her fair life's end. QUEEN ELIZABETH But how long fairly shall her sweet life last? KING RICHARD As long as heaven and nature lengthens it. QUEEN ELIZABETH As long as hell and Richard likes of it. 355 KING RICHARD Say, I, her sovereign, am her subject love. QUEEN ELIZABETH But she, your subject, loathes such sovereignty. KING RICHARD Be eloquent in my behalf to her. QUEEN ELIZABETH An honest tale speeds best being plainly told. KING RICHARD Then in plain terms tell her my loving tale. 360 QUEEN ELIZABETH Plain and not honest is too harsh a style. KING RICHARD Your reasons are too shallow and too quick.s QUEEN ELIZABETH O no, my reasons are too deep and dead; Too deep and dead, poor infants, in their grave. KING RICHARD Harp not on that string, madam; that is past. 365 QUEEN ELIZABETH Harp on it still shall I till heart-strings break. KING RICHARD Now, by my George,s my garter, and my crown, -- 215 QUEEN ELIZABETH Profaned, dishonoured, and the third usurped. KING RICHARD I swear -- QUEEN ELIZABETH By nothing; for this is no oath: The George, profaned, hath lost his holy honour; 370 The garter, blemished, pawned his knightly virtue; The crown, usurped, disgraced his kingly glory. If something thou wilt swear to be believed, Swear then by something that thou has not wronged. KING RICHARD Then, by myself -- QUEEN ELIZABETH Thyself thyself misusest. 375 KING RICHARD Now, by the world -- QUEEN ELIZABETH 'Tis full of thy foul wrongs. KING RICHARD My father's death -- QUEEN ELIZABETH Thy life hath that dishonoured. KING RICHARD Why then, by God -- QUEEN ELIZABETH God's wrong is most of all. If thou hadst feared to break an oath by Him, The unity the king thy brother made 380 Had not been broken, nor my brother slain: If thou hadst feared to break an oath by Him, The imperial metal, circling now thy brow, Had graced the tender temples of my child, And both the princes had been breathing here, 385 Which now, two tender playfellows for dust, Thy broken faith hath made a prey for worms. What canst thou swear by now? KING RICHARD The time to come. QUEEN ELIZABETH That thou hast wronge/d in the time o'erpast; For I myself have many tears to wash 390 Hereafter time, for time past wronged by thee. The children live, whose parents thou hast slaughtered, Ungoverned youth, to wail it in their age; The parents live, whose children thou hast butchered, Old barren plants, to wail it with their age. 395 216 Swear not by time to come; for that thou hast Misused ere used, by time misused o'erpast. KING RICHARD As I intend to prosper and repent, So thrive I in my dangerous attempt Of hostile arms! myself myself confound! 400 Heaven and fortune bar me happy hours! Day, yield me not thy light; nor night, thy rest! Be opposite all planets of good luck To my proceedings, if, with pure heart's love, Immaculate devotion, holy thoughts, 405 I tenders not thy beauteous princely daughter! In her consists my happiness and thine; Without her, follows to this land and me, To thee, herself, and many a Christian soul, Death, desolation, ruin and decay: 410 It cannot be avoided but by this; It will not be avoided but by this. Therefore, good mother, -- I must call you so -- Be the attorney of my love to her: Plead what I will be, not what I have been; 415 Not my deserts, but what I will deserve: Urge the necessity and state of times, And be not peevish-fonds in great designs. QUEEN ELIZABETH Shall I be tempted of the devil thus? KING RICHARD Ay, if the devil tempt thee to do good. 420 QUEEN ELIZABETH Shall I forget myself to be myself? KING RICHARD Ay, if yourselfs remembrance wrong yourself. QUEEN ELIZABETH But thou didst kill my children. KING RICHARD But in your daughter's womb I bury them: Where in that nest of spicerys they shall breed 425 Selves of themselves, to your recomforture. 217 QUEEN ELIZABETH Shall I go win my daughter to thy will? KING RICHARD And be a happy mother by the deed. QUEEN ELIZABETH I go. Write to me very shortly, And you shall understand from me her mind. 430 KING RICHARD Bear her my true love's kiss; and so, farewell. <2Exit Queen [Elizabeth]>2 Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman! <2Enter Ratcliffe [Catesby following]>2 How now! what news? RATCLIFFE My gracious sovereign, on the western coast Rideth a puissants navy; to the shore 435 Throng many doubtful hollow-hearted friends, Unarmed, and unresolved to beat them back: 'Tis thought that Richmond is their admiral; And there they hull,s expecting but the aid Of Buckingham to welcome them ashore. 440 KING RICHARD Some light-foot friend post to the Duke of Norfolk: Ratcliffe, thyself, or Catesby; where is he? CATESBY Here, my lord. KING RICHARD Catesby, fly to the duke. CATESBY I will, my lord, with all convenient haste. KING RICHARD <2[To Ratcliffe]>2 Come hither. Post to Salisbury; 445 218 When thou comest thither, -- <2[To Catesby]>2 Dull unmindful villain, Why stand'st thou still, and go'st not to the duke? CATESBY First, mighty sovereign, let me know your mind, What from your grace I shall deliver to him. KING RICHARD O, true, good Catesby: bid him levy straight 450 The greatest strength and power he can make, And meet me presently at Salisbury. CATESBY I go. <2Exit>2 RATCLIFFE - What is't your highness' pleasure I shall do At Salisbury? 455 KING RICHARD Why, what wouldst thou do there before I go? RATCLIFFE Your highness told me I should post before. KING RICHARD My mind is changed, sir, my mind is changed. <2Enter Lord Stanley, [Earl of Derby]>2 How now, what news with you? STANLEY None good, my lord, to please you with the hearing; 460 Nor none so bad, but well may be reported. KING RICHARD Hoyday,s a riddle! neither good nor bad! Why dost thou run so many miles about, When thou mayst tell thy tale a nearer way? Once more, what news? STANLEY Richmond is on the seas. 465 KING RICHARD There let him sink, and be the seas on him! White-livered runagate,s what doth he there? STANLEY I know not, mighty sovereign, but by guess. KING RICHARD Well, sir, as you guess? STANLEY Stirred up by Dorset, Buckingham, and Ely, 470 219 He makes for England, there to claim the crown. KING RICHARD Is the chair empty? is the sword unswayed? Is the king dead? the empire unpossessed? What heir of York is there alive but we? And who is England's king but great York's heir? 475 Then, tell me, what doth he upon the sea? STANLEY Unless for that, my liege, I cannot guess. KING RICHARD Unless for that he comes to be your liege, You cannot guess wherefore the Welshman comes. Thou wilt revolt and fly to him, I fear. 480 STANLEY No, mighty liege; therefore mistrust me not. KING RICHARD Where is thy power then to beat him back? Where are thy tenants and thy followers? Are they not now upon the western shore, Safe-conducting the rebels from their ships? 485 STANLEY No, my good lord, my friends are in the north. KING RICHARD Cold friends to Richard: what do they in the north, When they should serve their sovereign in the west? STANLEY They have not been commanded, mighty sovereign: 220 Please it your majesty to give me leave, 490 I'll muster up my friends, and meet your grace Where and what time your majesty shall please. KING RICHARD Ay, ay, thou wouldst be gone to join with Richmond: I will not trust you, sir. STANLEY Most mighty sovereign, You have no cause to hold my friendship doubtful: 495 I never was nor never will be false. KING RICHARD Well, Go muster men; but, hear you, leave behind Your son, George Stanley: look your faith be firm, Or else his head's assurances is but frail. 500 STANLEY So deal with him as I prove true to you. <2Exit>2 <2Enter a Messenger>2 MESSENGER My gracious sovereign, now in Devonshire, As I by friends am well advertised, Sir Edward Courtney, and the haughty prelate Bishop of Exeter, his elder brother, 505 With many moe confederates, are in arms. <2Enter another Messenger>2 SECOND MESSENGER My liege, in Kent, the Guildfords are in arms; And every hour more competitorss Flock to the rebels, and still their power increaseth. <2Enter another Messenger>2 THIRD MESSENGER My lord, the army of the Duke of Buckingham -- 510 KING RICHARD Out on you, owls! nothing but songs of death? 221 <2He striketh him>2 Take that, until thou bring me better news. THIRD MESSENGER The news I have to tell your majesty Is, that by sudden floods and fall of waters, Buckingham's army is dispersed and scattered; 515 And he himself wandered away alone, No man knows whither. KING RICHARD I cry thee mercy: Here is my purse to cure that blow of thine. Hath any well-advise/d friend proclaimed Reward to him that brings the traitor in? 520 THIRD MESSENGER Such proclamation hath been made, my liege. <2Enter another Messenger>2 FOURTH MESSENGER Sir Thomas Lovel and Lord Marquess Dorset, 'Tis said, my liege, in Yorkshire are in arms. Yet this good comfort bring I to your grace, The Breton navy is dispersed by tempest: 525 Richmond, in Dorsetshire, sent out a boat Unto the shore, to ask those on the banks If they were his assistants, yea or no; Who answered him, they came from Buckingham Upon his party: he, mistrusting them, 530 Hoised sail and made away for Brittany. KING RICHARD March on, march on, since we are up in arms; If not to fight with foreign enemies, Yet to beat down these rebels here at home. <2Enter Catesby>2 CATESBY My liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken; 535 222 That is the best news: that the Earl of Richmond Is with a mighty power landed at Milford, Is colder tidings, yet they must be told. KING RICHARD A way towards Salisbury! while we reason here, A royal battle might be won and lost: 540 Some one take order Buckingham be brought To Salisbury; the rest march on with me. <2Flourish. Exeunt>2 <1Scene 5>1 <2Enter [Stanley, Earl of] Derby and Sir>2 <2Christopher [Urswick, a priest]>2 STANLEY Sir Christopher, tell Richmond this from me: That in the sty of this most bloody boar My son George Stanley is franked up in hold:* If I revolt, off goes young George's head; The fear of that withholds my present aid. 5 So get thee gone: commend me to thy lord. Withal say that the queen hath heartily consented He should espouse Elizabeth her daughter. But tell me, where is princely Richmond now? CHRISTOPHER At Pembroke, or at Ha'rford-west, in Wales. 10 STANLEY What men of name resort to him? CHRISTOPHER Sir Walter Herbert, a renowne/d soldier; Sir Gilbert Talbot, Sir William Stanley; Oxford, redoubteds Pembroke, Sir James Blunt, And Rice ap Thomas, with a valiant crew, I5 And many moe of noble fame and worth: And towards London they do bend their course, If by the way they be not fought withal. STANLEY Well, hie thee to my lord. I kiss his hand. My letter will resolve him of my mind. 20 Farewell. <2Exeunt>2 <1ACT V>1 <1Scene 1>1 <2Enter Bucki-ngham, with Halberds [and Sheriff],>2 <2led to execution>2 BUCKINGHAM Will not King Richard let me speak with him? SHERIFF No, my good lord; therefore be patient. BUCKINGHAM Hastings, and Edward's children, Rivers, Grey, Holy King Henry, and thy fair son Edward, Vaughan, and all that have miscarried 5 By underhand corrupted foul injustice, If that your moodys discontented souls Do through the clouds behold this present our, Even for revenge mock my destruction! This is All-Souls' day, fellow, is it not? 10 SHERIFF It is, my lord. BUCKINGHAM Why, then All-Soul's day is my body's doomsday. This is the day that, in King Edward's time, I wished might fall on me when I was found False to his children or his wife's allies; 15 This is the day wherein I wished to fall By the false faith of him I trusted most; This, this All-Souls' day to my fearful soul Is the determined respite of my wrongs:* That high All-seer that I dallied with 20 Hath turned my feigne/d prayer on my head, And given in earnest what I begged in jest. Thus doth he force the swords of wicked men To turn their own points on their masters' bosoms: 225 Now Margaret's curse is fallen upon my head; 25 "When he,' quoth she, "shall split thy heart with sorrow, Remember Margaret was prophetess.' Come, sirs, convey me to the block of shame; Wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame. <2Exeunt Buckingham [and Sheriff] with officers>2 <1Scene 2>1 <2Enter Richmond, Oxford, Blunt, Herbert, and others>2 <2with drum and colours>2 RICHMOND Fellows in arms, and my most loving friends, Bruised underneath the yoke of tyranny, Thus far into the bowels of the land Have we marched on without impediment; And here receive we from our father Stanley 5 Lines of fair comfort and encouragement. The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar, That spoiled your summer fields and fruitful vines, Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough 226 In your embowelleds bosoms, this foul swine 10 Lies now even in the centre of this isle, Near to the town of Leicester, as we learn: From Tamworth thither is but one day's march. In God's name, cheerly on, courageous friends, To reap the harvest of perpetual peace 15 By this one bloody trial of sharp war. OXFORD Every man's conscience is a thousand swords, To fight against that bloody homicide. HERBERT I doubt not but his friends will fly to us. BLUNT He hath no friends but who are friends for fear, 20 Which in his greatest need will shrink from him. RICHMOND All for our vantage. Then, in God's name, march: True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings. <2Exeunt omnes>2 <1Scene 3>1 <2Enter King Richard in arms with Norfolk, Ratcliffe>2 <2and the Earl of Surrey, [and others]>2 227 KING RICHARD Here pitch our tents, even here in Bosworth field. My Lord of Surrey, why look you so sad? SURREY My heart is ten times lighter than my looks. KING RICHARD My Lord of Norfolk, -- NORFOLK Here, most gracious liege. KING RICHARD Norfolk, we must have knocks; ha! must we not? 5 NORFOLK We must both give and take, my gracious lord. KING RICHARD Up with my tent there! here will I lie tonight: <2[Soldiers begin to set up the King's tent]>2 But where tomorrow? Well, all's one for that. Who hath descried the number of the traitors? NORFOLK Six or seven thousand is their utmost power. 10 KING RICHARD Why, our battalion trebles that account: Besides, the king's name is a tower of strength, Which they upon the adverse faction want. 228 Up with my tent there! Valiant gentlemen, Let us survey the vantage of the field; 15 Call for some men of sound direction:s Let's want no discipline, make no delay; For Lords, tomorrow is a busy day. <2Exeunt>2 <2Enter Richmond, Sir William Brandon, Oxford, and>2 <2Dorset, [Blunt, Herbert, and others. Some of the>2 <2Soldiers pitch Richmond's tent]>2 RICHMOND The weary sun hath made a golden set, And by the bright track of his fiery car 20 Gives signal of a goodly day tomorrow. Sir William Brandon, you shall bear my standard. Give me some ink and paper in my tent: I'll draw the form and model of our battle, Limits each leader to his several charge,s 25 And part in just proportion our small strength. My Lord of Oxford, you, Sir William Brandon, And you, Sir Walter Herbert, stay with me. The Earl of Pembroke keeps his regiment: Good Captain Blunt, bear my good-night to him, 30 And by the second hour in the morning Desire the earl to see me in my tent: Yet one thing more, good Blunt, before thou go'st, Where is Lord Stanley quartered, dost thou know? BLUNT Unless I have mista'en his colours much, 35 Which well I am assured I have not done, His regiment lies half a mile at least South from the mighty power of the king. RICHMOND If without peril it be possible, 229 Sweet Blunt, make some good means to speak with him, 40 And give him from me this most needful scroll. BLUNT Upon my life, my lord, I'll undertake it; And so, God give you quiet rest tonight! RICHMOND Good night, good Captain Blunt. <2Exit Blunt>2 Come gentlemen, Let us consult upon tomorrow's business: 45 In to our tent! the air is raw and cold. <2They withdraw into the tent>2 <2Enter [to his tent King] Richard, Ratcliffe,>2 <2Norfolk, and Catesby>2 KING RICHARD What is't o'clock? CATESBY It's supper-time, my lord; It's nine o'clock. KING RICHARD I will not sup tonight. Give me some ink and paper. What, is my beavers easier than it was! 50 And all my armour laid into my tent? CATESBY It is, my liege; and all things are in readiness. KING RICHARD Good Norfolk, hie thee to thy charge; Use careful watch, choose trusty sentinels. 230 NORFOLK I go, my lord. 55 KING RICHARD Stir with the lark tomorrow, gentle Norfolk. NORFOLK I warrant you, my lord. <2exit>2 KING RICHARD Catesby! CATESBY My lord? KING RICHARD Send out a pursuivant at arms To Stanley's regiment; bid him bring his power 60 Before sunrising, lest his son George fall Into the blind cave of eternal night. <2[Exit Catesby]>2 Fill me a bowl of wine. Give me a watch.s Saddle white Surrey for the field tomorrow. Look that my stavess be sound, and not too heavy. 65 Ratcliffe! RATCLIFFE My lord? KING RICHARD Saw'st thou the melancholy Lord Northumberland? RATCLIFFE Thomas the Earl of Surrey, and himself, Much about cock-shuts time, from troop to troop 70 Went through the army, cheering up the soldiers. KING RICHARD So, I am satisfied. Give me a bowl of wine: I have not that alacrity of spirit, Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have. 231 <2[A bowl of wine is brought]>2 Set it down. Is ink and paper ready? RATCLIFFE It is, my lord. 75 KING RICHARD Bid my guard watch. Leave me. Ratcliffe, about the mid of night come to my tent, And help to arm me. Leave me, I say. <2Exit Ratcliffe>2 <2[Richard sleeps]>2 232 <2Enter[Stanley, Earl of] Derby to Richmond in his tent>2 <2[Lords and others attending]>2 STANLEY Fortune and victory sit on thy helm! RICHMOND All comfort that the dark night can afford 80 Be to thy person, noble father-in-law! Tell me, how fares our loving mother? STANLEY I, by attorney,s bless thee from thy mother, Who prays continually for Richmond's good: So much for that. The silent hours steal on, 85 And flakys darkness breaks within the east. In brief, for so the season bids us be, Prepare thy battle early in the morning, And put thy fortune to the arbitrement Of bloody strokes and mortal-starings war. 90 I, as I may -- that which I would I cannot, -- With best advantage will deceive the time, And aid thee in this doubtful shock of arms: But on thy side I may not be too forward, Lest, being seen, thy brother, tender George, 95 Be executed in his father's sight. Farewell: the leisure and the fearful time Cuts off the ceremonious vows of love, And ample interchange of sweet discourse, Which so long sundered friends should dwell upon: 100 God give us leisure for these rites of love! Once more, adieu: be valiant, and speed well! RICHMOND Good lords, conduct him to his regiment: 233 I'll strive, with troubled thoughts, to take a nap, Lest leaden slumber peises me down tomorrow, 105 When I should mount with wings of victory: Once more, good night, kind lords and gentlemen. <2Exeunt. Manet Richmond>2 <2O>2 Thou, whose captain I account myself, Look on my forces with a gracious eye; Put in their hands thy bruising irons of wratg, 110 That they may crush down with a heavy fall The usurping helmets of our adversaries! Make us thy ministers of chastisement, That we may praise thee in the victory! To thee I do commend my watchful soul, 115 Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes: Sleeping and waking, O, defend me still! <2Sleeps>2 <2Enter the Ghost of young Prince Edward, son [to]>2 <2Henry the Sixth, to Richard>2 234 GHOST <2[To Ri-chard]>2 Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow! Think how thou stabb'st me in my prime of youth At Tewksbury: despair, therefore, and die! 120 <2[ To Richmond]>2 Be cheerful, Richmond; for the wronge/d souls Of butchered princes fight in thy behalf: King Henry's issue, Richmond, comforts thee. <2Enter the Ghost of Henry the Sixth>2 GHOST <2[To Richard]>2 When I was mortal, my anointed body By thee was punche/d full of deadly holes: 125 Think on the Tower and me: despair, and die! 235 Harry the Sixth bids thee despair and die! <2[ To Richmond]>2 Virtuous and holy, be thou conquerer! Harry, that prophesied thou should'st be king, Doth comfort thee in thy sleep: live, and flourish! 130 <2Enter the Ghost of Clarence>2 GHOST <2[To Richard]>2 Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow! I, that was washed to death with fulsome* wine, Poor Clarence, by thy guile betrayed to death. Tomorrow in the battle think on me, And fall thy edgeless sword: despair, and die! 135 <2[ To Richmond]>2 Thou offspring of the house of Lancaster, The wronge/d heirs of York do pray for thee: Good angels guard thy battle! live, and flourish! <2Enter the Ghosts of Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan>2 GHOST OF RIVERS <2[To Richard]>2 Let me sit heavy on thy soul tomorrow, Rivers, that died at Pomfret! despair, and die! 140 GHOST OF GREY <2[To Richard]>2 Think upon Grey, and let thy soul despair! GHOST OF VAUGHAN <2[To Richard]>2 Think upon Vaughan, and, with guilty fear, Let fall thy lance: despair, and die! ALL <2[To Richmond]>2 Awake, and think our wrongs in Richard's bosom Will conquer him! awake, and win the day! 145 <2Enter the Ghost of Hastings>2 GHOST <2[To Richard]>2 Bloody and guilty, guiltily awake, 236 And in a bloody battle end thy days! Think on Lord Hastings: despair, and die! <2[To Richmond]>2 Quiet untroubled soul, awake, awake! Arm, fight, and conquer, for fair England's sake! 150 <2Enter the Ghosts of the two young Princes>2 GHOSTS <2[To Richard]>2 Dream on thy cousins smothered in the Tower: Let us be lead within thy bosom, Richard, And weigh thee down to ruin, shame, and death! Thy nephews' souls bid thee despair, and die! <2[ To Richmond]>2 Sleep, Richmond, sleep in peace, and wake in joy; 155 Good angels guard thee from the boar's annoy! Live, and beget a happy race of kings! Edward's unhappy sons do bid thee flourish. <2Enter the Ghost of Lady Anne his wife>2 GHOST <2[To Richard]>2 Richard, thy wife, that wretched Anne thy wife, That never slept a quiet hour with thee, 160 Now fills thy sleep with perturbations: Tomorrow in the battle think on me, And fall thy edgeless sword: despair, and die! <2[To Richmond]>2 Thou quiet soul, sleep thou a quiet sleep: Dream of success and happy victory! 165 Thy adversary's wife doth pray for thee. <2Enter the Ghost of Buckingham>2 GHOST <2[To Richard]>2 The first was I that helped thee to the crown; The last was I that felt thy tyranny: O, in the battle think on Buckingham, And die in terror of thy guiltiness! 170 Dream on, dream on, of bloody deeds and death: 237 Fainting, despair; despairing, yield thy breath! <2[To Richmond]>2 I died for hope ere I could lend thee aid: But cheer thy heart, and be thou not dismayed: God and good angels fight on Richmond's side; 175 And Richard falls in height of all his pride. <2[The Ghosts vanish]>2 <2Richard starts out of his dream>2 KING RICHARD Give me another horse: bind up my wounds. 238 Have mercy, Jesu! -- Soft! I did but dream. O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me! The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight. 180 Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. What do I fear? myself? there's none else by: Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I. Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am: Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why: 185 Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? for any good That I myself have done unto myself? O no! alas, I rather hate myself For hateful deeds committed by myself! 190 I am a villain: yet I lie, I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter. My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain. 195 Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree; Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree; All several sins, all useds in each degree, Throng to the bar, crying all "Guilty! guilty!' I shall despair. There is no creature loves me; 200 And if I die, no soul will pity me: 239 Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity to myself? Methought the souls of all that I had murdered Came to my tent, and every one did threat 205 Tomorrow's vengeance on the head of Richard. <2Enter Ratcliffe>2 RATCLIFFE My lord! KING RICHARD 'Zounds! who is there? RATCLIFFE Ratcliffe, my lord; 'tis I. The early village-cock Hath twice done salutation to the morn; 210 Your friends are up, and buckle on their armour. KING RICHARD O Ratcliffe, I have dreamed a fearful dream! What thinkest thou, will our friends prove all true? RATCLIFFE No doubt, my lord. KING RICHARD O Ratcliffe, I fear, I fear, -- RATCLIFFE Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of shadows. 215 KING RICHARD By the apostle Paul, shadows tonight Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard, 240 Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers Armed in proof,s and led by shallow Richmond. It is not yet near day. Come, go with me; 220 Under our tents I'll play the eaves-dropper, To see if any mean to shrink from me. <2Exeunt>2 <2Enter the Lords to Ri-chmond[sitting in his tent]>2 LORDS Good morrow, Richmond! RICHMOND Cry mercy, lords and watchful gentlemen, That you have ta'en a tardy sluggard here. 225 LORDS How have you slept, my lord? RICHMOND The sweetest sleep, and fairest-boding dreams That ever entered in a drowsy head, Have I since your departure had, my lords. Methought their souls, whose bodies Richard murdered, 230 Came to my tent, and cried ons victory: I promise you, my soul is very jocund In the remembrance of so fair a dream. How far into the morning is it, lords? LORDS Upon the stroke of four. RICHMOND Why, then 'tis time to arm and give direction. <2His oration to his soldiers>2 More than I have said, loving countrymen, 241 The leisure and enforcement of the time Forbids to dwell upon: yet remember this, God and our good cause fight upon our side; 240 The prayers of holy saints and wronge/d souls, Like high-reared bulwarks, stand before our faces. Richard except,s those whom we fight against Had rather have us win than him they follow: For what is he they follow? truly, gentlemen, 245 A bloody tyrant and a homicide; One raised in blood, and one in blood established; One that made means to come by what he hath, And slaughtered those that were the means to help him; A base foul stone, made precious by the foils 250 Of England's chair, where he is falsely set; One that hath ever been God's enemy: Then, ifyou fight against God's enemy, God will in justice wards you as his soldiers; If you do swear to put a tyrant down, 255 You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain; If you do fight against your country's foes, Your country's fat shall pay your pains the hire; If you do fight in safeguard of your wives, Your wives shall welcome home the conquerors; 260 If you do free your children from the sword, Your children's children quitss it in your age. Then, in the name of God and all these rights, Advance your standards, draw your willing swords. For me, the ransom of my bold attempt 265 Shall be this cold corpse on the earth's cold face; But if I thrive, the gain of my attempt The least of you shall share his part thereof. Sound drums and trumpets boldly and cheerfully; God and Saint George! Richmond and victory! 270 <2[Exeunt]>2 242 <2Enter King Richard, Ratcliffe, [Attendants and Forces]>2 KING RICHARD What said Northumberland as touching Richmond? RATCLIFFE That he was never traine/d up in arms. KING RICHARD He said the truth: and what said Surrey, then? RATCLIFFE He smiled and said "The better for our purpose.' KING RICHARD He was in the right; and so indeed it is. 275 <2The clock striketh>2 Tells the clock there. Give me a calendar. Who saw the sun today? RATCLIFFE Not I, my lord. KING RICHARD Then he disdains to shine; for by the book He should have braved the east an hour ago: A black day will it be to somebody. 280 Ratcliff! RATCLIFFE My lord? KING RICHARD The sun will not be seen today; The sky doth frown and lour upon our army. I would these dewy tears were from the ground. Not shine today! Why, what is that to me 285 243 More than to Richmond? for the selfsame heaven That frowns on me looks sadly upon him. <2Enter Norfolk>2 NORFOLK Arm, arm, my lord; the foe vaunts in the field. KING RICHARD Come, bustle, bustle. Caparisons my horse. Call up Lord Stanley, bid him bring his power: 290 I will lead forth my soldiers to the plain, And thus my battle shall be ordered: My forewards shall be drawn out all in length, Consisting equally of horse and foot; Our archers shall be place/d in the midst: 295 John Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Earl of Surrey, Shall have the leading of this foot and horse. They thus directed, we will follow In the main battle, whose puissances on either side Shall be well winge/ds with our chiefest horse. 300 This, and Saint George to boot! What think'st thou, Norfolk? NORFOLK A good direction, warlike sovereign. This found I on my tent this morning. <2He sheweth him a paper>2 KING RICHARD <2[Reads]>2 "Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold, For Dickon thy master is bought and sold.' 305 A thing devise/d by the enemy. Go, gentlemen, every man unto his charge: Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls: 244 Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devised at first to keep the strong in awe: 310 Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. March on, join bravely, let us to 't pell-mell; If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell. <2His oration to his Army>2 What shall I say more than I have inferred? Remember whom you are to cope withal; 315 A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, A scum of Bretons, and base lackey peasants, Whom their o'er-cloyed country vomits forth To desperate adventures and assured destruction. You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest; 320 You having lands and blest with beauteous wives, They would restrains the one, distains the other. And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow, Long kept in Bretagne at our mother's cost? A milk-sop, one that never in his life 325 Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow? Let's whip these stragglers o'er the seas again, Lash hence these overweening rags of France, These famished beggars, weary of their lives, Who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit, 330 For want of means, poor rats, had hanged themselves: If we be conquered, let men conquer us, And not these bastard Bretons, whom our fathers Have in their own land beaten, bobbed, and thumped, And in record left them the heirs of shame. 335 Shall these enjoy our lands? lie with our wives? Ravish our daughters? <2(Drum afar off)>2 Hark! I hear their drum. Fight, gentlemen of England! fight, bold yeomen! Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head! Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood; 340 Amaze the welkins with your broken staves! <2Enter a Messenger>2 What says Lord Stanley? will he bring his power? MESSENGER My lord, he doth deny to come. KING RICHARD Off with his son George's head! 245 NORFOLK My lord, the enemy is past the marsh: 345 After the battle let George Stanley die. KING RICHARD A thousand hearts are great within my bosom: Advance our standards, set upon our foes; Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George, Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons! 350 Upon them! Victory sits on our helms. <2Exeunt>2 <1Scene 4>1 <2Alarum: excursions. Enter [Norfolk and forces>2 <2fighting; to him] Catesby>2 CATESBY Rescue, my Lord of Norfolk, rescue, rescue! The king enacts more wonders than a man, Daring ans opposite to every danger: His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights, Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death. 5 Rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost! 246 <2Alarums. Enter [King] Ri-chard>2 KING RICHARD A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! CATESBY Withdraw, my lord; I'll help you to a horse. KING RICHARD Slave, I have set my life upon a cast,s And I will stand the hazard* of the die.s 10 I think there be six Richmonds in the field; Five have I slain today instead of him. A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! <2[Exeunt]>2 247 <1Scene 5>1 <2Alarum. Enter [King] Richard and Richmond; they>2 <2fight. Richard is slain. Then retreat being>2 <2sounded[and flourish] enter Ri-chmond[Stanley,>2 <2Earl of] Derby bearing the crown, with other Lords>2 249 RICHMOND God and your arms be praised, victorious friends! The day is ours; the bloody dog is dead. STANLEY Courageous Richmond, well hast thou acquit thee. Lo, here, this long usurped royaltys From the dead temples of this bloody wretch 5 Have I plucked off to grace thy brows withal: Wear it, enjoy it, and make much of it. RICHMOND Great God of heaven, say amen to all! But, tell me, is young George Stanley living? STANLEY He is, my lord, and safe in Leicester town; 10 Whither, if it please you, we may now withdraw us. RICHMOND What men of name are slain on either side? STANLEY John Duke of Norfolk, Walter Lord Ferrers, Sir Robert Brakenbury, and Sir William Brandon. RICHMOND Inter their bodies as becomes their births: 15 Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled, That in submission will return to us: And then, as we have ta'en the sacrament, 250 We will unite the white rose and the red. Smile heaven upon this fair conjunction, 20 That long have frowned upon their enmity! What traitor hears me, and says not amen? England hath long been mad, and scarred herself; The brother blindly shed the brother's blood, The father rashly slaughtered his own son, 25 The son, compelled, been butcher to the sire: All this divided York and Lancaster, Divided in their dire division, O, now let Richmond and Elizabeth, The true succeeders of each royal house, 30 By God's fair ordinance conjoin together! And let their heirs, God, if thy will be so, Enrich the time to come with smooth-faced peace, With smiling plenty and fair prosperous days! Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord, 35 That would reduces these bloody days again, And make poor England weep in streams of blood! Let them not live to taste this land's increase, That would with treason wound this fair land's peace! Now civil wounds are stopped, peace lives again: 40 That she may long live here, God say amen! <2Exeunt>2 Appendix 251 <1APPENDIX>1 <1Richard's Seven New Soliloquies in Cibber's Versions>1 (a) But see, my Love appears: Look where she shines, Darting pale Lustre' like the Silver Moon Through her dark Veil of Rainy sorrow: So mourn'd the Dame of Ephesus her Love, And thus the Soldier arm'd with Resolution Told his soft tale, and was a thriving Woer. 'Tis true, my Form perhaps, will little move her, But I've a Tongue shall wheadle with the Devil. Yet hold; She mourns the Man whom I have kill'd: First, let her sorrows take some vent -- Stand here; I'll take her passion in its wain, and turn This storm of grief to gentle drops of pity For his Repentant Murderer. ---- II.1.54-66 (b) Thus far we run before the wind; My Fortune smiles, and gives me all that I dare ask. The conquer'd Lady Ann is bound in vows, Fast as the priest can make us, we are one. The King my Brother, sleeps without his Pillow, And I am left the Guardian of his Infant Heir. Let me see ---- The Prince will soon be here -- let him -- the Crown! O yes! he shall have twenty, Globes, and Scepters too, New ones made to play withall -- But no Coronation! No! nor no Court flies about him, no Kinsmen -- -- Hold ye! -- Where shall he keep his Court! -- Ay! -- the Tower. II.2.128-40 252 Appendix (c) Mean while my private orders shall be given To lock out all admittance to the Princes. Now, by St. Paul, the work goes bravely on -- How many frightful stops wou'd Conscience make In some soft heads to undertake like me: -- Come; this Conscience is a convenient Scarecrow, It Guards the fruit which Priests and Wisemen tast, Who never set it up to fright themselves: They know 'tis rags, and gather in the face on't, While half-starv'd shallow Daws thro Fear are honest. Why were Laws made, but that we're Rogues by Nature? Conscience! 'tis our Coin, we live by parting with it, And he thrives best that has the most to spare: The protesting Lover buys hope with it, And the deluded Virgin short liv'd pleasure. Old gray beards cram their Avarice with it, Your Lank-jaw'd hungry Judge will dine upon't, And hang the Guiltless rather than eat his Mutton cold. The Crown'd Head quits it for Despotick sway, The stubborn People for unaw'd Rebellion: There's not a Slave but has his share of Villain; Why then shall after Ages think my deeds Inhumane? Since my worst are but Ambition: Ev'n all Mankind to some lov'd Ills incline, Great Men chuse Greater Sins -- Ambition's mine. III.1.154-78 (d) Ha! still in tears; let 'em flow on; they're signs Of a substantial grief -- Why don't she die? She must: My Interest will not let her live. The fair Elizabeth hath caught my Eye, My Heart's vacant; and she shall fill her place -- <2Aside>2 They say that Women have but tender hearts. 'Tis a mistake, I doubt; I've found 'em tough: They'll bend, indeed: But he must strain that cracks 'em. All I can hope's to throw her into sickness: Then I may send her a Physicians help. III.2.24-33 (e)Why now my golden dream is out -- Ambition like an early Friend throws back 253 My Curtains with an eager Hand, o'rejoy'd To tell me what I dreamt is true -- A Crown! Thou bright reward of ever daring minds, O! How thy awful Glory fills my Soul! Nor can the means that got thee dim thy lustre; For, not mens Love, Fear pays thee Adoration: And Fame not more survives from Good than Evil deeds. Th' aspiring youth that fir'd th' Ephesian Dome Out-lives in Fame the pious Fool that rais'd it: Conscience, lie still -- More lives must yet be drain'd, Crowns got with Blood must be with Blood maintain'd. III.2.270-82 (f) Wou'd it were done: There is a busie something here, That foolish Custom has made terrible, To the intent of evil Deeds; And Nature too, As if she knew me Womanish, and Weak, Tugs at my Heart-Strings with complaining Cries, To talk me from my Purpose -- and then the thought of what Mens Tongues will say, Of what their Hearts must think; To have no Creature Love me Living, nor my Memory when Dead. Shall future Ages, when these Childrens Tale Is told, drop Tears in pity of their hapless Fate, And read with Detestation the Misdeeds of <2Richard,>2 The crook-back Tyrant, Cruel, Barbarous, And Bloody -- will they not say too, That to possess the Crown, nor Laws Divine Nor Human stopt my way -- Why let 'em say it; They can't but say I had the Crown; I was not Fool as well as Villain. Hark! the Murder's doing; Princes farewel, To me there's Musick in your Passing-Bell. IV.3.19-38 (g) 'Tis now the dead of Night, and half the World Is with a lonely solemn darkness hung; Yet I(so coy a dame is sleepto me) With all the weary Courtship of My Care-tir'd thoughts can't win her to my Bed; Tho' ev'n the Stars do wink as 'twere, with over watching -- I'll forth, and walk a while -- The Air's refreshing, 254 And the ripe Harvest ofthe new-mown Hay Gives it a sweet and wholesome Odour: "How awful is this gloom -- and hark from Camp to Camp "The humm of either Army stilly sounds: <2That the fixt Centinels almost receive>2 <2The secret whispers of each other's watch.>2 "Steed threatens Steed in high and boastful neighings, "Piercing the nights dull Ear. Hark from the Tents, <2The A rmourers accomplishing the Knights,>2 "With clink of hammers closing rivets up <2Give Dreadful note of Preparation; while some>2 "Like sacrifices by their fires of watch, "With patience sit, and inly ruminate "The mornings danger. By yon Heav'n my stern "Impatience chides this tardy-gated night, "Who, like a foul and ugly Witch, does limp So tediously away: I'll to my Couch, And once more try to sleep her into morning. <2Lies down; a groan is heard>2 Ha! What means that dismal voice? Sure 'tis The Eccho of some yawning Grave, That teems with an untimely Ghost. -- 'Tis gone! 'Twas but my Fancy, or perhaps the Wind Forcing his entrance thro' some hollow Cavern; No matter what -- I feel my eyes grow heavy. V.5.1-30 <1GLOSSARY>1 <1I.1>1 2 <2son>2 a pun: the newly crowned King Edward was the son of Richard of York, and the Yorkist badge was a sun. 6 <2bruise/d arms>2 dented armour <2for monuments>2 as memorials 7 <2alarums>2 calls to arms 8 <2measures>2 dances . 10 <2barbe/d>2 a "barb' was a covering for the breast and flanks of the horse, sometimes metal plated, sometimes of leather with metal spikes. 16 <2rudely>2 roughly 23 <2halt>2 limp 27 <2descant>2 comment, discourse 32 <2inductions>2 preparations 38 <2mewed>2 caged (like a hawk) 44 <2tendering>2 concerned for 55 <2cross-row>2 Christ- (or criss-) cross-row i.e. alphabet; a cross was prefixed to the alphabet in primers. 60 <2toys>2 trifles 64 Queen Elizabeth's first husband was Sir John Grey. 65 <2tempers>2 moulds 72 <2night-walking heralds>2 secret messengers 76 <2her deity>2 i.e., Jane Shore 77 <2lord chamberlain>2 i.e., Hastings 80 <2men>2 servants 81 <2jealous, o'erworn>2 suspicious, faded (the worse for wear) <2 widow>2 i.e., Queen Elizabeth, widow of Sir John Grey 83 <2gossips>2 cronies 85 <2straitly>2 strictly 87 <2degree>2 rank 88 <2an>2 if 97 <2nought>2 nothing 98 <2naught>2 naughtiness, wickedness 106 <2abjects>2 abject subjects 115 <2lie for>2 (a) go to prison for (b) tell lies about 256 125 <2brooked>2 endured 137 <2fear him>2 fear for him 139 <2diet>2 way of life 146 <2with post-horse>2 as quickly as possible 153 <2Warwick 's youngest daughter>2 Lady Anne 160 <2I run before my horse to market>2 i.e., I'm counting my chickens before they're hatched. <1I.2>1 SD <2Halberds>2 halbediers, guards carrying halberds 3 <2obsequiously>2 as a dutiful mourner 4 <2Lancaster>2 i.e., Henry VI, of the House of Lancaster 12 <2windows>2 wounds. The idea comes from the custom of opening the windows to allow the soul of the dead person to pass through. 13 <2helpless>2 useless 17 <2More direful hap betide>2 may more evil fortune happen to 21 <2abortive>2 unformed 22 <2Prodigious>2 monstrous 28 i.e., by the deaths of Prince Edward and Henry VI 31 <2still, as>2 whenever 42 <2spurn upon>2 trample 46 <2Avaunt>2 be gone 49 <2curst>2 shrewish, spiteful 54 <2pattern>2 example 58 <2exhales>2 draws out 65 <2quick>2 alive 77 <2by circumstance>2 by explaining the circumstances 78 <2defused>2 diffused, disorderly, misshapen 84 <2current>2 genuine, as of a coin 94 <2falchion>2 curved sword 107 <2holp>2 helped 117 <2timeless>2 untimely 141 i.e., There is a man that loves thee better than Prince Edward could. 150 <2basilisks>2 fabulous serpents, whose glance or breath was said to kill 154 <2aspect>2 appearance 165 <2exhale>2 draw out 169 <2fee>2 reward 212 <2presently>2 immediately 216 <2expedient>2 expeditious, speedy 249 <2Edward's moiety>2 half of Edward 257 251 <2denier>2 small coin, the twelfth of a sou 254 <2proper>2 handsome 256 <2entertain>2 employ <1I.3>1 3 <2brook it>2 illtake it badly 6 <2betide of>2 happen to 14 <2concluded>2 fixed 20 <2Countess Ri-chmond>2 mother of Richmond, who became Henry VII 36 <2atonement>2 reconciliation 39 <2warn>2 summon 48 <2cog>2 use fraud 53 <2Jacks>2 fellows. Jack was the nick-name for anyone of common origin. 60 <2breathing-whi-le>2 the length of a breath 61 <2lewd>2 base 82 <2noble>2 gold coin 83 <2careful>2 full of worry 89 <2suspects>2 suspicions 98 <2marry>2 indeed 102 <2I wis>2 certainly 109 <2baited>2 harassed 112 <2state>2 rank 116 <2adventure>2 risk 122 <2pack-horse>2 drudge 135-6 Clarence had married Isabella, daughter to the Earl of Warwick, and he fought on the Lancastrian side, until he forswore himself by returning to the Yorkists. See <2Henry VI Part>2 3, V. 1 .81- 106. 139 <2meed>2 reward 144 <2cacodemon>2 evil spirit 159 <2pilled>2 pillaged 161-2 i.e., Even if you do not bow before me as subjects because I am queen, at least you quake like rebels because you have deposed me. 165 <2But>2 only 174-80 See <2Henry VI Part>2 3, I.4. 177 <2clout>2 rag 194 <2answer for>2 equal 197 <2surfeit>2 excess, dissipation 206 <2stalled>2 installed 219 <2them>2 i.e., heaven 228 <2elvish-marked>2 marked by malign fairies 258 229 <2sealed>2 stamped, confirmed 238 <2period>2 conclusion 241 <2pai-nted>2 counterfeit <2vain flourish>2 empty ornament 242 <2bottled>2 big-bellied, swollen 255 <2malapert>2 impertinent 256 <2stamp>2 design, as on a coin which is stamped while it is hot. <2current>2 current as coin 264 <2aery>2 eagle's brood 277 i.e., The only charity shown to me is outrage, and my very life is made my shame. 305 <2muse>2 wonder 314 <2franked up>2 shut up (like a pig) 317 <2scathe>2 harm 325 <2set abroach>2 set flowing (as of a broached or pierced cask) 328 <2gulls>2 dupes <1I.4>1 1 <2heavily>2 sorrowfully 13 <2hatches>2 movable planks forming a deck 20 <2main>2 sea 27 <2unvalued>2 invaluable 37 <2envious>2 malicious 45 <2melancholy flood>2 i.e., the river Styx 46 <2grim ferryman>2 i.e., Charon 53 <2shadow>2 i.e., Prince Edward 80 <2unfelt imagination>2 i.e., something imagined but not experienced 129 <2entertain>2 receive, take 145 <2insinuate>2 ingratiate himself 149 tallbrave 150 <2gear>2 business 151 <2costard>2 a large apple, i.e., head 152 <2chop>2 thrust, "pop' <2malmsey-butt>2 wine cask 154 <2sop>2 cake dipped in wine 180 <2quest>2 inquest, jury 206 <2dear>2 grievous 218 <2gallant-springing>2 i.e., gallant and aspiring 256 <2pent>2 shut up 259 <1II.1>1 8 <2dissemble>2 disguise 12 <2dally>2 trifle 33 <2but>2 the sense of this apparently corrupted passage requires <2nor>2 51 <2swelling>2 inflated with anger 53 <2heap>2 company 67 <2without desert>2 without my deserving it 74 <2compounded>2 settled 90 <2lag>2 late 92 <2blood>2 kinship 94 <2go current>2 are taken at face value 99 i.e., my servant's forfeited life 133 <2closet>2 private apartment <1II.2>1 8 <2cousins>2 kinsmen 18 <2Incapable>2 unable to understand 28 <2visor>2 mask 38 <2rude>2 violent 48 <2title>2 legal right 50-1 <2images>2. . . <2mirrors>2 i.e., children 60 <2moiety>2 half 81 <2parcelled>2 assigned to each separately 94 <2opposite with>2 antagonistic to 118 <2splintered>2 bound up in splints 120 <2little train>2 small entourage 127 <2green>2 new, unestablished 128 <2bears>2 controls 144 <2censures>2 opinions 148 <2sort>2 contrive 149 <2index>2 introduction 151 <2consistory>2 council chamber <1II.3>1 13-15 i.e., during his nonage (minority) the council under him shall govern well, and then he himself when he is older shall also govern well. 20 <2politic>2 wise 260 28 <2haught>2 haughty 30 <2solace>2 be happy 36 <2sort>2 dispose <1II.4>1 24 <2flout>2 gibe 35 <2parlous>2 dangerous (perilous) 51 <2jet>2 encroach 60 <2seated>2 i.e., on the throne 63 <2preposterous>2 inverting the natural order of things 64 <2spleen>2 malignancy <1III.1>1 1 <2chamber>2 London was known as the King's "chamber'. 4 <2crosses>2 untoward events (i.e. the arrests) 11 <2jumpeth>2 accords 22 <2slug>2 sluggard 31 <2peevish>2 perverse 45 <2ceremonious>2 formal 71 <2re-edified>2 built again 81 <2without characters>2 without written records 82 <2the formal Vice>2 the typical or stock Vice of the Morality plays 83 i.e., I interpret the moral or the hidden meaning of a phrase. 85 <2with what>2 with that with which 103 <2idle>2 useless 114 toy trifle 126 <2cross>2 perverse 130-1 alluding to Richard's hump-back which resembled the back of an ape-bearer (at fairs and carnivals) 132 <2sharp-provided>2 ready 152 <2incensed>2 incited 173 <2sit about>2 discuss 179 <2divided>2 separate 192 <2complots>2 conspiracies 195 <2moveables>2 personal property 261 <1III.2>1 11 <2boar>2 Richard's badge was a boar <2razed his helm>2 torn off his helmet 25 <2instance>2 cause 26 <2fond>2 foolish 43 <2crown>2 i.e., head 72 The heads of traitors were displayed on London Bridge. 77 <2rood>2 cross 96SD <2Pursuivant>2 junior officer, attendant on a herald 112 <2exercise>2 sermon 116 <2shriving work>2 confession and absolution <1III.3>1 24 <2expiate>2 fully come <1III.4>1 5 <2nomination>2 appointing 25 <2neglect>2 cause neglect of 47 <2prolonged>2 postponed 50 <2conceit>2 fancy 56 <2livelihood>2 liveliness 85 <2foot-cloth>2 wearing ornamented covering 99 <2in air>2. . . <2looks>2 on the airy foundation of men's seeming friendliness 103 <2bootless>2 useless <1III.5>1 8 <2Intending>2 pretending 17 <2o'erlook>2 inspect 31 <2conversation>2 intercourse (a quibble) 32 <2from.>2 . . <2suspects>2 free from all taint of suspicion 54 <2prevented>2 anticipated 62 asasif 73 <2meet'st.>2 . . <2time>2 the most advantageous opportunity 74 <2infer>2 allege 75-8 The <2crown>2 was the sign over this unfortunate citizen's shop. 262 79 <2luxury>2 sensuality 80 <2change of lust>2 promiscuity 95 <2golden fee>2 i.e., the crown <1III.6>1 2 <2set>2. . . <2engrossed>2 secretary's handwriting is beautifully written out 7 <2precedent>2 first draft 10 <2gross>2 thick, stupid <1III.7>1 6 <2contract by deputy in France>2 i.e., engagement to Lady Bona. See <2Henry VI Part>2 3, III.3. 8 <2enforcement>2 violation 30 <2the recorder>2 a city official 33 <2in warrant from himself>2 on his own authority 45 <2intend>2 pretend 49 <2ground>2 ground-bass over which a descant is sung 55 <2leads>2 roof covered with sheets of lead 76 <2engross>2 fatten 97 <2stay>2 support 127 <2graft>2 grafted 128 <2shouldered>2 immersed up to the shoulders 130 <2recure>2 recover 175 <2respects>2 considerations <2nice>2 overscrupulous 187 <2purchase>2 booty 189 <2bigamy>2 Edward's previous betrothals are construed here as marriages, but marriage with a widow was in any case bigamy, according to canon law. 211 <2effeminate>2 tender 213 <2egally>2 equally <2estates>2 ranks 233 i.e., the fact that you forced me shall acquit me. <1IV.1>1 1 <2niece>2 i.e., granddaughter 10 <2gratulate>2 greet 263 33 <2lace>2 i.e., the cord, as in shoe-lace, which fastened her bodice 46 <2counted>2 recognized 49 <2son>2 i.e., stepson 54 <2cockatrice>2 basilisk 58 <2inclusive verge>2 enclosing circle 79 <2grossly>2 stupidly 96 <2teen>2 woe <1IV.2>1 8 <2play the touch>2 act like a touchstone (which was used for testing gold) 29 <2unrespective>2 heedless 30 <2considerate>2 considering, thoughtful 35 <2close exploit>2 secret undertaking 42 <2witty>2 cunning 57 <2it stands me much upon>2 it is of great importance to me 80 <2prefer>2 advance 115-16 The idea is that Buckingham, like the Jack, or mannikin in a clock, keeps on hammering the bell, thus interfering with Richard's "meditation'. <1IV.3>1 6 <2fleshed>2 used to killing (a foxhound that has eaten from its first kill is "fleshed') 11 <2alablaster>2 alabaster 18 <2replenishe/d>2 complete 20 <2gone>2 overwhelmed 40 <2Britain>2 Breton, of Brittany <1IV.4>1 5 <2induction>2 prologue (to a play) 6 <2consequence>2 conclusion (in a play, the last act) 10 <2sweets>2 flowers 20 <24ui-t>2 requite 21 Edward V for Prince Edward her son 26 <2mortal living>2 i.e., ghost doomed to life 28 <2brief abstract>2 summary, account, pre/cis 264 43 <2Richard>2 of York, Edward V's younger brother 44 <2Richard>2 of York, her husband 52 <2excellent>2 exceeding 56 <2carnal>2 carnivorous 58 <2pew-fellow>2 companion 65 <2boot>2 makeweight 69 <2adulterate>2 adulterous 71 <2intelligencer>2 spy 72 <2Only.>2 . . <2factor>2 kept as their (hell's) agent 85 <2index>2 prologue 97 <2Decline>2 go through in order 122 <2Bettering>2 magnifying 128 <2intestate>2 dead without heirs 142 <2owed>2 owned 176 <2Humphrey Hour>2 (unexplained) 203 <2level>2 aim 218 <2unavoided>2 unavoidable 219 <2avoided grace>2 one who avoids or rejects God's grace (i.e., Richard) 223 <2cozened>2 cheated 230 <2But>2 except <2still>2 continual 245 <2type>2 symbol 248 <2demise>2 transmit 259, 260, 261 <2from>2 removed from 303 <2metal>2 substance 305 <2of>2 by 336 <2retail>2 relate 362 <2quick>2 hasty (Elizabeth quibbles on the word in its sense of "live') 367 <2George>2 part of the insignia of the Order of the Garter 406 <2tender>2 cherish 418 <2peevish-fond>2 perversely foolish 425 <2nest of spicery>2 i.e., the nest of the phoenix, which was both its birth- place and its funeral pyre 435 <2puissant>2 powerful 439 hulldrift 462 <2Hoyday,>2 exclamation of surprise, impatience 467 <2white-livered runagate>2 cowardly renegade 500 <2assurance>2 security 508 <2competitors>2 associates 265 <1IV.5>1 3 <2franked up in hold>2 shut up in custody 14 <2redoubted>2 feared <1V.1>1 7 <2moody>2 angry 19 <2determined>2. . . <2wrongs>2 day to which the punishment of my crimes was postponed <1V.2>1 10 <2embowelled>2 disembowelled <1V.3>1 16 <2direction>2 tactical capacity 25 <2Limit>2 appoint <2several charge>2 particular post 50 <2beaver>2 face-guard of helmet 63 <2watch>2 watchlight, or possibly a guard 65 <2staves>2 lance-staffs 70 <2cock-shut>2 sunset 83 <2by attorney>2 by proxy 86 <2flaky>2 broken into flakes of cloud 90 <2mortal-staring>2 fatally glaring 105 <2peise>2 weigh 132 <2fulsome>2 cloying 198 <2used>2 committed 219 <2proof>2 impenetrable armour 231 <2cried on>2 cried aloud 243 <2except>2 excepted 250 <2foil>2 setting for a jewel 254 <2ward>2 guard 262 <2quits>2 repays 276 <2Tell>2 count the strokes 289 <2caparison>2 put the trappings on 293 <2foreward>2 vanguard 299 <2puissance>2 strength 266 300 <2winge/d>2 flanked 322 <2restrain>2 confiscate <2distain>2 defile 341 <2welkin>2 sky <1V.4>1 3 <2an>2 apparently corrupt; "and' would make better sense 9 <2cast>2 a throw of the dice 10 <2hazard>2 chance <2die>2 singular of dice <1V.5>1 4 <2royalty>2 i.e., the crown 36 <2reduce>2 bring back <1Scene 1>1 Colley Cibber opened the play with his own first act set in <2"a Garden>2 <2within the>2 Tower', and <2"a Chamber in the>2 Tower'. The chamber scene "discovers' Henry VI "sleeping', so the garden scene would have consisted of a pair of painted shutters drawn across in front. During the eighteenth century, plays were generally provided with stock scenery which was therefore not especially accurate but which in this play went unremarked until the turn of the century. Kemble and Capon attempted historical accuracy at Drury Lane but they were not thorough enough for the "antiquary' who wrote in the April and June numbers of the <2Gentleman's Magazine>2 (1800). Of the opening scene he doubted that "a rural scene of this kind was ever seen within [the Tower's] walls' and he is more indignant still that the painter should have gone "further and. . . made his picture show a <2flower>2 garden'. Green's Juvenile Drama version of the play (penny plain, twopence coloured), though published in 1851, "seems to reproduce the costumes and settings made familiar by Kean and his imitators of the romantic school' (George Speaght's preface to the set reprinted by Benjamin Pollock Ltd, 1960). Here the opening garden scene shows a picturesque corner with hollyhocks and a bowered seat, the White Tower rising not at all menacingly in the background. Charles Kean added a sundial, "a happy thought, . . . affording a resting-place for Henry VI' <2(The Albion,>2 10 January 1846 quoted in Odell, <2Annals,>2 V, p. 174). For Kean's 1854 revival the nook had become a fairly spacious park with an arboreal walk, and a step down to the sundial on a terrace downstage (all descriptions of Charles Kean's 1854 revival are taken from a set of twenty watercolours painted as a record of that production, now in the Enthoven Collection). When Shakespeare was restored it was usual to open the play on a street in London. Irving "represented the end of a street, a corner-gable casting a shadow, a sundial in the foreground. Bells were ringing... the sun was shining brightly in the street beyond the gable-end, and in the foreground' (Ordish, p. 60). Morris Kestelman's scenery for the Olivier production in 1944 "had the expressionistic quality of a medieval painting: a tumble of picturesque toy-buildings in streets diminishing in perspective...'. Like Irving's set, "the brightness was ringed in darkness. . . costumes emerged luminously from the background' (Williamson, p. 175). Until Peter Hall's production in 1963, fixed sets tended to suggest the period, though not always so prettily. Tyrone Guthrie had a "triptych of five windows, one of which is a door . . . this door being thrown open we arc at once in the Tower of London, a cell in Pomfret Castle, and even that Limbo where ghosts inhabit' (Agate, <2ST,>2 7 November 1937). In 1957 Leslie Hurry designed for Douglas Seale a many-levelled stage raking back to front and from stage right to left with a huge arch in a wall on top of which Margaret would appear. The backcloth represented a spider's web which when fully lit at the end was a sunburst. William Gaskill in 1961 had a single Norman pillar, with symbols let down from the flies so as to hang over the actors' heads, indicating particular localities (e.g., the royal cipher for the palace, a portcullis for the Tower). john Bury, the designer for the RSC's <2Wars>2 <2of the Roses>2 broke away from this architecturally historical tradition in order to suggest atmosphere rather than period. His stage was "a bare combat arena on which gaunt metallic walls open and close like the sides of battle-ships' (<2T>2, 13 January 1964). Ralph Koltai, designer for Christopher Morahan's production (1979) seems to have been influenced by John Bury's conception, but the huge horseshoe shaped execution embrasures in the walls, and the channels and gutters running red with each beheading, were his own. <2Prelude>2 Some Shakespearian productions have forfeited "the fine abrupt beginning' that made Hazlitt so eager for the original text (Hazlitt, XVIII, p. 255). Calvert in 1870 had a display of morris dancing though the drummers and onlookers "looked as though they had lost relatives at Tewkesbury' <2(MET,>2 9 September 1870). Mansfield in 1896 opened with a pageant -- Queen Elizabeth and her train entering the Tower over a drawbridge (Wilstach, pp. 173, 178). Olivier in his film showed the coronation of Edward IV at length, while some of the principle characters exchanged enough significant glances to suggest the main lines of interest. Bogdanov (1978) had a corpse in battle dress, presumably Henry VI's, lying face up on the floor as the audience came in. After this was removed, the whole dramatis personae assembled gradually, as though at a party, each taking a drink from a butler. As they entered, their place on the family tree and something of their background was explained by a master of ceremonies. Cibber's explanatory first act, in other words, has not been proved to be entirely misconceived. <2Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester,>2 <2solus>2 Richard's entrance has been traditionally one of the most striking moments of the play. Actors have been able to establish their authority during it before speaking a word. Unfortunately Murphy Says no more of Garrick than that "the moment he entered the scene, the character he assumed was visible in his countenance' (Murphy, p. 16). George Frederick Cooke walked on "with a dignified erect deportment. . . to the centre of the stage' while the audience applauded. "His appearance was picturesque and proudly noble. His head elevated, his step firm, his eye beaming fire. . . He returned the salutes of the audience not as a player to the public... but as a glorious prince acknowledging the acclamations of the populace . . . ' (Dunlap, II, p. 156). The leading actor's acknowledging the audience's applause on his entry was taken for granted, and may account for the stir that Edmund Kean's entrance caused. Macready wrote that "a little keenly-visaged man rapidly bustled across the stage' (Macready, p. 94) and Finlay thought his "tumbling on' with such "precipitation' was uncalled for: "He waddles in a sort of dogtrot, and all at once without any apparent reason, he stops short to give a disquisition' (Finlay, p. 212). Hackett's marginal note reads "Gloster enters hastily -- head low -- arms folded.' Kean, acting in Cibber's version was making sense of Tressel's remark that Richard left his friends "in haste' and with "unwashed hands' crying "I must to the Tower / I've business there.' forrest kept the idea and "burst upon the stage, cloaked and capped, waving his glove in triumph over the downfall of the house of Lancaster' (Sprague, <2Stage Business,>2 p. 95, quoted from Alger, II, p. 747). Junius Brutus Booth was remembered in the United States for his slow entrance: "with head bent in thought, arms folded, and slow, long step, longer it would seem than the height of his figure might warrant. . . and so that his lifted foot emerged first into view. . .' (Gould, p. 39). Walt Whitman describes his "quiet entrance from the side, as with head bent, he slowly and in silence (amid the tempest of boisterous hand-clapping), walks down the stage to the footlights with that peculiar and abstracted gesture, musingly kicking his sword which he holds off from him by its sash. .. I can hear the clank, and feel the perfect following hush of perhaps three thousand people waiting' (Sprague, <2Stage>2 <2Business,>2 p. 95, quoted from Walt Whitman, <2Complete Writings,>2 New York, 1902,VI,pp. 192-3). Irving "entered through an archway, and paused, and glanced round, and listened to the merry bells before he began to speak. . .' (Winter, <2Shakespeare,>2 I, p. 115). Ordish remembers "a shadow. . . cast on the wall of the street, a moving shadow, and Richard, passing through the shadow of the gable, steps out into the sunlight as he comes towards the dial. . .' (Ordish, p. 60). This shadow idea was used later by Olivier and John Wood. Mansfield opened "the little door in the tower' and instead of the "halting, grizzled, lowering tyrant' there "bounded forth. . . a sleek sinuous young Prince of nineteen' (Wilstach, pp. 176, 183). Olivier came in "at the back' (Darlington, <2The Actor,>2 p. 175), "entering through a door whose lock he avariciously fingered as if to see that decency and generosity had been shut out. . . ' (Hobson, p. 136). Then, continued Darlington, he made "his progress downstage a thing of so many artfully contrived but deeply significant pauses and hesitations, of so much play of expression, that it seemed as if the time that elapsed before he spoke could be reckoned by minutes rather than seconds'. 1-4 Cibber omitted these lines and they were not restored until Kemble re- introduced them. On 1-3 Cooke was "without motion, his hands hanging at ease', then at 4 he "lifted his right hand a little with a gently sweeping motion' on "In the deep bosom'; "turning the palm downwards' on "of the ocean', then "made a short pause' and "sinking his hand (the palm parallel with the earth) and his voice at the same time, flnished the sentence by the word " -- buried" ' (Dunlap, II, p. 353). Edmund Kean also "held forth his arm and in a beautiful style of deliberate triumph, uttering his words with inward majesty, pointed his finger downwards; as if he saw the very ocean beneath him from some promontory, and beheld it closed over the past' (Hunt, Archer, p. 201). "I find, and perfectly remember that there was a murmur of approbation at the pause and action of his [Kean's] extended arm. . .' (Doran, III, p. 413). J.B. Booth's elocution here was "exceptionally elaborate. . . He pronounced the word "ocean" as one of three syllables, and he gave a rising inflection to the phrase "glorious summer" as if to suggest a flood of radiance by means of sound' (Winter, <2Shakespeare,>2 p. 100). Olivier, in his film, reproduced the cinematic equivalent of Cook's and Kean's action by dropping his eyes for a moment on "buried'. 12 Edmund Kean: "Grins and frets' (Hackett). 13 Irving's bells stopped ringing to mark the change of mood. 14 Edmund Kean: "stands and pulls on his gauntlets tighter and keeps the centre writhing his body R and L and using his right hand' (Hackett). 20 Edmund Kean: "Deformed" (vehement -- plays with his sword belt -- starts and crosses)' (Hackett). 23 Complaining of the "hard, literal, conception' of the "players', Lamb said that here they make Richard "look round as if he were literally apprehensive of some dog snapping at him' (Lamb, I, p. 426). 27 Garrick was said to have closed the sentence "with an action of pointing to the ground, and fixing the eye thereon For some time, as if <2Richard>2 had a real Delight in ruminating on his own uncouth person'. This was "sure to be dwelt on 'till the Audience clap' (Thco. Cibber Part I, p. 65). 28-41 Cibber replaced these lines with <23 H VI>2, III.2.165-71, slightly altered, on to which he tacked four lines of his own. On these lines taken from <23 H VI>2 Hackett noted that Edmund Kean "starts up' and at "this misshapen trunk', "strikes his breast 3 times and points to his forehead'. On "be circled' he "pauses and chuckles and crosses' stage right. Cibber's lines then follow: "But then 'tis fixed on such a heighth, O! I / Must stretch the utmost reaching of my Soul. / I'll climb betimes without Remorse or Dread / And my first step shall be on <2Henry's>2 head.' Here Kemble "pierces his gaze into the highest altitude of the Heavens' (Martin, p. 11). Edmund Kean hesitated just before "on Henry's head' and then exited "hastily' (Hackett). For this soliloquy both Emlyn Williams and Olivier imported the lines from <23 H VI>2, III.2. 153ff., which Cibber introduced for Richard just before Anne's entry in I.2. When Williams spoke "why love forsook me in my mother's womb', Audrey Williamson felt "an extraordinary touch of pathos' (Williamson, p. 76). Olivier marked the "loneliness' and "isolation' less than Williams (p. 176). <2Enter Clarence.. .>2 Cibber cut the rest of the scene and interpolated a modified form of V.6 from <23 H VI>2. It is the scene in which Richard murders Henvy VI and then soliloquizes at length about his villainy, about the evil omens that attended his birth and about his isolation. The set which the opening shutters revealed at Drury Lane in 1800 was "one of the most unaccountable apologies for the architecture of the l5th century that can possibly be conceived; a huddle of compartments, cornices, pilasters, etc., of every style that the painter had ever seen; and its furniture both in the painting and on the stage, shows a common modern achievement, an antique shield, a modern chair, a sofa, and to sum up the list of conveniences, a Buzaglo stove!' <2(GM,>2 April 1800). The murder itself offered opportunities, to American actors especially. J.B. Booth "affected amazement' on the words "What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster / Sink in the ground', as he stooped over the body, and then "changed to the cruelest aspect of triumphant irony in the succeeding phrase: -- "I thought it would have MOUNT-ed." The writer continued: "when the hunchbacked form towering erect, the head with the plumed hat thrown back, the eyes following the upturned point of the raised and outstretched sword, the syllable I have marked as emphatic, uttered not only at the height of the voice, but with a swelling volume of sound, produced a feeling of some general ascent in which one was taking an involuntary part' (J.F. Kirk, <2Lippincott's>2 <2Magazine,>2 June 1884). On "see how my sword weeps for the poor King's death' Forrest shook it to show that it was dripping blood (Forster, p. 40), and Mansfield wiped it on the velvet bed-curtains (Lady Olga Montagu, a letter in <2ST,>2 3 December 1944). The three lines starting "I have no brother, am like no brother. . .' and ending "I am myself alone' were often instanced in separating the good actors from the bad. Thomas Wilkes wrote that Garrick showed "the cross-grained splenetic turn of Richard' at that moment "whereas I have seen some people here smile upon themselves as if well pleased with their own appearance' (Wilkes, p. 237). Hazlitt thought Kean spoke "I am myself alone' too hurriedly "as if it was a thought that suddenly struck him' (Hazlitt, V, p. 183). When Hackett was studying him in 1826 Kean had remedied this with a "long pause' after "I am'. 98-102 When Macready restored this scene "one or two persons' showed an audibly "uneasy delicacy' at these lines <2(Gold's London Magazine and Theatrical>2 <2Inquisitor,>2 April 1821). 112-16 Phelps's promptbook here notes that Richard weeps and embraces Clarence, bearing out Clarence's later words to the murderers at 1.4.242-3. <2Enter Lord Hastings>2 John Burrel introduced Jane Shore here, played mutely by Pamela Brown, "a laughing and sensuous ghost from whose embrace Lord Hastings tore himself at his first appearance' (Williamson, p. 175). <1Scene 2>1 In Shakespeare's play the setting stays the same, though Richard Mansfleld changed it to "the Road to Chertsey' making a memorable picture of a "grassy bank and realistic but not obtrusive tree and church and town in the distance' (Enthoven Collection). Cibber started here with a new scene, "<2St>2 Paul's', presumably an interior, for when later he brought on the funeral procession, the earliest direction (1700) reads "<2Enter Bearers with King>2 Henry's <2Body, the Lady>2 Anne <2in Mourning, Lord>2 Stanley, Tressel <2and Gua rds who all advance>2 <2from the middle Isle of the Church'.>2 It is unlikely that the scene painter bothered to show old St Paul's rather than Wren's for, in Cumberland's 1829 acting edition Cibber's direction is altered for the first time so as to specify "Ludgate, and in the background a view of old St Paul's'. By 1800, at least at Drury Lane, the set had become totally unspecific, "a gate of entrance' and "within the arch. . . a distant view of the country, a river, and the outside walls of a castle' (<2GM>2, April 1800). Cumberland the direction also indicates bell tolling; this bell, according to Sprague had been usual "from the mid-eighteenth century onwards' (Sprague, <2Histories,>2 p. 138). Charles Kean's funeral procession was "accompanied by the deep tolling of the Cathedral bell and strains of solemn music' (<2The Albion,>2 10 January 1846, quoted in Odell, <2Annals,>2 V, p. 175). Before thc entrance of the funeral procession Cibber interpolated an explanatory dialogue (which Macready did not alter) between Stanley and Tressel in which we learn who is in the coffin, what Anne's relation to it is, and what Richard is about to do: "I hear <2Richard>2 attempts her love', says Lord Stanley, usefully. After their exit, Richard comes on, soliloquizing on Anne's rejection of him and his deformity using lines 153-64 from <23 H>2 <2VI,>2 III.2. On "to shrink my Arm up like a withered Shrub', Edmund Kean "remained looking on the limb for some moments with a sort of bitter discontent, and then struck it back in angry disgust' (Macready, p. 95). Forrest did the same (Alger, II, p. 746). The Lieutenant interrupts him, and Edmund Kean made a point of "the sudden alteration of his manner' from fury to kindness when he learns that King Edward has "taken ill', a moment which was admired by Hazlitt (Hazlitt, V, p. 182-3). Left alone he soliloquizes again (see Appendix (a)), momentarily romantic as he catches sight of his "Love.. . / Darting pale Lustre, like the Silver Moon.' Cooke lengthened this soliloquy with four lines from <23 H VI,>2 III.2.182-5: "why I can smile, and murder while I smile' etc., which the <2Monthly>2 <2Mirror>2 (November 1800) thought peculiarly "suitable to his manner of playing the part'; when he spoke them he emphasized <2murder>2 <2while'>2 giving the impression of <2"hugging>2 <2himself up>2 and enjoying a horrible satisfaction. . .'. Edmund Kean kept the addition and Hackett noted the clenched fist on "murder' and the "savage grin of satisfaction'. <2Enter the corse of King Henry the Sixth. . .>2 Shakespeare's stage direction, virtually the same in the quartos and the Folio, suggests the unceremonious interment described in <2The Union of the Noble and Illustre Famelies>2 <2of Lancastre and York>2 (1548) by Edward Hall, one of Shakespeare's sources: "without Prieste or Clarke, Torche or Taper, syngyng or saiyng, it was coveighed to the Monasterie of Chertsey. . .' (Bullough, III, p. 249). In the Cibber acting editions the staging here sometimes requires an entrance immediately after Richard's soliloquy, but in later editions the <2"Scene draws and>2 <2discovers Lady>2 Anne <2in Mourning'>2 immediately before it. Kemble returned to the entry, placed where Cibber had the discovery. The procession itself was originally very simple: "Stanley, Tressel, Guards <2and>2 Bearers', but by 1800 it began to be more elaborate: "a modern burial in all its several circumstances, as the undertaker, the bearers with a coffin and pall, the Lady Anne and others as mourners in full modern mourning shewing away with white pocket handkerchiefs, etc. etc. The guards are in dresses which such sort of inferior characters have trod the stage in for many years past, on every occasion where the absolute military uniform of our three regiments of the Guard arc not wanted to ennoble... some modern warlike enterprise.' The handkerchirf, according to this author, is "ever the principle accompaniment. . . of a performer in Tragedy to shew a graceful attitude or express a lively sorrow (or between ourselves to give employment to the hands. . .)' <2(GM,>2 April 1800). Cumberland's acting edition (1829) reflects the growing taste for spectacle. There are four boys supporting banners at points along the procession, two groups of four soldiers carrying spears, four soldiers carrying torches. The coffin is carried by eight soldiers, and after Lady Anne, Stanley and Tressel, there are eight mourners, women and men. Even so, the entrance cannot always have been impressive, for <2The>2 <2Times>2 praised Charles Kean's production at Drury Lane in 1838, in which he showed "a view of the interior of old St Paul's with the lying in state of Henry VI', for being "an immense improvement of the old practice, when an old lumbering ginger-bread coffin was dragged across the stage' (T, 6 February 1838). According to Lacy's edition (1854), Charles Kean's procession at the Princess's in 1854, winding through the cloisters, consisted of about seventy-two people, and the coffin "carried by gentlemen in black' was "covered by a canopy of black and gold, hung with shields of royal arms, and surmounted with a crown, borne by gentlemen. The Pall [was] borne by six peers in scarlet robes and orders'. The Duke of Wellington's funeral in 1852 might almost have served as a model. Phelps and Irving also had solemn processions, Irving with hooded monks carrying candles on poles and the coffin covered with purple velvet and Phelps with trumpeters and black-cre^ped halberds, but they were smaller than Charles Kean's. Lena Ashwell who played Lady Anne at short notice with Irving in 1896 remembered that "the beautiful clothes were very heavy and I could hardly drag them along, while the whimple got in my way as I moved. When I took my place in the funeral procession which emerged slowly out of the darkness at the back of the stage I was sure that I should fail, but when 1 stepped out of the shadow into the ring of light and the magnetism of "Richard", I forgot about myself.' (Ashwell, p. 85). Bram Stoker said that in this scene Irving "tried to realise some of the effect of the great picture by Edwin E. Abbey, R.A.. Here the tide of mourners seems to sweep along in resistless mass, with an extraordinary effect of the spear-poles of royal scarlet amidst the black draperies' (Stoker, p. 81). Calvert was unique in having an "open bier'. Modern productions have kept that detail and have reduced the procession. Peter Hall's corpse was even "ensanguined', and so much so that Trewin thought it stole the scene (<2BP>2, 13 January 1964). 1-32 Cibber directed Richard to retire as Anne began her speech, and Kean's attitude was so graceful "it would have done for a Titian to paint' (Hazlitt, V, p. 182). Later actors followed Kean here, and the "point' survived into Irving's restored play. Gordon Crosse remembers how "he withdrew into an angle of the street and listened with mischievous enjoyment to her lament' (Crosse, p. 10). Mansfield, on his country road, crouched down facing the audience, holding up his cloak sideways so as to be hidden from Anne (Sprague <2Stage Business>2 p. 96, quoted from Charlotte Porter <2Poet.>2 <2Lore,>2 1890, IIm p. 31). In Cibber's version Anne's speech is only thirteen lines long the five opening lines being taken from Bedford's lament for Henry V at the beginning of <2Henry VI:>2 "Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night.. .'. The rest consists with small alterations of lines 14-20, and 26-8, at which Richard says aside "Poor girl! What pains she takes to curse herself.' She then continues with lines 21-5 and 29. Garrick, Kemble and Edmund Kean all cut lines 17-20. Richard's aside, during her speech, was spoken by Edmund Kean with "chuckling mirth. . . . It was thoroughly feline, terrible yet beautiful' (Lewes, p. 10). 36.41 One of the "points'. Edmund Kean drew his sword and knocked the halberd up with it (Hackett). Charles Kean followed his father. The business is spoofed in Charles Selby's burlesque where the guard is a footman carrying a red umbrella and two lapdogs under his arms. When he attempts to bar Richard with his umbrella (using the old gag "Stand back my lord and let the parson cough') Richard <2"knocks his umbrella>2 <2with his sword -- gives>2 footman <2a cut behind'.>2 Balliol Holloway spoke the words low "standing motionless and supremely confident, with blazing eyes, and a suggestion of power that if unleashed could practically annihilate. It was not surprising that the halberd wavered in the man's hands, and went back slowly and obediently to the position of attention' (Martin Holmes, <2Shakespeare and Burbage,>2 1978, p. 61). Olivier, in his film version, actually knocks the man down and puts his foot on him. 46 In Terry Hands's production Anne carried a huge cross and hit Richard with it, who got it off her upside down (promptbook). 49-221 Though Shakespeare's audience would not have been concerned about the psychological improbability of the wooing of Lady Anne, eighteenth-century critics were much troubled by the question. The scene has always been the naturalistic actor's greatest test -- Garrick's dissimulation was so persuasive that Wilkes "was almost induced to think it real and to wonder how such deformity could succeed with so much beauty' (Wilkes, p. 237). Spranger Barry, famous for his Romeo, mistook the mood entirely here, according to Wilkes and Murphy. He seemed to "pour out the melting Harmony of Romeo,' his words "like flakes of feathered snow that melted as they fell' (Murphy, quoted in Vickers, IV, p. 276). Kemble "whines it in a way which no ear can endure' and Cooke was "harsh, ungentlemanly and coarse' (Barnes, p. 98). Lamb, writing about Cooke, said that Lady Anne, court-bred "would have turned with disgust from such a fellow' (Lamb, <2Letters,>2 II, p. 7). Cooke was "violent, hurried, and full of anxious uncertainty' (Hazlitt, V, p. 182). For Hazlitt, as for Murphy, Richard should woo "not as a lover, but as an actor' and Kean was almost perfect. His performance was "an admirable exhibition of smooth and smiling villainy. The progress of wily adulation, of encroaching humility, was finely marked throughout, by the action, voice, and eye (ibid.). "An enchanting smile played on his lips, while a courteous humility bowed his head. His voice. . . was yet modulated to a tone which no common female mind ever did or ever could resist. . .' (Barnes, p. 98). "Anne like a fluttered bird could not escape the fascination' <2(The Athenaeum>2 18 May 1833). Forrest laid great stress upon "animal magnetism' (Winter, <2Shakespeare,>2 I, p. 104). Irving, according to Shaw, was like a "Hounsditch salesman cheating a factory girl over a pair of second hand stockings' (Shaw, II, p. 291). But Lena Ashwell did not feel like a factory girl. Irving told her that "the scene was a duet and that I was not to move more than an arm's length from him'. She remebered Irving's magnetism: "angry, fascinated, frightened, reluctant, I felt myself mesmerised, but just as I felt this irresistible power drawing me into his arms there came the solemn tolling of the funeral bell. I don't know how this terrible warning was achieved, except that Irving was very strict about the timing of a scene and would count loud to keep his actors in the rhythm of the verse' (Ashwell, p. 85). Olivier made the fascination sexual, which overcame the problem of Anne's credulity. She no longer had to believe him before falling prey to him. Ian Holm, John Wood and Chkivadze were more frankly sexual, and Wood continued the idea in IV.4. 49. John Wood had got down on his knees beside the corpse during Anne's previous speech, and interrupting his muttered prayers, spoke this line as a pious reproach her. 55-67 Omitted by Cibber, and not restored by Phelps or Irving. When Anne exclaimed at "dead Henry's wounds', John Wood was "so intrigued by the blood on her husband's corpse, he dips his finger in it to lick it' (Billington, <2G,>2 5 May 1979). 89-100 Richard's lie is cut in Cibber, as is the subsequent dialogue. 93 In Terry Hands's production Anne hit Richard here and drove him back (promptbook). 101 Edmund Kean spoke this "with a deep-fetched sigh' (Hackett). 102 Cibber cut the "hedgehog', and so did Irving and other early "restored' texts. 109-11 Edmund Kean: 'Puts his left hand gently on her right arm, then -- plays with his cap' and spoke 111 "in a smothered voice' (Hackett). 121-9 Edmund Kean here "slaps his hands together, squeezes his hat warmly and gazes'. On 127 he "shakes his head and smiles', then at 128 "points with his cap up' (Hackett). 134-9 Edmund Kean "hesitates -- looks his cap -- turns it round and round -- stammers -- looks at her doatingly'. On 139 he paused between "to' and "help' (Hackett). <2She spitteth at him>2 Cibber cut out the spit, and so did all the nineteenth-century restorations. Phelps had Richard kneeling on "Here' (144) and the direction "She passes to R but pauses when in front of Gloster, makes a contemptuous action and then cross to RH.' The following lines about the spit were cut. 149 In Terry Hands's production Richard tried to catch her, and she ran downstage. He missed and fell to the floor, his cloak falling off (promptbook). 153-66 Cibber cut the historical references, and so did Phelps. After 152 Cibber interpolated "Darting, with cruel aim, despair and love', and went on to the last four lines of the speech. Hackett noted that during it "Lady Anne crosses before him to RH -- scornfully -- he remains, appears uncertain of his course, eyes her closely when she turns -- throws his hands up as in despair and anguish, crosses to Lady Anne, eagerly supplicates.' 166 Again Terry Hands directed Richard to try and catch Anne, and he fell to the floor (promptbook). 178 Olivier at the Old Vic, 1949, dropped to one knee and fell to one side in his deformity: "an effect at once revolting and pitiful' (Hobson, p. 136). 178-83 "When <2Richard>2 gets upon his knees to Lady Anne in this scene, there is in the usual style of acting it too much anti- thetical point to the discourse of <2Richard;>2 it is made all see-saw; and <2Lady Anne.>2 .. is made to point the sword, or drop it, like a figure in a puppet show' <2(The Edinburgh>2 <2Drantatic Review,>2 11 March 1824, quoted in Sprague, <2Stage Business,>2 p. 96). Cibber added another four lines of antithesis in which the sword could be raised and lowered. After 182 Richard goes on "And I might still persist (so stubborn is / My Temper) to rejoice at what I've done, / But that thy powerful Eyes (as roaring Seas / Obey the changes of the Moon) have turn'd / My Heart and made it flow with Penitence.' Oxberry's 1822 edition repeats the direction <2"She offers to strike'>2 three times, after lines 179, 181 and after Cibber's words "to rejoice at what I've Walter Scott remembered Kemble in one performance "drilling' his Lady Anne, "a very pleasing young person much- disturbed by Kemble's directions about lifting and lowering the sword. . .' <2(Quarterly Review,>2 1826, pp. 230-1). After line 178 Cibber inserted an aside for Anne, "What shall I say or do? Direct me Heaven; / When stones weep sure the tears are natural, / And Heaven itselfinstructs us to forgive, / When they do now from sincere Repentance.' This was normally cut to the first line and during it and again at 182 Kean "seizes her scarf anxiously watching' (Hackett). Henry Crabb Robinson was especially struck: "his mode of lifting up her veil to watch her countenance was exquisite' (Crabb Robinson, I, p. 274). 191 Cibber outflanked his doubting audience here with six lines of dialogue, to be spoken aside, between Tressel and Stanley, in which they say they can't believe their eyes: "When future Chronicles shall speak of this / They will be thought Romance, not History.' 199-200 Edmund Kean here put his sword <2"half>2 up -- and fixes his eyes upon her' then at her assurance he "sheathes his sword with violence, crosses a step or two to L.H., turns -- claps his hands together with great joy' (Hackett). <2The Morning Post>2 (14 February 1814) complained of excessive levity, "he strutted across the stage, rubbing his hands and laughing, in a manner which we could almost venture to compare with that of Mr Lovegrove in Gobbo'. 201-5 Cibber cut the ring business and interpolated four lines for Richard in which he assures her that "Thy goodness makes soft in penitence.' 202 Here, in Terry Hands's production, Richard took the ring back and put it on Anne's finger. She then picked up his cloak and put it on him (promptbook). Then "in a flash she changes her mind and with no real encouragement makes a giggling date with him in the shelter of his cloak' (Young, <2FT,>2 16 April 1970). 220 Edmund Kean: "Off RH glove -- seizes her hand, kisses it, and follo (Hackett). <2Exeunt two [Tressel and Berkeley] with>2 <2Anne>2 Edmund Kean "Kisses his hand to her after she is out of sight and looks off as if watching her departure -- till Guard repeats the question <2twice>2 -- then turns suddenly upon him -- <2"No",>2 crosses to LH' (Hackett). Phelps had trumpets playing a dead march (promptbook). Irving, in his first production, burst into "harsh, triumphant laughter' ( <2The Spectator, 6>2 February 1877). 227 "provoked a shout of derisive applause' in Irving's first production <2(Morning Post,>2 30 January 1877). 229 In Sturua's production, Richard who was holding Anne's scarf, dropped it here on Henry's coffin. 246, 249, 250 "On me.' John Wood betrayed the phrase out each time like a donkey -- "awee', as it were, on a rising interval. 251 Cibber's line reads: "My dukedom to a widow's chastity', and although Kemble restored Shakespeare's line, it was not forgotten, for Olivier returned to it, in his film at any rate. 251-7 Garrick played Richard as though he were "such a Fool really to think himself comely of person' (Theo. Cibber, Part I, pp. 65-6). 260 Cibber altered "yon fellow' to "St Harry': vintage Cibber. 262-3 Cibber's couplet runs: "Shine out fair Sun till I salute my Glass / That I may see my shadow as I pass.' Here, Garrick's "Rum-Duke <2Richard>2 has gone halting off, all the way looking at and admiring his suppos'd Shadow on the Ground' (ibid., p. 66). Lamb, too, complained of the literal- minded actor who pronounced the words about tailors and mirrors "as if he were prepared to put both in practice before he should get home' (Lamb, I, p. 426). Edmund Kean "was sportive in accent as in the very action of saluting' (Doran, III, p. 413). Hackett's note at these lines is "points up'. Irving had a quick drop-curtain on the last word, which marked the end of his first act(promptbook). <1Scene 3>1 Omitted in Cibber. Calvert's set was "a perfect gem'. "The tapestry on the upper wall, the coloured wainscotting, the rich hanging curtains, the gothic <1screen,>1 and mediaeval furniture are all admirable. . .' <2(MET,>2 9 September 1870). Irving's set was also a tapestry hung room, with a lighted fire in the fireplace. Peter Hall had a throne trundled on, followed by Margaret who touched it and wandered off the other side (promptbook). Sturua also brought Margaret on first, who announced the title of the play, the scene division, and then lines 257-60, her theme tune. Then she gave the stage direction and on came Queen Elizabeth and family in a sort of tumbril. This scene and II.l (also omitted in Cibber) with their atmosphere of court faction were said by Shaw to make all the difference between Shakespeare and his adaptor (Shaw, II, p. 288). Hazlitt argued for its restoration because of its "striking passages' such as Richard's entering speech, which are "important to the understanding of the character, and peculiarly adapted for stage effect' (Hazlitt, IV, p. 301). Macready was similarly impressed, but his restoration of it did not draw comment. Irving was universally admired, even Shaw allowing him to have been at his best in the "court scenes' (Shaw, II, p. 288). Sir Edward Russel described him sitting "thoroughly enjoying.. . the railings of his royal relatives at each other, and at the point where the discussion comes loudest and nearest and most offensive to him goes to a table and hearing everything all the time writes out a warrant of arrest' <2(The Theatre,>2 May 1897). <2Enter Richard [and Lord Hastings]>2 Olivier in his film took advantage of the camera here, and showed Richard outside the door laughing for a moment with cronies, and then suddenly assuming his indignation for the entry. <2Enter Old Queen Margaret>2 Until Peggy Ashcroft took the part in Peter Hall's production the great Margarets had always been done majestically. Miss Warner in Phelps's first revival (February 1845) was "an image of fate' <2(The Athenaeum,>2 1 March 1845) and Miss Glyn in his second (March 1849) was "a veritable prophetess. . . She is nothing less than a majestic being endowed with something like supernatural powers' <2(The Athenaeum,>2 24 March 1849). Genevie\ve Ward in Irving's second revival, 1896, was a "particularly <2strong>2 actress, good at invective' (Stoker, p. 351). Edith Evans could "rant like a queen and walk like one too' (Agate, <2ST,>2 11 October 1925). Peggy Ashcroft, on the other hand, approached Margaret from the different perspective provided by the earlier parts of the sequence. When she finally arrived at the last play, still with her vestigial French "r', she was a defeated old woman "embittered and disappointed' (Darlington, <1ST>1, 13 January 1964), "a bedraggled crone with glittering eye, rambling and cussing' (Philip Hope-Wallace, <2G,>2 13 January 1964). The old prophetess-Margarets always ran the risk of being bores. F.A. Marshall said that to the reader Margaret is impressive enough, but when the play is acted "were Margaret to be represented by one who had inherited all the talent and reputation of a Siddons. . . no one would. . . regard her otherwise than as something of a bore' (Marshall, p. 12). And Agate made no exception of her when he called the women "a quartet of she-ravens' who "would have croaked any but the most magnificent play into its grave' <2(The Contemporary Theatre,>2 March 1923). Olivier left her out of his film entirely. 111-12 lrving in his first production cut this and all Margaret's asides before she comes forward after 157. 127-39 This passage with its historical references was cut in Irving's and most other nineteenth-century productions. <2[She comes forward]>2 Peter Hall's promptbook reads "Everybody treats Margaret as deaf, i.e. all move in and bend. ' 174-5 Illustrating the gains of seeing the play in sequence, Trewin instanced this as a moment that "tingles in the theatre when Dame Peggy Ashcroft's eyes glitter malevolent recollection at Richard's "t curse my noble father laid on thee when thou didst crown his war-like brows with paper" (<2BP>2, 13 January 1964). 195-6 Peggy Ashcroft "talked to herself as well as to her victims, and to the heavens'. On 195 "she <2actually>2 asked' the question and then on 196 "clapped her hands for attention' (Russell Brown, p. 153). 224 Peter Hall: "Richard springs from seat, grabs M who recoils' (promptbook). 228 Irving cut this line, and so did Phelps. 231-2 Irving and Phelps also cut these, no doubt for reasons of prudery. 240 In Peter Hall's production Queen Elizabeth laughed here (promptbook). 290 Peggy Ashcroft "acted the biting and gave a mad laugh' (Russell Brown, p. 153). 339 Olivier in his film ran like a spider the length of the palace hall to the sound of joyful violins, as if he were greeting long lost brothers. 339-56 and I-4-1-74 ran concurrently in Sturua's version, so that Richard's remark about Clarence being well-spoken was being demonstrated as the warning is given. <2[He gives the warrant]>2 Olivier in his film transposed this moment to the next scene, I.4, where, Cibber-like, he brought Richard on to hover round the scene of his crimes. Just as the murderers were going in he gave them a warrant and then, quickly checking, took it back and gave them a different one. Obviously he had waylaid Edward's countermand (II.1.89) and had it tucked in is glove with his own warrant. <1Scene 4>1 Omitted in Cibber. Phelps had an opening in a flat stage right, through which Clarence made his entrance, a table and chair visible within (promptbook). After a noise of a lock and bolt, Irving brought on Brakenbury, speaking lines 76-8; he then drew aside a curtain discovering Clarence on a couch. The 1877 promptbook also indicates blue or green medium lamp halt on, and blue or green limelight from the side thrown on to the curtains. Trewin once described Clarence's dream (9-74) as an "aria', and praised George Relph, in Olivier's original production, for not making "a fuss' about it <2(Punch,>2 27 September 1944). The speech tends to define Clarence as a poet; there is so little else to know him by. Egerton, in Macready's version, was "much applauded' says Genest (Genest, IX, p. 108), which may mean that he was clapped at the end, like a tenor. The sense of a set-piece is conveyed in the <2Athenaeum>2 which said that Dickinson in Phelps's revival "was very successful in the recitation of the dream' (24 March 1849). The speech misfired in Irving's production where Cooper Cliffe "recited his dream like an elocutionary coroner summing up' (Shaw, II, p. 292). Olivier made sure of it with Gielgud for his film. In Peter Hall's production Clarence had already been established as a person in the second part of the sequence, and was seen less as a reciter of a piece of verse, than as "a strong link with the past' (<2I>2, 21 August 1963). <2Enter two Murderers>2 In nineteenth- century Shakespeare revivals, the murderers were played exclusively for laughs, most of their more serious discussion with Clarence being cut. Macready, Phelps, Booth and Irving all brought the scene to an end shortly after Clarence wakes up. Calvert was unique in keeping most of it. Even the fuller text was not enough to counteract the first few minutes of fooling; the <2Manchester>2 <2Guardian>2 had to warn the murderers against "getting too much into the Dogberry and Verges vein' lest the murder should be "enacted to the accompaniment of a mirthful pit' (6 September 1870). Irving's murderers came "straight out of the pantomime of <2The>2 <2 Babes in the Wood'>2 (Shaw, II, p. 292). In Henry Cass's production at the Old Vic in 1936 "they comport themselves like the Gobbo family' (<2ST>2, 19 January 1936). 117-18, 121 Irving's 1877 promptbook notes that the first murderer "gives him a flask and he drinks'. Terry Hands made him count from one to twenty and at line 121 carry on "twenty-one twenty-two twenty- three ... ' (promptbook). 157, 159 In Phelps's production Clarence spoke his line from the other side of the opening and the murderers went out to him. After line 159 he cut straight to line 266 "Look -behind you'. Irving's murderer stabbed Clarence on line 160. 197-247 Cut by Edwin Booth. 240 244 Terry Hands had the first murderer make as if to strike, and Clarence grab his sword. At 244 he drew it out of Clarence's grasp and cut his hands (promptbook). <2[Stabs him]>2 In Phelps the murder took place off stage. The direction reads "A noise without- Fall of a body, and then a noise as If dragg'd along-' A note underneath explains: "A heavy bag of sawdust.' The murderers then came on through the opening for their last lines. Modern productions have been less discreet. Douglas Seale, in a much-praised production marred by a self-indulgent Robert Helpmann, made this moment "shudderingly effective . . . A scornful thrust of a foot which sends the body rolling down he forestage stairs. . . [was] a most successful stroke' (Darlington, <2DT>2, 30 May 1957). For Peter Hall's staging see Introduction p. 71). Sturua made only a symbolic gesture. The murderers simply inclined Clarence towards a large butt, centrestage, and then they all walked off together. <1Scene 1>1 Omitted in Cibber. Edward is not especially noticed in the early Shakespeare restorations. Gordon Craig played him in Irving's second revival, wasting "his delicacy on the wrong part' (Shaw, II, p. 290). The first generally remarked performance was that of lon Swinley in Henry Cass's production, (1936) who played him with "exquisitely detailed and moving perfection' (Williamson, p. 48). Only in the last twenty years has the potential grotesqueness of this scene been realized. Jane Shore was brought on again by Olivier, and in his film she ogles her lover Hastings behind the dying Edward's bed-head. <2flourish. Enter the king.>2 . . Terry Hands included the Duchess of York, Clarence's children and the young Duke of York in this entry. Avto Makharadze in Sturua's production made a long, paraplegic entrance in pyjamas, leaning on a Zimmer frame, with a grotesque grin fixed across his fat white face: a dying king keeping up appearances. 53 In Guthrie's Old Vic production Emlyn Williams's "quick satiric emphasis on the line "this princely heap" flashed at the bowing courtiers raised a laugh I have never heard equalled in the course of this play' (Williamson, p. 76). 66 In his film Olivier used a variant on this line in which the word "Lord' is repeated, emphasizing the title both times with exaggerated courtesy. 102-33 Roy Dotrice in Peter Hall's production "fumes and stumbles in a paroxysm of guilt, rage' and grief. It is one of the show-stopping moments' <2(Stratford->2 <2upon-Avon Herald,>2 17 January 1964). In Christopher Morahan's production Edward was seized by a fit of coughing towards the end of his speech. Having coughed blood on to his hand he then accidentally wiped it over his face. In Sturua's production he died on stage, sitting up on his throne. Richard made a slow beeline through the court, took the crown, panting heavily and, just restraining himself from putttng it on his own head, presented it to Queen Elizibeth. 139 Terry Hands here gave Richard and the Duchess lines 104-11 from II.2: "Madam, I do cry you mercy / I did not see your grace' etc. Richard then took Buckingham by the hand, who slapped it with a "tut, tut, tut' (promptbook). <2Exeunt some with King and Queen>2 Phelps has the direction "A cry within the King's chamber and confused wailing sound.' A "despondent' attendant comes out and the following exchange takes place with another attendant, the words taken from II.3, the "citizens' scene': "Wither away so fast?' "I promise you I scarcely know myself.' "The King is dead.' "Then look to see a troublous time' (promptbook). Irving followed this arrangement and ended the act there. <1Scene 2>1 Cibber calls this scene "The Presence'. W.M. Merchant reproduces a drawing (p. 41) from a 1728 promptbook of <2Richard II>2 in which the Paliament scene is shown with a canopied throne approached by three steps. This, he argues, is probably what was meant by the Presence. Cibber does not say whether the shutters opened to reveal it, or whether it was pushed on in front of a new pair of shutters closing over the previous scene at the end of Richard's soliloquy. <2The Gentleman's Magazine>2 describes this scene as "a slight careless copy of some side aisle of a church divested of its windows, and in lieu of which is hung up modern fancy armour. In the centre are modern square and oblong panelled doors to an immense large doorway!' (June 1800). In Kemble's 1814 revised edition the scene is set simply in <2"An Apartment in the Palace'.>2 Charles Kean at the Princess's Theatre had a built timber ceiling, draped walls and a doorway at the back, but Gothic. 1-33 Cut in Cibber and in most Shakespearian productions. Terry Hands was unusual in including it. Cibber (Macready following him throughout the scene) has sixteen lines of introductory dialogue between Stanley and Buckingham, bringing the audience up to date with the King's death and the nomination of Richard as Protector. Peter Hall and John Barton ran the two scenes together, going straight from II.1.138 to II.2.33 with "What noise is this?' spoken by Richard. <2Enter Queen[Elizabeth] with her hair about>2 <2her ears>2 This in Shakespeare's day was "the conventional dishevelment of bereavement, cf. Constance <2(King John,>2 III.4) and Ophelia <2(Hamlet,>2 IV.5)' (Dover-Wilson's note in the new Cambridge edition of <2Richard III).>2 Cibber omitted the direction about her hair; it would have been impossible to disarrange and rearrange the elaborate head dresses of the eighteenth century, and would anyway have been considered unseemly in a queen. None of the nineteenth-century acting editions or promptbooks restore it. 34-100 Most productions greatly shorten these lamentations. Cibber (and Macready) brought the Duchess on first and gave her a hodgepodge of her speech at 47ff. and his own verse, and followed up with Elizabeth mourning very briefly, again chiefly in his own words. There is no competition in their griefs, no echoing of phrases. Most productions move swiftly on to Richard's entrance. 38 Peter Hall and John Barton's version gave this line to Buckingham who crossed to the Queen, slapped and grabbed her (promptbook). <2Enter Richard>2 Cibber brought him on "behind', which presumably means not through one of the proscenium doors. The <2Gentleman's Magazine>2 May 1789 complained of actors "making their entries and exits through plastered walls and wainscot panels' (quoted in Odell, <2Shakespeare,>2 I, p. 395), suggesting that "double doors in the bottom scene would be more natural'. By 1800 the problem had been dealt with though anachronistically. Cibber gave Richard a characteristic aside on his entrance: "Why ay! -- Thcse tears look well! sorrow's the mode, / And every one at Court must wear it now --/ With all my heart, I'll not be out of fashion', and he then comes forward <2"weeping'.>2 Hackett noted that Kean took out a white handkerchief just before advancing. 105-9 "Irving, with a refinement of mockery, lightly spreads his handkerchief on the ground at her feet before kneeling to her. This little touch is thrown in with such finish that it is not till he rises again with the ironical <2aside>2 that follows, that its ribald insolence is made clear' (Sprague, <2Stage>2 <2Business,>2 p. 98). 120-2 Cibber cut Buckingham's idea of the "little train', and therefore his two explanations, first to Rivers and then to Richard. Phelps, Booth and Irving also cut the explanations and went straight to 141 "Then be it so...' an instance of their habitual reduction of any character other than Richard. 141-4 Of Kemble Henry Martin wrote delightedly, "What affected yet ridiculous weight he gives to simply appointing <2messengers>2 to the princess! <2[sic]>2 He wants her <2"sentiments">2 on the occasion".' ("Censures in this business' becomes "sentiments on this occasion' in Cibber.) 146-54 Cibber replaced this with a few lines of gloating from Richard: "Now by St Paul, I feel it here! Methinks / The massy weight on't galls my laden Brow.' Hackett noted that here Kean "approaches Buckingham and leans on his left shoulder biting his half-bent fore-finger side-ways'. Then follows a truncated version of the conversation about Stanley and Hastings which in Shakespeare takes place after the princes have left them alone together in III.1. Buckingham says he will find out Catesby and does not instruct him there and then. Since little is done to follow up their plan for Hastings, it must have been introduced chiefly for the sake of the line "Chop off his head -- Something we'll soon determine' (which is how it appears in Cibber). Cibber's instinct was right; the line became one of the most famous points and father to Cibber's own in the last act. Cibber then had Buckingham exit, and gave Richard a short soliloquy (see Appendix (b)), summing up his achievements and pondering the next step, very much in the spirit of Shakespeare's soliloquy at the end ofI.l, or at IV.3.36-43. <2The Monthly Mirror, >2 November 1800, noted the confldent businesslike manner of Cooke on the last line which he changed slightly to "The Tower? -- ay, the tower': "there was no side- glance at the pit, no grin of delight. ..'. Edmund Kean gave the line "with a world of argument and resolution in the delivery of the simple words -- "The Tower? -- <2Aye;>2 the TOWER!" (Doran, III, p. 414). In Terry Hands's production, the Duchess of York, Queen Elizabeth, and the three children, Clarence's and the Duke of York, remained on stage with Richard and Buckingham. During the concluding dialogue Richard picked up the girl, put her down, picked a skull out of a reliquary, and was chased round by the children. At line 152, Buckingham said "No', and Richard stopped. As they went out, Buckingham slapped Richard's hand, and the children slapped each other's hands. The children, the Duchess and the Queen stayed for II.4 which changed places with II.3 immediately following (promptbook). <2Scene 3>2 Most productions have cut this scene: Cibber, all the nineteenth-century Shakespeare productions, and most mentieth- century ones. "Political' productions, especially where the influence of Kott is felt, tend to include it. John Barton and Peter Hall strengthened it with infusions of their own, and from the omitted Scrivener's speech at III.6. After line 21 the third citizen, relying on the audience's memory of an earlier part of the sequence, questions the virtue of the uncles mentioned in that line; a little later the first citizen tells the news of Lord Rivers' indictment, to which the reply comes, "Here's a good world the while! Why who's so gross / That seeth not this palpable device', taken from III.6. 10-11. Jan Kott made great play with "Here's a good world' (Kott, pp. 24-5). <2Enter one Citizen at one door and another>2 <2at the other>2 The Folio stage direction shows how the two doors of the Elizabethan tiring-house could be used to suggest a meeting or parting of ways. 46-7 Maragaret Webster directed a politically explicit production at the City Centre in New York (December 1953) (marred by a mediocre Richard, Jose/ Ferrer). She made a telling moment at the end of this scene when just before the concluding lines, Richard's secret police entered, and the last lines were spoken for their ears (Sprague, <2SQ,>2 V, p. 312). John Barton changed line 46 so that the citizen says he was "sent for to the Mayor', and both the others say they were too. This, with the later crowd scene in mind, makes sense of an otherwise slightly baffling line. Bogdanov at the Young Vic made his citizens a newspaper vendor and other obvious proletarians. Morahan made them into respectably robed burghers. <1Scene 4>1 Cibber omitted this scene, as did Macready, Booth and Irving; modern productions usually shorten it drastically. Cibber (followed by Macready) transposed its plot information to his version of IV.1. Phelps shortened it and made it follow II.2. John Barton and Peter Hall, far from cutting it, added to the scene, giving it a historical breadth which only a knowledge of <23 H VI>2 could make sense of At line 4, ten lines are introduced in which young York questions the women about his grandfather York wearing a paper crown: "Methinks he was foolish to do so. / I and my brother have worn paper crowns; / I wot not why my grandad should.' Sturua had a scene roughly like it, Margaret opening it to announce the instatement of the new King, and Richmond as messenger. <1Scene 1>1 Edwin Booth cut the princes entirely, coming in at line 157, "Come hither Catesby'. Since he cut 1I.3 as well, he went straight from the end of I1.2 to the end of III.1. Cibber gives no location, and since the characters enter, rather than being discovered, it is likely that he intended the "presence' scene to remain. Kemble sets it in <2"The Presence Chamber'>2 but makes it a discovered scene with a "Flourish of Trumpets and Drums' (1814). Most Cibber acting editions thereafter keep the discovery. <2The Gentleman's Magazine>2 (June 1800) regrets that the scene was not a likeness of Westminster Hall but praises the scene-painter for "selecting exact copies of our ancient architecture'. Phelps had a practicable bridge set diagonally across the stage with "old English houses set raking to the back' (promptbook). Charles Kean, at the Princess's, reverted to the old custom of a hall in the Palace, using the same timber ceiling as in II.2, dividing the blue, gold- starred walls with gothic arches, and hanging them with the royal shield and ornamental clusters of armour. Calvert too used an interior set. <2The trrumpets sound. Enter young prince.>2... The 1689-90 cast list puts Tommy Kent for Prince Edward and "a little Boy' for the Duke of York; Cibber's 1700 cast list has a Mrs Allison and a Miss Chock in these parts, and so begins the practice of having girls as the princes which was common during the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries, and in the early part of the twentieth. The result was sometimes unfortunate, as with Irving in 1896 who used Lena Ashwell (when she was not standing in for Lady Anne): "Not in the least the sort of person whose sex is so little emphasized that it can be hidden in a doublet and hose. . . Nothing can be more absurd than the spectacle of Sir Henry Irving elaborately playing the uncle to his little nephew when he is obviously addressing a fine young woman in rational dress. . .' (Shaw, II, p. 289). Charles Kean and Calvert each took the opportunity for spectacle at the entrance; Charles Kean had Beefeaters and gorgeously dressed attendant nobles <2(The Albion,>2 10 January 1846 quoted in Odell, <2Annals,>2 V, p. 175); and Calvert had a "Grand Pageant': "the great hall of the palace was throng'd with nobles and courtly ladies, and their stately dances enable us to observe more closely the rich materials, the quaint devices, and the bright and varied colours of their splendid costumes' <2(MET,>2 9 September 1870). Phelps too had a large procession marching to trumpets over his practicable bridge. In Peter Hall's production Richard and Buckingham clearly stage-managed the whole thing: Buckingham signalled the arrival to Richard from the wall corner, Richard signalled for a fanfare, and the Mayor's party clapped the prince as he entered (promptbook). 6 Because he has omitted Buckingham's plan at II.2.150 and II.4 in which the messenger brings news of the uncles at Pomfret (II.4.42-3), Cibber has to gloss the prince's line with a dialogue between that useful couple, Lord Stanley and Tressel. 22-60 Omitted by Cibber, and almost as much (i.e., the conversation between Buckingham and the Cardinal) was cut by Phelps and Irving: another example of the emasculation of Buckingham. It also means that when the young duke enters there is no suggestion of that cruel off-stage sanctuary scene: Olivier put it in in his film. 37ff. In Morahan's production John Wood was standing behind the Cardinal here, and as the Cardinal moved forward to speak Richard stepped on his trailing robe. 68ff. Cibber substitutes "Why at the <2Tower!>2 But be it as you please', and then the young Duke of York and Duchess enter. The history lesson is cut. Phelps and Irving also cut a large part of it. Olivier in his film took advantage of his medium here: Richard and Buckingham stand together at a window in close-up discussing Buckingham's mission to the Mayor and citizens <2sotto voce,>2 while in the distance a forlorn Prince Edward, alone on his tall wooden throne in the middle of a great bare room, chirps out his questions about Julius Caesar. <2Enter young York>2 Phelps made the young duke embrace Richard. Christopher Morahan brought him on riding a hobby horse, "one of the few touches of colour, in the generally grey ambience. . .' (Young, <2FT,>2 5 May 1979). Bogdanov had him playing with a plastic "Action Man' throughout the scene. There must have been something coy about the scene in the early nineteenth century to make Hazlitt call it "the fantoccini exhibition of the young princes... bandying childish wit with their uncle' (Hazlitt IV, p. 303). 96 Cibber has the brothers <2"embracing'>2 after this line. 97 Here Peter Hall and John Barton cut the whole dagger, sword and apr episode, and introduced lines which again add to the historical breadth of the play. Young York is made to doubt the necessity for a Lord Protector, adding "I have heard / That in King Henry's time there was one such / Who was so troublesome that men removed him.' At that, Buckingham and Richard laughed, and Buckingham's aside "So cunning and so young is wonderful' (135) following on immediately, referred to his policital cunning rather than his witty cunning, as it does in Shakespeare. 106-25 Cibber cut the dagger and sword episode and substituted the "flout' about Richard's early teeth, lost in the cut I1.4. 110-31 Terry Hands made the young duke into a spoiled brat. Richard offered him a toy; he threw it down and asked for the dagger. At "a greater gift' he threw down the dagger, and on "light gifts' stamped on the toy. His brother cried "Richard!' and picked up the toy, while the other went for Richard's sword. As Richard (senior) bent down to pick up the dagger, young Richard jumped on his back for "bear me on your shoulders'. Richard shook him off and he fell (promptbook). 130-1 Lacy's acting edition (1854) representing Charles Kean's production has <2puts up his right shoulder going across to>2 Duchess'. Kate Terry was the prince in that production. According to St John Ervine (unnamed newspaper clipping of 30 January 1927, Enthoven Collection) Balliol Holloway's acting was "great' here at the moment when he was mocked. It was the only time one felt pity for him. In Olivier's film the young duke leaps upon Richard's shoulders and is whirled round with real fury. Bogdanov used the same business. In Morahan's production the boy imitated Richard's dot-and-carry-one walk, and John Wood "lunges' at him "as if to throttle him then and there' (Nightingale, <2NS,>2 12 October 1979). 140 In Peter Hall's production young York grabbed his brother and pulled him back (promptbook). 147 Hazlitt took this moment as an example of how far Edmund Kean's performance had degenerated since his visit to Ireland in 1814: "The motion' with which he turned on the prince "was performed, and the sounds uttered in the smallest possible time in which a puppet could be made to mimic or gabble the part' (Hazlitt, V, p. 201). Charles Selby's direction reads <2"Makes>2 <2a furious grimace, then suddenly checks himself>2 <2and smiles;>2 and a little further on, <2"Attempts>2 <2to laugh then makes afrightfu/grimace.>2 ' <2A sennet. Exeunt.>2 . . In Phelps there was a grand procession as they left (promptbook). In Peter Hall's production they appeared to enter the Tower, and as the great doors shut on them Buckingham and Richard shook hands with the Mayor and Richard shooed him off (promptbook). Sturua left Hastings on stage saying "Tomorrow morning England shall see a new king -- the young Edward V.' Straightaway Buckingham came on with line 161 and gave Catesby his instructions while Brakenbury as messenger gave Hastings Stanley's warning. Richard interposed the last two lines of III.5 about no one having recourse to the princes, and Hastings went straight into his conversation with Stanley while Richard was promising Buckingham his reward. III.1, III.2 and some of III.5 were thus intercut so as to heighten the irony of Hastings's confidence. The council scene, III.4, followed immediately, Hastings saying his most prophetic line: "I'll have the crown cu these shoulders / Before I'll see the crown so foul misplaced' (III.2.43-4). 157 Edwin Booth rejoined the plot here. 151-97 Cibber is still a step ahead of Shakespeare in the plot. At the end of II.2, in Cibber, Richard conspires against Hastings instead of Rivers, Vaughan and Grey; at the end of III.I therefore, he receives Catesby's report of Hastings's coolness and can move on to his instructions to Buckingham about the Guildhall speech, which in Shakespeare does not take place until the end of III.5. Cutting his practical part in the Hastings conspiracy is another example of the neutralization of Buckingham. 174-80 lrving also reduced Buckingham by cutting these lines, the meat, out of Buckingham's speech. 193 Henry Martin noted Kemble's "gibing voice' here (Martin, p. 19). Thomas Barnes on Kean: "one of the finest touches which we remember was his method of repeating the passage "Chop off his head".. . This is usually given with much pomp and ferocity of utterance. Mr Kean,. . . delivered the order in a way which shewed that he equally despised his victim, and any consequences which might ensue from his murder. He laughed, spoke in a jeering accent, and accompanied his speech with a familiar tap on the arm of his poor subservient creature. . .' (Barnes, p. 98). Hazlitt, however, found the "sudden letting down of his voice' here "decidedly objectionable' (Hazlitt, V, p. 182). Hackett noted that Kean lifted his hand to his throat "in token of. Olivier, in his film, spoke the line with a slight note of surprise that Buckingham should have needed to ask. 198 Here Irving followed Cibber, hurrying the plot forwards to the end of III.5 where Richard gives Buckingham his instructions about the Guildhall speech. Peter Hall and John Barton did the same, bringing in as Buckingham's initiative, not Richard's, the lines at the beginning of III.5: "Why I can counterfeit the deep tragedian. . .' which Cibber and Irving leaveout. <2Exeunt>2 Cibber leaves Richard on stage for his conscience soliloquy (see Appendix (c)) which drew much praise, even from the caustic Genest (II, p. 203). <1Scene 2>1 The scene is, of course, omitted in Cibber. In Olivier's productions, stage and film, Jane Shore was much in evidence here. Richard's parting line to Catesby, "And bid my lord, for joy of this good news / Give Mistress Shore one gentle kiss the more', providing the excuse. In Terry Hands's production it was she who answered at 2 and 4 (promptbook). <2Enter a Messenger to the door of Hastings>2 On the Elizabethan stage the messenger would have entered through one door and knocked at the other adjacent to it. Thereafter new arrivals and exits would have been through the messenger's doors, the other being understood to be Hastings's house. On the Restoration stage this would have been slightly "improved' by the width of the stage between the two sets of proscenium doors. <2Enter Catesby>2 While Catesby and Hastings talk, Terry Hands had jane Shore bring in water and a towel for Hastings. <2Enter a Pursuivant>2 This episode is usually cut. <1Scene 3>1 Omitted in Cibber, and all nineteenth-century Shakespeare revivals. Twentieth-century productions have often included it, emphasizing Its cruelty. 6 Terry Hands had Ratcliffe kick Vaughan (promptbook). 9 Peter Hall and John Barton cut Vaughan and Grey and gave Rivers a new speech in which he tells Ratcliffe that he is "no more than fortune's instrument'. Ratcliffe then slapped Rivers's face with his glove while two soldiers held him. Rivers went on with the interpolation to prophesy that Ratcliffe's death will be like his own, but that one day "When all the roses in this ravaged land / Are plucked out, and every proud man slain', then England will at last have peace. At this "all clap', and Ratcliffe dismissed them. Christopher Morahan beheaded them all on stage in one of the U- shaped slots (see Introduction, p. 00), their backs and tied hands twitching as the axe came down on their unseen heads. The conduits down the walls and across the floor ran red. <1Scene 4>1 Although Cibber cut this Scene, it was not entirely unacted in the eighteenth century, for Nicholas Rowe included a scene, which follows Shakespeare's fairly closely, in his popular play, <2Jane Shore>2 (1714). W.C. Oulton says that the part of the Duke of Gloucester was "usually sustained by a third rate actor', but that Kemble once "condescended' to play it (Oulton, III, p. 139). It was the scene that the critics most congratulated Macready on for restoring. Irving's 1877 promptbook shows a table and chairs standing in front of a raised gallery with steps running downstage left beside a wall pierced by a Gothic window. The lighting direction indicates sunlight through this window. Peter Hall's production had the same great iron council table which had been used throughout the series and which, to Peter Roberts writing in <2Plays and Players>2 (October 1963), was one of the things that had "acquired a strange effect of accumulated associations'. 10-14 These significant and ironic lines, which, as Ralph Richardson in Olivier's film showed, can give such weight to Buckingham's part, were omitted by Phelps and Irving. <2Enter [Richarch, Duke of]>2 <2Gloucester>2 Irving entered by the door into the gallery and must have run down the stairs in and out of the sunlight streaming through the window. 26, 31 In Sturua's production, at each of these lines Hastings, as chairman, was about to speak but first Buckingham and then Richard interrupted. Before he had time to collect himself, Richard, Buckingham and Catesby had gone, and he was left repeating "Now noble peers, the cause why we have met / Is to determine of the coronation' followed by "I'll have this crown of mine cut from my shoulders / Before I'll see the crown so foul misplaced.' 34 Phelps and Irving cut the strawberries. <2Exeunt [Richard and Buckingham]>2 Phelps has the direction "Gloster affecting mirth'. In Olivier's film all those who are left behind suddenly have misgivings and get up from the table, leaving Stanley and Hastings alone at the far end. <2Enter [Richard] and Buckingham>2 Shakespeare follows More here (as he is given in Hall) in so many circumstantial details (Richard's lateness, his excuse that he had been "a sleeper', the request for strawberries, the "if retort, and the promise not to dine until Hastings's head is off) that where More describes gestures and facial expressions these may throw light on how the scene was originally acted. More says that Richard re-entered the chamber "all chaunged with a sowre angry countenance knittyng the browes, frownyng and fretyng, and gnawyng on his lips and so set him downe in his place. All the lordes were dismaied and sore marveyled of this maner and sodeyne chaunge and what thyng should him ayle. When he had sitten a whyle, thus he began', and his speech is given much as it appears in Shakespeare (Bullough, III, p. 263). 59 Edwin Booth's promptbook indicates the arrival of the strawberries here, which later productions have made much of: "Page enters with strawberries. Ely about to rise, Catesby goes quickly to prevent him -- takes the dish and gives it to Gloster' (quoted in Sprague, <2Stage Business,>2 p. 99). 67 In Peter Hall's production they 'all clap' here. 69-80 More (in Hall): "and therwith plucked up his doublet sleve to his elbowe on hys left arme, where he shewed a weryshe wythered arme and small as it was never other. And thereupon every mannes mynde mysgave theim, well perceyvyng that this matter was but a quarrel. . .' Then Hastings's demurring reply is given, and Richard's retort, "and therewith (as in great anger) he clapped his fyste on the borde a great rappe, at which token geven, one cried treason without the chamber, and therewith a dor clapped, and in came rushyng men in harneyes as many as the chamber could hold'. More also says that "one let slye at the Lorde Stanley, which shronke at the strocke and fell under the table, or els hys head had bene cleft to the teth, for as shortly as he shrancke, yet ranne the bloud aboute his eares' (Bullough, III, p. 265). This may have been reproduced on the Elizabethan stage, although it is not a nineteenth- or twentieth-century stage tradition. When Kemble played the scene as it appears in <2Jane Shore>2 he is remembered for the first part of this episode when "he placed his foot on the council table and stripped his arm to the elbow'. It is the moment that Macready was most praised for in his "restored' version. The "vehemence with which the actor stunned the Council and the accused, the picturesque effect and reality (if we may express it) of illusion, with which he bared his arm, as the witness of his wrongs, and the masterly control with which he governed himself in the very whirlwind of declamation, produced upon the audience one of those electric effects, which are but rarely witnessed, and which it is delightful to share' <2(The Morning Herald,>2 13 March 1821, quoted in Macready, I, p. 224). At line 75 Phelps had the direction "strikes his hand violently on table, and 6 guards enter'. Iden Payne who directed a production at Stratford in 1939 also has a note "Richard thumps the table twice a cue for the soldiers.' John Wood struck the wall near the door with the head of a halberd as a cue. 76 Irving had "ten men in armour surround Hastings' and on "Off with his head', "Hastings starts up and knocks the chair over.' 77 Holloway 'proceeded to sort out the most luscious of Ely's strawberries with unction' (<2T>2, 27 January 1927). Sturua had the bishop return with the strawberries, just before Richard's vow to abstain until he sees Hastings's head. Terry Hands had Richard provided with a prop arm, and on this line Richard slapped Hastings's face and transferred the arm so as to leave him holding it (promptbook). 81 Edwin Booth cut the rest of the scene. 81ff. In Peter Hall's production "storm troopers appear quietly' (promptbook). Terry Hands had Lovell and Ratcliffe stab Hastings from behind repeatedly; he fell was helped up, and was stabbed again (promptbook). <2Exeunt>2 In Peter Hall's production Catesby signalled, and put his foot on the table. Storm troopers then returned, and "bash table' striking it fiat (promptbook). <1Scene 5>1 Cibber, all nineteenth-century and many important twentieth-century revivals cut this scene, inserting lines 71ff., which are necessary to the plot, at the end of III.1. Booth put them in at the aside in III.4 (38ff.). Phelps substituted a speech of his own in which Richard tells Buckingham to explain away Hastings's death to the Mayor and citizens. He then goes straight to 73 and on to the end. <2Enter Richard... in rotten armour,>2 <2marvellous ill-favoured>2 The significance of this is explained in its source: "him selfe and the duke of Buckingham stode harnessed in olde evill favored briganders, such as no man would wene that they would have vouchsafed to have put on their backes, excepte some sodeyne necessitie had constraigned them' (Bullough, III, p.267). Terry Hands brought Ratcliffe on, too, with a mirror (promptbook). 8 Terry Hands imported after this line the passage from <23 H VI,>2 III.2.182-5: "Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile' etc., which he divided up between Richard and Buckingham. Presumably the mirror was for practising with. <2Enter Lovel and Ratcliffe with Hastings'>2 <2head>2 "One of [Wolfit's] best points was his gloating over the head of Hastings in a bag, while he ate the Bishop of Ely's strawberries' (Crosse, p. 147). Sprague remembers seeing Jose/ Ferrer in Margaret Webster's production (New York, 1953) "wave his bloody sack at the Mayor and at last fairly drive the poor man from the stage with it' (Sprague, <2Histories,>2 p. 135). In Bogdanov's production, the head was carried like shopping in a plastic carrier bag. In Terry Hands's, the head was tossed about, Richard at one point throwing it to the Mayor, who fainted. Buckingham then threw it to Lovel who caught it in his helmet (promptbook). 71ff. The promptbook for Peter Hall's production has Richard and Buckingham dividing the speech up between them, inventing their conspiracy as they go along, very much as a piece of teamwork. 98.9 and 102.3 Cut in Peter Hall's production so that when Buckingham mentions churchmen at III.7.48 it seems to be his own idea. Terry Hands also cut these lines, ending the scene with an anxious "within the hour, cousin Buckingham', and a reassuring "within the hour' from Buckingham, who went out leaving the rest to wait, literally, for his return. All except Richard, sat down, lying and leaning against each other, and began to fall asleep. Richard suddenly shouted to wake them up, and was seized with a cramp in his shoulder. Irving Wardle commented on Richard's vigour, which he kept up "to hold his dreams at bay', something the production showed "by testing his reaction to a long silence during Buckingham's offstage speech to the citizens. Richard cannot bear it and starts spinning round and round clasping his shoulder in agony' <2(T,>2 16 April 1970). <1Scene 6>1 This scene was omitted by Cibber, and most nineteenth- and twentieth- century productions. Phelps was alone in keeping it in the last century. <1Scene 7>1 Ciber does not start the scene here. Richard's last appearance was at III.1 where he had just instructed Buckingham in his Guildhall speech and had uttered his conscience soliloquy. To fill in the interval in which Buckingham must be supposed to be making his speech Cibber here wrote in an encounter with Lady Anne usually known as the Gothic Chamber scene. Cibber gives no location, and makes Anne <2"enter'.>2 Later eighteenth- and nineteenth- century acting editions have her "discovered, sitting on a couch'. <2The>2 <2Gentleman's Magazine>2 (June 1800) describes the set: "The chamber now before us is painted without evincing the least knowledge of either the peculiarities of our antient architecture, or the arrangements of the interior of a mansion erected in that style.' The writer then describes what it ought to look like, and exclains: "What do we find here? Octangular pilasters against the wall, supporting semi-circular groined arches of an entire modern design. Various niches too (of the fancy kind) and one strange made-up window raised several feet from the floor. . . under the said window, a door of entrance, against which the couch is placed whereon the Lady Anne is discovered sitting.' Charles Kean in New York set the scene on "a beautifully executed representation of Crosby House, opening on a view of the Thames, and old St Pauls -- a perfect gem of the pictorial art -- the furniture richly emblazoned with the Royal Arms' <2(The Albion,>2 10 January 1846 quoted in Odell, <2Annals,>2 V, p. 175). The scene, which has its origin in Polydore Vergil (which Cibber read in Holinshed), shows a meeting between Anne and Richard in which she demands to know why she is so ill-used and (Cibber here departing from the source) he urges her to take her life. The soliloquy, or extended aside, that Richard speaks just before making himself known (see Appendix (d)) reinforces the romantic streak that Cibber had touched on in the earlier soliloquy at Anne's first entrance. It appears that he wishes to marry Elizabeth because she is fair and his heart is vacant. From Hackett's notes Kean relished the scene: he entered "sullen and angrily', he spoke "with malicious looks', and "grins' when he tells her that for once he is no hypocrite in telling her he hates her. Lamb and Hazlitt were particularly indignant about this scene, Lamb questioning Garrick's reputation as a Shakespeare lover since he kept such "vulgar stuff (Lamb, I, p. 122) and Hazlitt seeing no reason for it other than to make Richard "as odious and disgusting as possible' (Hazlitt, IV, p. 301). Genest, on the other hand, usually so caustic, thought it "not bad' (Genest, II, p. 204). At the end of the episode this amiable interchange takes place: Richard: "Your Absence, Madam, will be necessary.' Anne: "Would my death were so'. Rich: "It may be shortly'. Then Buckingham enters and the scene proceeds roughly as it does in Shakespeare. <2Enter... at several doors>2 Another instance of how the adjacent doors on the Elizabethan stage can represent different directions. 5ff. Hazlitt found Kean's "action of putting his hands behind him in listening to Buckinghim's account of his reception by the citizens' "decidedly objectionable' (Hazlitt, V, p. 182). Doran complains that the critics thought Kean "too natural', especially when he "crossed his hands behind his back' (Doran, III, p. 414). 55 Cibber cut this line, since Richard's later appearance is not to be "aloft' in his version, and before Richard exits he is given to say "We cannot fail, my Lord, while you are Pilot,' adding aside "A little Flattery sometimes does well.' In Peter Hall's production, just before the mayor entered, soldiers were seen patrolling the walls, a torture wheel was brought on; monks' cowls and prayerbooks were distributed by Buckingham to Ratcliffe who gave them to Tyrrel and a soldier. As the may or entered, Buckingham signalled off the wheel, and Richard and monks went out chanting (promptbook). <2Exit [Richard], Enter the Mayor>2 On the Elizabethan stage the comedy would have been sharpened by the closeness of the doors. During the eighteenth century, the Lord Mayor was played as a buffoon, and there are traces of the tradition in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Given the hostility during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries between the city fathers and the players, the tradition may well have had its origins then. The Mayor was the only character to provoke a comment from George II when he came to see Garrick at Drury Lane in September 1755; "when Taswell entered buffooning the character, the King exclaimed "Duke of Grafton, I like that Lord Mayor", and when the scene was over he said again "Duke of Grafton, that is good Lord Mayor".' Mr Fitzherbert who attended the King that night was pressed to say what the King thought of "the warlike bustle, the drums and trumpets' and so on: "I can say nothing of that" replied Mr Fitzherbert, but when Richard was in Bosworth field, roaring for a horse, his majesty said "Duke of Grafton, will that Lord Mayor not come again?" (Murphy, pp. 181-2). Genest noted that on 5 June 1819 when Kean was playing Richard, "the Lord Mayor was very properly played seriously' (Genest, VIII, p. 692). Robert Courtneidge tells a story of Barry Sullivan's Mayor, played by Billy Hardman, "a ruthless gagger', who "would drop his white wand innocently through a hole in the stage, and look with pretended stupefaction and dismay, as Richard glowered at him' (Courtneidge, pp. 110-11). In Guthrie's production Darlington complained that the Lord Mayor was "over-burlesqued' <2(DT,>2 3 November 1937) and Clive Macmanus described the aldermen as "a comic bodyguard of long-bearded clowns' (Enthoven Collection). In Terry Hands's production the Mayor was pushed about between Buckingham, Ratcliffe and Lovel, and when Richard appeared, he was virtually thrown at him (promptbook). Phelps's entry here was spectacular; he brought the Lord Mayor on pushed in a barge, as though by water, "four city Bargemen with oars upraised', trumpets blasting, and a crowd of citizens shouting. <2The News of the World>2 (20 February 1845) mentioned it as one of Phelps's "extremely picturesque scenes. 85 'Troops' can be made to raise a laugh as "heap' can in II.1, and Morahan's Catesby, Dermot Crowley, got one. <2Enter Richard a/oft, between two Bishops.>2 On the Elizabethan stage "aloft' was the little gallery above the doors in the tiring- house fac#ade, a position conventionally associated with the heavens, and the highest point on Fortune's Wheel. Here with his prayerbook and bishops, his pretended removal from earthly matters would have been all the more impiously underlined. Anne Pasternak-Slater, noting this, poin out too that it was "a wicked parody of Henry's similar appearance on the Tower, the day Richard murdered him' <2(Shakespeare's Stage Direction,>2 D. Phil thesis, Oxford 1974). But by the end of the scene there is a sense in which Richard's elevation in the gallery is legitimate, for the offer of the crown does represent his highest ambition. At no point in the story is he higher, for even at the coronation the wheel begins to move downwards. So the irony of his position is only partly understood Richard and Buckingham. The other part would have been obvious to the audience. Cibber, careful to avoid the blasphemy of bringing such perverted churchmen on stage, has the Lord Mayor and Buckingham look off stage before Richard enters, pointing him out as he "stands between two clergymen' and "bows to thank 'em for their care.' Then he enters alone. The clowning that disfigured the rest of this scene in the eighteenth century is indicated by Henry Martin's description of Kemble's new seriousness: "he employs no clumsy grimace, such as I have heard commended, to mark the dupery of his regret at assenting to his own wishes. . . the audience.. . can possess but very dull powers of compre- hension if they require Richard to tell them by any tricks or grimace that he is outwitting the mayor and aldermen, and laughing in their very faces' (Martin, p. 24). 104 Kemble's "apology to Buckingham <2singly>2 seems so natural: his surprise and perplexity when he affects to discern first the rest of his visitors is admirably defined' (ibid., p. 23). 134 In Terry Hands's production the Mayor here said "No'. Ratcliffe twisted his hand and he promptly said "yes', and fell over. Lovel and Ratcliffe picked him up (promptbook). 205 In Holm showed the crowd his leg (promptbook). 216 Olivier in his film here drops his book and his assumed character and stands for a moment genuinely dumbstruck, his hands on his hips. 227-40 Irving came down from his gallery to the centre of the stage, and ended the act at 240. As the curtain came down quickly on that tableau he "hid his face behind his prayer-book, and under cover of it shot at Buckingham a wink of unspeakably crafty triumph' (Crosse, p. 13). Phelps also ended the scene here, the crowd kneeling and shouting "Long Live King Richard', and Richard bowing at them from a balcony. Both these actors avoided the traditional gesture for the end of this scene but any mask-dropping here owes itself to Cibber's rather than Shakespeare's play. 246-7 and <2Exeunt>2 In Shakespeare everyone exits together, but Cibber inverts these two lines, and Richard sends everyone off and remains on stage himself for his triumphant soliloquy (see Appendix (e)). Garrick here surprised and delighted his audience "when he flung away the prayer- book, after dismissing the deputation -- a simple and most natural action, yet marked with originality' (Percy Fitzgerald, <2The Life>2 <2of David Garrick,>2 1899, p. 41. Fitzgerald gives no source, but in his introduction indicates enough original source material to have persuaded modern biographers and scholars to take his word.) Every actor in Cibber's version followed Garrick's new business here, and the tradition has survived into productions of Shakespeare. Irving avoided it, but Benson returned to it, adding a shout -- "King!' -- as he hurled his book into the air (Crosse, p. 13). Balliol Holloway "like Mansfield. . . flung the book sky-high' <2(The Sketch,>2 14 October 1925). Crosse says that at first Wolfit adopted Benson's shout, followed by hysterical laughter (he does not say whether he threw the book) but later changed his business and "when Buckingham and the rest had left the main- stage, leaned over the balcony, silent, with a fixed grin' (Crosse, p. 147). Olivier brilliantly added to the traditional business. "Richard flings the book of devotion aside, leaps from the window, gains the centre of the stage and extends his hand for Buckingham to kiss in a gesture of royalty horrible, evil, twisted and grotesque, but sickeningly powerful. The relationship between the two men changes on the instant without a word being spoken. With one astounded look Buckingham realizes that what he thought was a lizard is a rattlesnake' (Hobson, p. 137). Ian Holm continued in the same tradition, making as if to go and then as the doors banged behind the citizens, turning round, and throwing his book at Buckingham who caught it laughing (promptbook). John Russell Brown describes Ian Holm here as "childish in his humour. . . he sat alone after the scene with the two religious men -- here soldiers comically disguised -- and kicked his heels' (Russell Brown, p. 150). Terry Hands had Richard in effect drop the mask, by jumping down from the rostrum and going off with Buckingham. In a last touch of buffoonery, the Mayor fell flat as everyone went out (promptbook). <1Scene 1>1 Irving and Booth cut this scene, and Phelps greatly shortened it. Cibber wrote his own version of it, placing it within the Tower. Genest thought Cibber's part of the scene "poor stuff' (Genest, II, p. 204), and even Francis Gentleman thought it "not near so interesting as it might have been' (Gentleman, p. 7). Boaden confessed that he usually "retreated from [his] place' here, finding the scene "disagreeable rather than distressing' (Boaden, II, p. 59). It offered Queen Elizabeth some scope, but her potential was not realized until Hannah Pritchard and Sarah Siddons. Gentleman remarked that Pritchard 'did more for it in action, than the Author in writing', and that she had shown that the part, instead of being given to third rates as it usually was, should be given to a first rate (Gentleman, P.13). 21 When Siddons played the part Boaden felt obliged to keep his place, and was rewarded especially on this line: "her look and action when she exclaims [these words] and endeavours to pass on with her children absolutely beggars all description' (Boaden, lI, p. 59). 65-86 Cibber's Anne is not reminded of her original curse. <1Scene 2>1 On the Elizabethan stage the set was simply the throne, either pushed on or let down from the heavens. The splendour of the occasion would have been in the robes and heraldry suggested by the <2"pomp'>2 in the Folio stage direction. Cibber's direction reads "The <2Scene changes to the>2 <2Presence, discovering>2 Richard <2settled with>2 Buckingham, Catesby, Ratcliffe, Lovel, <2other Lords and Attendants',>2 and at Drury Lane in 1800 "we beheld an apartment studied to a most scrupulous exactitude. . . after that most beautiful and excessive rich chapel within the area of the cloisters of St Stephen's chapel, Westminster'. However, the authenticity was a little marred by a "modern armchair' for the throne (GM, June 1800). "Dramaticus' had earlier complained or the bishop "stiffened in reformed lawn sleeves, with trencher cap and tassel instead of the pontifical hat, cloak, and cassock' (GM, May 1789). Charles Kean had a great hammer-beamed hall with a gilt and canopied throne, looking very Victorian, on an anachronistically red-carpeted island in the middle. Lacy's acting edition describes his tableau, a crowded picture with banners, trumpets, soldiers of the Royal Guard, Garter King at Arms, Heralds, and of course the Archbishop and bishops, the Lord Mayor and aldermen, Judges and so on. Olivier, perhaps to suggest something sinister in the spectacle, held the coronation at night (Agate, S7; 14 September 1944) and he followed an innovation of Bridges- Adams at Stratford in bringing Lady Anne on -- "an unnecessary innovation' Crosse called it (p. 101) in the earlier production, hut Audrey Williamson thought it effective in Olivier's. Anne there was "a wan and sleepless spectre, sitting immobile at the side of the stage throughout the coronation scene. Already on this silent and suffering figure onc remarked the pale cold finger of sickness and death. Richard's -- "Conic hither Catesby: rumour it abroad / That Anne my wife is very grievous sick --" had in these circumstances a dreadful relevance which his auditor, with a sickened glance, was quick to appreciate. Joyce Redman, eloquent and passionate before, played Anne in this scene with an unobtrusive but moving sense of fatality' (Williamson, p. 175). Modern productions have tended to play down the pomp and pageantry. Morahan had the wooden throne actually knocked together on stage, while Margaret stationed herself, sitting down, behind it. Richard came on hastily wearing a red plastic macintosh/robe and approached the throne with no ceremony. <2Here he ascendeth the throne>2 The previous line suggests that Shakespeare intended Richard to symbolize his acknowledgement of Buckingham's part in his ascent by allowing him literally to hand him up the steps to the throne. Cibber forfeited this by making the scene discover Richard already enthroned. The Shakespearian moment has been pointed by some actors: Emlyn Williams dclayed thc sitting down "like a child saving the jam till last' (ibid., p. 76). Wolfit suggested "a sudden unleashing of demonic force, underlined by Richard's heavy red robe and the throne's red drapery into which he sank as into a bed of fire' (Wilson Knight, p. 251). In his film Olivier's feet were lifted slightly off the floor as he sat and gave himdelf up to a brief ecstasy, a detail which made him look faintly ridiculous. Alan Bates tripped as he went up. John Wood sat "with a sigh as if kingship were an anti-climax to its achievement' (Billington, <2G,>2 5 October 1979). 4-5 Hackett's note says that Kean here "leans upon him (Buckingham] familiarly'. 8-23 "In tempting Buckingham to the murder of the children, he [Kean] did not impress me as Cooke was wont to do, in whom the sense of the crime was apparent in the gloomy hesitation with which he gave reluctant utterance to thc deed of blood. Kean's manner was consistant with his conception, proposing their death as a political necessity, and sharply requiring it as a business to be done' (Macready, I, p. 95). Within this passage Cibber interpolated a metaphor which became notorious for being overacted: "I tell thee, Cuz, I've lately had two Spiders / Crawling upon my startled hopes: Now tho' / Thy friendly hand has brushed 'em from me / Yet they still crawl offensive to my Eyes, / I would have some Friend to tread upon 'em.' Bctween "to' and "tread' Hackett notes that Kean makes a pause, and "points down with his finger several times'. Garrick in the spider metaphor was not pantomimical enough at least according to one correspondent who suggested that on "tread' he should have made a motion with his foot as well as his hand (Garrick, <2Private>2 <2Correspondence,>2 I, p. 4). The metaphor was used in Selby's burlesque of the 1840s to make fun of the exaggerated diction of lesser actors, especially Charles Kean's (see Introduction p. 58). 32 Irving's page approached hiding a cup and ball behind his back (prompt book). <2Exit [Page]>2 and 42-5 As lrving's Page left, he handed his toy to another page, who played with it, taking turns with the courtiers, while Richard spoke his brief soliloquy (promptbook). <2Enter Stanley [Earl of Derby]>2 In Peter Hall's production, the soldiers "menace' him as he entered (promptbook). 57 On "About it!' Irving's nobles all laughed at something in their cup and ball game (promptbook). 64 This line is not in Cibber, but Edmund Kean restored it. <2Enter [Page with] Tyrrel>2 Cibber cut Tyrrel from this scene, and went straight to Buckingham's re-entrance. <2Whispers>2 Irving's nobles laughed again at their game. Olivier in his film demonstrated his meaning by pressing his throne cushion over Tyrrel's face. <2Enter Buckingham>2 At this point Irving's nobles listened. So did Phelps's nobles; Phelps's promptbook reads: "The Lords have been until now in conversation. When Buckingham enters they observe the dialogue.' 85 In Peter Hall's production when Buckingham attempted to mount the dai%s, he clashed with Ratcliffe, and as the exchange proceeded Ratcliffe took his position next to the throne with Buckingham at the foot (promptbook). 86-120 In Cibber this whole episode is cut to nineteen lines. Hackett's notes describe Kean waving his hand "in token of his mind being occupied elsewhere', appearing "absorbed in thought', and "unmindful of Buckingham', and then at the end turning upon him "with great anger' and exiting suddenly. He had not always acted it like that. When Hazlitt saw him on 21 February 1814 his expression was "of sarcastic petulance' which Hazlitt felt to be wrong (Hazlitt V p. 183). John Wood "ostentatiously drops off to sleep as Buckingham asks for his promised earldom'. (Young, <2FT>2; 5 October 1979). 102-13 Irving crossed right and left four times with Buckingham following after. 118 Cumberland's edition (1829) adds the direction <2"kneels and catches the King's>2 <2robe which the King dashes from his hand'>2 (quoted in Sprague, <2Stage Business,>2 p. 101) and the action was obviously traditional enough for Charles Selby, in his burlesque to copy it in his direction <2"Pulls his robe'.>2 In Bogdanov's production, the throne was a swivelling office chair, and during the preceding lines Richard had been con- stantly swinging away from Buckingham. On this line Buckingham, kneeling, grasped its sides and forced Richard to notice him. 120 Wolfit's "favourite trick of infusing dramatic power into his cloak' was finely in evidence. At the dismissal of Buckingham, Richard's robe was "for an instant a tongue of flame' (Wilson Knight, pp. 251-2). Ian Holm "flicks' Buckingham and pushed him aside (promptbook). In Sturua's production Richard simply said "Chop off his head' and the Jester repeated to Buckingham his own words to Hastings: "We know each other's faces: for our hearts . . .'. 121-4 In Cibber Buckingham's speech is padded out with sentimental reflections on Richard's other victims whose "joyful souls' he supposes to be looking down "in smiles' from "the walls of heav'n'. In Sturua's production Buckingham's last moments were send, like Hasting's, in dialogue with Margaret. "Hurry up,' she says, "It's nearly ten.' <1Scene 3>1 Here Calvert interpolated "one of thc most touching and pathetic incidents of the play', the burial of the princes: "with potent eloquence appear the dead forms of the gentle babes "eirdling one another / within their alabaster innocent arms" on the edge of their secret grave. The whole scene is most effectively designed, and the grouping of the chaplain and his attendants admirably arranged' <2(MET,>2 9 September 1870). Olivier in his film had Tyrrel's voice over as the murderers smother the princes. Cibber cut Tyrrel's speech and replaced it with a scene within the Tower in which Tyrrel, Forrest and Dighton discuss how best to do the murder. They then receive the keys from the Lieutenant and leave the stage for Richard's soliloquy while they do their work (see Appendix (f). Hackett's notes show Kean "nervous and thoughtful' during the soliloquy; he "frequently laps his robe closely around him', "dejected at his thoughts'. Then at the end, on "Hark! the murder's doing' he "slaps his hands together in joy. 24 This, in Cibber, becomes "Now my <2 Tirrel>2 how are the Brats dispos'd?' 29 In Cibber Tyrrel feeds Richard with a question on how to bury them and Richard replies with characteristic ghoulishness "Get me a coffin / Full of holes, let 'em both be cram'd into't. / And, hark thee, in the night-tide throw 'em down / The Thames; once in they'll find the way to th' bottom.' <2Edit Tyrrel>2 Mansfield "caused a commotion and a horrified smothered cry to be heard' as if Tyrrel 'had been set upon and killed outside the throne room' (Winter, <2Mansfield,>2 II, p. 59 quoted in Spragur, <2Stage>2 <2Business,>2 p. 100). He mounted the throne with "hideous exultation and then, in an instant, as the single ray of red light from the setting sun streamed through the Gothic window and fell upon his evil head, you saw him shrink in abject fear, cowering in the shadow of his throne; and the dusky room was seemingly peopled with gliding spectres' (Winter, <2Shadows,>2 1, p. 314). <1Scene 4>1 Cibber does not indicate a setting; the <2Gentleman's Magazine>2 has "The gate of entrance in the Tower again.' Phelps showed "the outside of the Tower of London with low archway and platform. Practicable gates. Low dwarf wall backed by Tower drop' (promptbook). Irving had a grand turreted view of the Tower. Charles Kean had the entrance to the Tower stage right with the drawbridge let down to the outer arched gate. <2Enter old Queen Margaret>2 In Morahan's production she comes out from behind the throne where she has lurked since IV.2, <2Enter the Queen [Elizabeth]>2 In Morahan's production, Anna Carteret as the queen ran to the stage with her hair down and part of her robe in front lapped up in her arms like a baby, pitifully beating it against her. <2[Sits down>2 Phelps, who was unusual in keeping much of the following lamentation scene, including some of Margaret's lists, blocked his sitting women in a diagonal line from downstage right to midstage right of centre. 39-115 Until recently this 'outbidding' sequence has tended to be cut completely and it is still always shortened. When Henry Cass included it and the other one at II.2 in 1936 there were groans from the critics -- "intensely trying to the players' Audrey Williamson said politely (Williamson, p. 47). But in the sixteenth century, set displays of formal grief were still familiar and acceptable. Wolfgang Clemen (p. 186) points out the common ground between this scene and the lament of the three Marys in the mystery plays and points too to the convention in plays immediately preceding Shakespeare e.g., the laments of the three Kings for Tamburlaine as he lies dying (2 <2Jam.>2 4393ff.). In Peter Hall's production these passages came over with something of the signiflcance that they must have had in Shakespeare's day; the Edwards and the Harrys of the incantations were actually remembered, so that the repetition "comes like the recapitualation in a symphony. This sense of formal continuity as well as narrative continuity is the great gain we have from the Hall-Barton treatment. . .' (Young, <2FT,>2 13 January 1964). <2Enter King Richard, marching, with drums>2 <2and trumpets>2 The <2Gentleman's Magazine>2 (June 1800) here exclaims "Why must a parade drum and fife play modern marches, and particularly the well-known one of the Belleisle march? Why must Richard, in his state of Duke of Gloster, of King, and when he is about to take the hostile field, appear in one and the same dress? Why does he wield a truncheon? I must answer. The galleries would not relish unfamiliar music; would not know Richard in a new dress, or closed in complete steel; and would not be satisfied to see a King going to battle with any other insignia than what is depicted on signs at alehouse doors for the principle characteristic of a modern commander.' "Dramaticus' <2(GM,>2 May 1789) describes Richard's troops wearing the "uniform of the soldiers in St James's park, with short jackets and cocked up hats'. Charles Kean had the procession marching across his practicable drawbridge, "a splendid scene, the solid towers giving the picture an appearance of strong reality, and the whole business of the soldiers passing through the archway being most skilfully managed, (T, 22 February 1854). Perhaps Phelps's platform was a similar bridge, and since his gates were practicable he must have intended his army to march through them. Calvert too had a spectacular procession. Audrey Williamson was pleasantly surprised to see this section of the scene in Henry Cass's production (Williamson, p. 47), and Donald Wolfit confirms the implication when he says that it is "so regrettably cut from the text on occasion'. He says it was his favourite scene in the play (Wolfit, p. 206). Christopher Morahan's business here was new. John Wood's Richard and his cronies came on with a map and a box of toy soldiers. He spread them on the ground and began to plan his campaign as if playing a game. 151 <2and Flourish. Alarums>2 Hackett's note on Kean reads "Lifts both arms in fury'. John Wood caused a mocking blast of toy trumpets and whlstles. 155ff. As the Duchess proceeded John Wood lay down on the map like a child. 184ff. Hackett's note on Kean described him as "impatient', scarcely appearing notice her words. In contrast, Barry Sullivan chose this moment to show Richard's first 'check' (Winter, <2Shakespeare>2, 1, p. 114). John Wood curled himself up into a foetal ball and sucked his thumb. 199ff. Cibber reduced this second "persuasion' scene from 230 lines to 71 Irving cut it to 50 lines. Audrey Williamson mentions Henry Cass in 1936 including it and the implication is that it was normally left out at that period (Williamson, p. 47). It is cut from Olivier's film. John Palmer in <2Political Characters of Shakespeare>2 (p. 104) says that the scene was "psychologically right', showing Richard's loss of grip, but "theatrically disappointing'. Ian Holm made it one of the two masterpieces of perversion', better even than the other, parallel scene with Lady Anne (Lambert, <2ST>2, 25 August 1963). John Wood and Anna Carteret made it a "scene full of evil eroticism' and their acting turned it into one of the best scenes of the evening (Billington, <2G,>2 5 October 1979). 260 Irving's promptbook (1877) makes sense of this line by putting the emphasis on "from'. 276 The reference to Rutland is omitt in Cibber, of course, and Irving does not restore it. 412 Cibber cleared up any ambiguity by giving Elizabeth an aside here in which she says that she will "seemingly' comply, and "thus / By sending <2Richmond>2 word of his Intent / Shall gain some time to let my Child escape him.' 431-2 In Peter Hall's production "Elizabeth kisses Richard passionately. Richard breaks away.' As she went out she looked back once, and Richard on his line turned away and spat (promptbook). 441-60 Where Shakespeare's Richard is rattled, Cibber's is firm and decisive. This was the moment when Garrick's audience was "more especially charmed', the moment when he "having thrown aside the hypocrite and politician assumed the warrior and the hero' (Davies <2Life>2 I p. 41). "Amidst all the discouraging tidings that he receives in the latter end of the fourth act', wrote Thomas Wilkes, "amidst all the bustle of repeated disappointment he maintains the intrepidity and fire of the character, in a manner which none but himself can sustain' (Wilkes, p. 239). This was Kemble's moment too, but it was his "elevation and grandeur', not his fire, that struck Henry Martin (Martin, p. 28). 469 Cooke's "whole soul thrown into the sneering expression of the face and tone of voice said in the four words such unutterable things as defy language' (Dunlap, II, p. 355). "In his studied mode of delivering the passages "Well as you guess?" and "Off with his head. So much for Buckingham" he [Edmund Kean] could not approach the searching sarcastic incredulity, or the rich vindictive chuckle of Cooke' (Macready, 1, p. 96). Edmund Kean's reply was "truly admirable. Suspicion of Stanley's fidelity seemed to rush into every fibre. . . and his mind seemed in contest with his feelings' (Phippen, p. 94 quoted in Downer's notes to Hackett, p. xxix). 472-6 Not in Cibber and first restored by Kemble. Kemble's "lofty' tone at this point thrilled Henry Martin: "he could fill the throne of all the world' (Martin, p. 30). Olivier in his film runs back to his throne and quickly sits on it. In Peter Hall's production "Richard rushes up and sits on throne, puts on crown' (promptbook). 487 Cibber's alteration of this line to "The north! What do they in the north' etc., made one of his most famous points. Garrick said it with "rage and rapidity' (Murphy, p. 16) and Kean with a "loud, shrill, taunting interrogatory' (Brougham, <2Recollections of a Long Life,>2 I, pp. 86-7, quoted in Downer's notes to Hackett, p. xxix). <2Enter a Messenger>2 The other messenger entries are all cut in Cibber, so that Richard is not given the opportunity to strike the bearer of good news. 535 After this line Cibbe his most famous "claptrap': "Off with his head! So much for Buckingham.' "Garrick's look and action when he pronounced the words. . . were so significant and important from his visible enjoyment of the incident that several loud shouts of approbation proclaimed the triumph of the actor and the satisfaction of the audience' (Davies, <2Life,>2 I, p. 41). Cooke's "rich vindictive chuckle' (Macready I, p. 96) passed to Edmund Kean who put the chuckle on "Buck'; Doran felt it to be "wanting in dignity' (Doran, III, p. 414). Hunt describes Edmund Kean's contemptuous levity on the word "Buckingham' -- "a sort of fondness and forsoothness of sarcasm. . . which seemed to set the poor Duke and his pretensions at a distance ludicrously immeasurable' (Hunt, Archer, p. 202). Dickens described the way the point was made by bad actors: " "Orf with his 'ed" (very quick and loud; then slow and sneeringly) -- "So much for Bu-u-u-u-uckingham!" Lay the emphasis on "uck"; get yourself gradually into a corner, and work with your right hand while you're saying it, as if you were feeling your way, and it's sure to do' ("Private Theatres', <2Sketches>2 by <2Boz). The Times>2 (22 February 1854) described how every Richard since Edmund Kean followed a "prescribed mode for pulling up his glove while he orders in a peculiar voice, the decapitation of [Buckingham]'. Charles Kean, whose production the article was reviewing, was faithful to his father's memory in this and elsewhere "and the thunders of delight marked the recognition of the old incitements to applause'. Sprague mentions the American Shakespearian actor, Walter Hampden, including it in a production in 1934 -- "we put it back in rehearsal, <2it was>2 <2so good">2 (Sprague, <2Histories,>2 p. 133). Olivier said it in his film. 539 Cibber here gives Richard a substantial speech (fourteen lines, seven of which are taken from <2H IV Y>2) in which he has a chance to do the sort of thing Kean did: "draws his sword -- makes a position pointing sword upward sacredly -- with great emphasis' (Hackett). It began with "Why, ay, this looks rebellion' and Kemble when he said the words "made us know he could not condescend to chastise petty treason -- danger must be gigantic ere he would measure his powers with it' (Martin, p. 31). Francis Gentleman in Bell's edition remarked on the "remarkable, quick, and animating succession of incidents through the whole fourth act' concluding here with a speech which placed "an audience on the topmost bent of expectation' (Bell, III, pp. 56,57). <1Scene 5>1 Cibber cut this scene, and most productions leave it out. Bogdanov invented an excellent device for it. Stanley, alone on a darkened stage, mimed the action, with sound effects, of ringing Urswick nervously from a telephone box, as though he had thrown off his "tail' for a moment. Urswick's replies were indicated by pauses, and Stanley repeated the gist of them as if in confirmation. <1Scene 1>1 Cibber cut this scene, and so did the nineteenth-century restorations. Modern productions usually show it. In Terry Hands's production Buckingham was attached to his captors by five long chains fastened to a collar round his neck. The diagram in the promptbook shows that he stood in the middle with the others fanned round in a half-circle. "A quick visual frisson' said Young (<2FT>2, 16 April 1970). 29 Peter Hall's promptbook has "Buck bows, Rat. clicks, Soldiers salute. B. snorts.' <1Scene 2>1 Cibber says "The Field'. The <2Gentleman's Magazine>2 for June 1800 describes "A wood', into which Richmond "struts in a sort of piecemeal armour made up of odds and ends for we find only part of his body and thighs covered with it'. In this he "swerves a little from thc common playhouse equipment'. (Probably no armour at all had been customary). Richmond's party is distinguished by a "solitary banner with a red rose!' The "antiquary' was scandalized: "Where are Richmond's armorial bearings?' Meanwhile the drum and fife are playing "the very march when the colours are receivcd on the parade every morning in St James's park, and when our Sovereign is saluted by his guards, but it is an air that John Bull dclights in'. Phelps's promptbook indicates trumpets. Charles Kean's set and entrance impressed <2The>2 <2Times>2 (22 February 1854) which felt that even his IV.4 entrance was eclipsed by it. The back scene showed a distant view of Tamworth, and a rustic hump-backed bridge "connected the back with the front of the stage'. This "was crossed by Richmond's forces producing an excellent effect'. Wherever "multitude is intended', Charles Kean made the figures "continue off the wing so the end of the series is never seen'. Irving cut the scene and went straight to V.3.19-46 ("The weary sun hath made a golden set' etc.) to which he added Stanley's entrance at 79 continuing to the end of Richmond's prayer. He then returned to Richard at V.3.47 (What is't a'clock) leaving out the first part of the scene -- where Richard orders his tent to be put up. Booth also ran Richmond's scenes together in the first part of his last act. The rearrangement suited their versions which retained Cibber's plan of having the ghosts appear to Richard alone. Booth's ghosts did "spout' their lines at Richard, but he was "imaginary' <2(Brooklyn Daily Eagle,>2 19 February 1878 quoted in Borden, p. 342). Scene 3 Scholars have been divided as to whether two tents were erected on the Elizabethan stage or not. Fusillo suggests that the two doors in the tiring house wall represented the tents (Sq 6 (1955), pp. 193- 4), and Hosley finds some evidence in support of his theory (Sq 7 (1956), pp. 458- 9). Albert Weiner suggests that one tent was effected at Richard's bidding which, at his exit, is occupied by Richmond; for Richard a chair and table would have sufficed with the advantage that his face and body would have been exposed for the ghostly visitations <2(Sq>2 13 (1962), pp. 258-60). Clifford Leech assumes two tents when he points to their possible resemblance to the simultaneous presence of the Heaven and Hell mansions in the miracle plays ("Shakespeare, Cibber and Tudor Myth', <2Shakespearian Essays,>2 ed. Alwin Thaler and Norman Sanders, Knoxville, 1964, p.80). If the tent-hanging is properly tied back, Hosley's doubts about Richard's visibility are unnecessary. The non-symbolic illusionistic stage from the Restoration onwards was ill-suited to the simultaneous display of the tents, and Cibber avoided it. Shakespeare alternates freely between Richard and Richmond during V.3, but Cibber, changing his scene with each exit and entrance, needed to cut the alterations down. Even as they were "the continual changing of scene and running about of parties first to one tune and then to another' always reminded one reviewer, grateful for Phelps's new staging, of "the rival booths at a fair' <2(News of the World,>2 20 February 1845). Stanley's entrance therefore takes place immediately after Cibber's version of lines 19-34, after which Richmond and Stanley exit. There is no prayer (though Charles Kean restored it). Richard goes straight from bidding Ratcliffe (Catesby in Cibber) goodnight, to Cibber's version of the ghost scene itself. Not until Cibber's equivalent of the section beginning at 47 does a tent appear in the directions: <2"The>2 <2Scene before>2 Richard's <2Tent:>2 Richard, Ratcliff, Norfolk <2and>2 Catesby', (1700). Subsequent editions prepared by Cibber, and later acting editions, do not mention the tent until after Ratcliffe's (Catesby's) exit at 78, which in Cibber precedes the ghost section. Until then the settings are <2"The>2 <2Field'>2 or <2"A wood'.>2 Phelps and Calvert were the only producers to present both tents simultaneously on the stage in the nineteenth century. Phelps's reviewer in <2The News of the World>2 described the whole process. "Richmond is observed marching onward with his army; and then we arc carried to Bosworth Field where the tent is literally set up in the presence of the audience. On the other side of the brook that divided the contending armies, Richmond's tent is then raised.' According to Dutton Cook they were both of "diminutive proportions' and, "pitched at opposite corners of the stage', had "rather the aspect of rival shower baths' (Cook, I, p. 52). Calvert transposed the little scene at IV.5 to V.3 at the point when Richmond's tent is being erected. In the twentieth century the simultaneous setting has not worked without criticism until the stage sets have themselves abandoned specificity. In 1937 Guthrie's pieces of painted canvas reminded Clive Macmanus of "those found at any seaside resort during the bathing season' (unnamed, undated clipping, Enthoven Collection). With Peter Hall's and Christopher Morahan's sets, which never attempted realism, the stage could be happily divided by the angles of the swivelling walls. 13 Here Cibber interpolated an exchange between Richard and Norfolk based upon those lines at the end of <2Henry>2 <2V>2, IV.2 where Grandpre/ talks of the crows flying over the enemy, and the Dauphin suggests sending them "dinners and fresh suits' (<2H V>2, IV.2.52). Then Norfolk urges Richard to offer a pardon in exchange for surrender and Richard ends the scene with a flourish: "Let Kings that Fear, Forgive; Blows and Revenge for me.' 19ff. Charles Kean set this scene in a white tent decorated with red crosses and suns; it filled the whole stage, and was open at the back on to a sunset view of the camp. <2The Albion>2 (10 January 1846) mentions the fact that Richmond's prayer was introduced here with pleasing effect (quoted in Odell, <2Annals,>2 V, p. 176). 46,47 These lines would have been crucial on the Elizabethan stage both indoors and out, to suggest the approach of night. The references a few lines further on to the "lark' and the "sunrising' to come, and the "cockshut time' that has just passed reinforce them. Someone would probably have carried a torch, but the rest was left to the imagination. On a winter afternoon at this stage of the play the outdoor theatre would have been darkening anyway, though at Blackfriars the stage- and house-lamps would have been lit and unsnuffable. <2Enter.>2 . . <2Richard>2 Most acting editions of Cibber's version set this in <2"Bosworth Field;>2 <2"Another tented fie/d;>2 or <2"A wood'.>2 Charles Kean had Richard's red, gold-trimmed tent stage left, before which stood a flaming cresset, and stretching back in diagonal Perspective were the other tents of the encampment. The sky was black and starry. Phelps has a note "Lights gradually down' and the reviewer on the <2News of the World>2 (20 February 1845) felt that the effect of night thus closing in was "dioramic'. "Two cressets', he said, were then "planted at the entrance to Richard's tent which threw a faint light over the forepart of the scene'. 47 Edmund Kean reintroduced this line and its reply which he gave to Norfolk (Webster, "Diary' 13 February 1827 in <2 Theatre Annual>2 (New York, 1945) quoted in Downer's notes to Hackett, p. xxix). Cibber began his new scene at 58. 58-78 This little scene was much dwelt on by commentators on Kemble, Cooke and Edmund Kean. Kemble's mood was "heavy, dejected, gloomy, yet determined'. Henry Martin was struck by his "slow-dwelling steps, his rapt meditation. . . We do not wonder at the languor of the nerveless arm that drops overpowered by his sword's weight -- it strikes against the ground. . . that accident carries to the heart a superstitious foreboding that tomorrow it may fall as powerless in his hand' (Martin, pp. 32-3). Cooke expressed his mingled apprehension and defiance at the thought of the next day's events by means of "his restlessness, his walking backwards and forwards, -- by his sticking the point of his sword in the ground and then recovering and flourishing it, -- by his sighing and silent attempts to speak. ..' <2(The>2 <2Philadelphia Mirror of Taste,>2 181 1 quoted in Donohue, <2Dramatic Character in the English>2 <2Romantic Age>2 (Princeton, 1970), p. 275). Edmund Kean, Hackett noted, made "long pauses' in this scene. 62 Peter Hall made Richard laugh here (promptbook). <2The Nottingham Post>2 (21 August 1963) commented on Ian Holm's habit of making Richard show himself obviously pleased whenever he achieves a good phrase, such as this one. 78 Instead of 'Leave me, I say', Cibber made Richard say "A good night, my Friends' and exit. Catesby and Ratcliffe are left to comment on Richard's state of mind, and reassure each other that he will be like "fiery Mars' once he gets into the saddle. Edmund Kean's business was helped by Cibber's quick exit here: "it would be impossible to express in a deeper manner the intentness of Richard's mind upon the battle that was about to take place, or to quit the scene with an abruptness more self- recollecting, pithy and familiar, than by the reverie in which he stands drawing lines upon the ground with the point of his sword, and his sudden recovery of himself with a "Goodnight" (Hunt, Houtchens, p. 113). Thomas Barnes, the year before, felt that this business was "a boldness which nothing but the consciousness of great talent could venture upon; for no common man dare keep the audience waiting without a speech or a startling attitude' (Barnes, p. 99). It drew "shouts of applause' (Hazlitt, V, p. 182). Barry Sullivan followed Kean here, but instead of completing his plan on the ground as Kean did (who "with a sudden motion. . . drew another line across as if he had just found his point of attack') he could not satisfy himself: "He retraces his movements, but halts again on reaching the same point. After a meaningful pause he leaves the field, puzzled and in heavy doubt.' (Quoted by Sprague, <2Stage Business,>2 p. 102.) <2Exit Ratcliffe.>2 .. Irving left alone in his tent impressed Sir Edward Russel with "one of the greatest things in the impersonation': "What has come to him? He walks the walk of an old man. He stoops. He almost totters. He moves heavily and feebly, and a helpless fretfulness seems unchecked to have infected his very gait. The reason? He is alone; much battered, much worried, at a troublesome crisis, and -- nobody is looking' <2(The Theatre,>2 May 1897). <2[Richard sleeps]>2 At this point Cibber brings Richard on again: "Enter Richard from his tent.' Presumably the tent was erected or perhaps it was just painted on shutters behind the "Bosworth Field' or "Wood' shutters which drew open to reveal it. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the tent seems to have filled almost all the stage. The frontispiece to Rowe's edition (1709), which was based upon the stage set, shows nothing but the interior of the tent. Hogarth's portrait of Garrick as Richard waking from the dream suggests the same size of tent with only a dim corner of background. Green's edition of the scenery and costumes for the Juvenile Drama shows a magnificent tent, again filling the whole stage picture. When the <2Gentleman's Magazine>2 for June 1800 describes the scene it only speaks of the interior of the tent and it calls the scene "Richard's tent'. Rowe's frontispiece shows the pieces of armour on the floor which the text calls for, and which are there in Hogarth's portrait and in the <2Gentleman's>2 <2Magazine>2 description. Hackett, using Oxberry's 1822 edition "marked with the stage business and stage directions as it is performed at the Theatres Royal', emended "Enter Richard from his tent' to "King Richard, seated on couch in his Tent', adding in the margin "Has paper before him on table and pen in his hand which he throws down just after scene draws and discovers - him.' In Cibber's version Richard is then given 31 lines based on the Chorus's speech in <2Henry V>2 at the beginning of Act IV (Appendix (g)) in which Edmund Kean "touched description into pathos' <2(The Athenaeum,>2 18 May 1833). At the end of the soliloquy Cibber's direction indicates that "a groan is heard', and exclaim- ing "Sure 'tis / The Echo of some yawning grave' Richard shortly after falls asleep. At the groan, Hackett notes, Kean "starts, presents his sword and listens'. Then as he turns to his couch he "lays down his sword on table, then bethinks him, takes it up again and sleeps with it in his arms'. Francis Phippen reports that "much has been said. . . on the impropriety of Richard's retiring to his couch and sleeping with his sword in his hand' (Phippen, p. 94), but it was obviously a long-standing tradition. Hogarth's portrait of Garrick shows him at the very moment of waking clutching in one hand his sword where it lies on the couch. <2Enter the Ghost of young Prince>2 <2Edward>2 Elizabethan stage ghosts customarily rose up through the trapdoor from under the stage, which represented the "kingdom of perpetual night' -- where Queen Elizabeth knew King Edward had gone. Throughout the eighteenth century, until Edmund Kean reformed the practice and brought them on behind gauze, the ghosts rose and sank through the trap, as one is in the act of doing in Rowe's frontispiece (1709). By 1770 Francis Gentleman offers the doubt "whether such false creatures of the brain should ever be called to view since it is most certain that they play upon our passions in flat and absurd contradiction to our reason'. He approved of Cibber's cutting out the appearance of the ghosts to Richmond, since "in representation one would have flattened the other and both must have consequently palled' (Gentleman, I, p. 9). Hazlitt agreed, wishing that "the introduction of the ghosts through the trapdoors. . . were altogether omitted. The speeches. . . might be delivered just as well from behind the scenes.' The actors and actresses were so "substantial', so "ruddy' that they "excite ridicule not terror' (Hazlitt, V, p. 184). The problem belongs very much to Cibber's play, less to Shakespeare's. Shakespeare's eleven ghosts deliver messages which arc scarcely more than a reminder of their particular wrong and the wish that Richard may "despair and die'. These ghosts are the agents of Nemesis evoked by the order of the moral world, not by the terrifled conscicnce of Richard. But Cibber connects them much more explicitly with Richard's state of mind and, with only four of them, there is timc to expatiatc. "Sleep on' says King Henry's ghost "while I by Heaven's high Ordinance / In dreams of horror wake thy frighted Soul: / Now give thy thoughts to mc, lct 'em behold / These gaping wounds, which thy Death-dealing hand / Within the Tower gave my annointed Body, / Now shall thy own devouring Conscience gnaw / Thy heart and terribly revenge my Murder.' And he comes back later with "Now Richard, wake in all the Hells of Guilt / And let that wild despair which now does prey / Upon thy mangled thoughts, alarm the world.' Shakespeare's ghosts are more interested in pronouncing Richard guilty than in dcscribing how he ought to feel about it, and since the whole play assumes an easy coexistence of formalism and naturalism the Elizabethan audience would probably not have minded their ordinariness. Cibber's scene, however, suffers from any obvious formalism, and soon after Hazlitt's complaint both Drury Lane and Covent Garden tried to improve the illusion. On 15 March 1814, <2The Times>2 noted that at Drury Lane the ghosts appear behind gauze, while at Covent Garden "the young princes appear at the back, but the shades of King Henry and Lady Anne come in at the side within a sort of aerial mist'. Appearing at the back probably meant that the back of the tent was made to slide away so as to reveal them. This became the regular method later. Hackett emended his Oxberry's acting edition from <2"King Henry's ghost appears'>2 to "Back of tent opens and discovers all the ghosts.' Cumberland's British Theatre edition (1829) incorporates the new procedure: "scene slides off at back of tent, and discovers the ghosts of King Henry through a medium (C), the princes, and Lady Anne.' Lacy's edition (1854) has roughly the same thing. Phelps's promptbook had a note at the beginning of this act: "Ghosts down trap behind gauze', but the trap was "behind a grove' so far upstage, and the lighting was so dim that the <2News of the World>2 reviewer could only say that they had appeared "by some ingenious process (20 February 1845). Booth and Irving both had "ghost music', so called in Irving's 1877 promptbook. Twentieth-century productions have often done no better than to bring the ghosts on looking like a collection from Madame Tussauds' (Agate, <2ST;>2 1 1 October 1925). But there were experiments: sound effects more sophisticated than Irving's ghost music made Douglas Seale's "ghosts wailing in the night-wind over Bosworth' impressive at the time <2(ILN,>2 15 June 1957). William Gaskill in 1961 had a "ring of armed men guarding [Richard] while he sleeps over a table in an open field' and these he used as the ghosts successfully (T, 25 May 1961). Peter Hall far from making them etherial made them frighteningly physical. Bogdanov shone a brilliant are- light at the audience and had the ghosts dimly visible behind it. At the end of the scene in Terry Hands's production "the ghosts join hands and form a circle round Richard', then they "hoist him up in the air and exit' (promptbook): "a macabre and eerie ballet' (Milton Shulman, <2ES,>2 16 April 1970). Sturua had them flitting on and off, crossing and recrossing in every direction, never stopping, and never speaking, from the moment the Duchess of York had finished her curse. 126, 128 In the preceding part of Peter Hall's <2The Wars of the Roses>2 the forgiving Henry VI had kissed his murderer "even as the dagger goes in . . . a most imaginative and poetic invention; and so is the echo of it before the battle of Bosworth, when Henry's ghost plants a kiss on Richard's forehead as he bids him "despair and die" (Young, <2FT,>2 13 January 1964). On turning to Richmond the ghost put his hand on his head. <2Enter the Ghost of Clarence>2 The ghost "hugs Richard' (Peter Hall's promptbook). <2Enter the ghost of Anne>2 Anne took Richard's head to her bosom in Peter Hill's production (promptbook). <2Richard starts out of his dream>2 This was Garrick's most famous moment: Wilkes could not "recollect any situation in Tragedy' in which Garrick had appeared "to more advantage than that in which he rises and grasps his sword before quite awake' (Wilkes, p. 239 quoted in Sprague, <2Stage>2 <2Business,>2 pp. 103-4). Murphy thought him a spectacle of horror (Murphy, 1, p. 24). But two correspondents of Garrick thought he should have lain longer on the couch after the ghosts had gone and have given "signs of further commotions in his mind' (Garrick, <2Private Correspondence,>2 I, pp. 3-4, 10). Kemble took up his sword and struck a tree with it. Then "he sinks to the earth. . . falls forward, faint, disorganised' (Martin, pp. 33- 4). Edmund Kean, according to Hackett, "starts, and writhes on his couch as if gradually awaking'. Then according to the German visitor Tieck he "staggered forward' leaning on his sword, and "sank on one knee, then started back as if he wished to rise, holding high in the air his other arm, which shook violently even to the finger-tips; then trembling, staring with wide open eyes, he advanced in silent anguish on his knees. . . still shaking with fright'. It was "an idiotic dumbshow. . . but when after a long interval he wanted to proceed with the monologue, he had to wait almost as long, on account of the extravagant peals of applause, before he could begin' (Dramaturgische Bla%ter, 1826, quoted by Theodore Martin, "An Eye-witness of John Kemble', <2The Nineteenth Century>2 (February 1880)). Tieck visited England in 1817. By 1826, according to Hackett, Kean had abandoned the journey on his knees: he "rushes headlong down the stage to the footlights'. Hackett then adds "Kean is a <2failure>2 in this scene, universally acknowledged'. Junius Brutus Booth managed a "dripping brow' presumably in readiness for "Cold drops of sweat hang on my trembling limbs' <2(Lippincott's Magazine,>2 June 1884). There is an interesting description in a manual on stage make-up, published in 1827, of a "celebrated tragedian of the present day' who "always removes his colour in the dreaming scene, and applies pomatum to his countenance, and then drops water on his forehead; and this he effects while tossing and tumbling. . . [so that] on rushing to the front... his countenance is an exempliflcation of the text' (Leman Thomas Rede, <2The Road to the Stage;>2 1827, quoted by M. St Clare Byrne in her article on make- up in Phyllis Hartnell, ed., <2The Oxford>2 <2Companion to the Theatre,>2 1967). Forrest started his convulsions well before the ghosts leave, and prolonged them before he started his speech: "He struggled on his couch with horrible phantoms. . . acting his dreams out he dealt blows around with frightful aimless energy, and, with an intense expression of remorse and vcngeance on his face, fell apparently cloven to the earth. He then arose like a man coming out of hell, dragging his dream with him, and, struggling fiercely to awake, rushed to the footlights, sank on his knee, and spoke . . .' (Alger, II, p. 746). 177-206 Cibber reduced this to nine lines. All nineteenth-century restorations cut from 185-92 and 202-3. 177-8 According to Macqueen-Pope in <2Theatre Royal, Drury Lane>2 (1945, p. 159). who gives no source, Cibber satirized Garrick's naturalness, rewording the speech thus: "Give me another horse. Well, well, where is the horse? Don't you see I'm waiting for him? Bind up my wounds. Look sharp now with those wounds! Have mercy heaven, but be quick about it, for the old dog cannot wait for heaven.' Murphy was more impressed: "Garrick called out in a manly tone "Give me another horse." He paused, and with a countenance of dismay, advanced, crying out in a tone of distress "Bind up my wounds", and then falling on his knees said in the most piteous accent "Have mercy heaven" (p. 24). Garrick's pause before "Have mercy' is used by Roger Pickering in <2Reflections upon Theatrical>2 <2Expression in Tragedy>2 ( 1755) to illustrate the eloquence of silence: "A man awaken'd in Surprise requires Time to recover himself. . . one, awaken'd in Terror, more; . . . But to bring a remorseless wretch to <2feeling>2 and from <2Feeling>2 to <2Pray>2 requires a PAUSE <2indeed.>2 .. exquisitely just and beautiful is GARRlCK'S <2Action,>2 in so small a compass' (Pickering, p. 51). Macready seems to have ripped his sleeve here, presumably on "Bind up my wounds', for Finlay who saw him in Dublin asked "Why did Mr Macready tear the arm off his vest or shape, a naked arm made a badjeu <2de the/atre;>2 he soon after atoned for it. . .' (Finlay, p. 276). Forrest spoke the first words "with a shriek' and then gradually "softening down to a shuddering whisper' (Alger, II, p. 746). 180 To an Elizabethan this was a sign that ghosts were about. How completely this is now lost is illustrated by Agate remembering his poetical reaction to Atkin's delivery of the line in 1921: "one's mind was suddenly filled with the blueness of the night sky' <2(ST, 11>2 October 1925). 191ff. John Wood here dropped to a whisper "pausing deliberately over "villain", "murder", "perjury", "guilty", "despair", as if recognising for the first time their full and appalling content' (Nightingale, <2NS,>2 12 October 1979). 201 Here Irving "dropped his hands as it were unconsciously, about a crucifix on the table in the tent -- a master touch' (Brereton, 11, p. 257). Hall Caine, describing Irving's first production, says that he "clings convulsively to the cross' (Hall Caine, p. 44). At the end of the speech Macready in Cibber's version used "some over-soft and pathetic tones' and Hunt warned him against whining (Hunt, Houtchens, pp. 220-1). But Finlay thought that his (Cibberian) line "I am but Man, and Fate do thou dispose me' which concludes the speech, "was as fine as anything we ever witnessed' (Finlay, p. 276)." 208 Kemble sank "almost lifeless. . . soliciting sympathy, into the arms of Catesby' (Martin, p. 34). Cooke "started from his knees' at Ratcliffe's entrance (Catesby's in Cibber), (John Bernard, <2Retrospections of the Stage>2 (1830), I, p. 20, quoted in Sprague, <2Stage Business>2, p.105). Edmund Kean "starts as if from extreme nervousness. . . turns sees Catesby utters "oh!" -- rests against LH pillar, covering his face as if overcome by his dream' (Hackett). <2The Times>2 thought that "nothing could be more beautiful or natural than his start at the entrance of Catesby' (T, 9 November 1819). Mansfleld elaborated: "Rapidly and repeatedly, in terror, he makes the sign of the cross, and finally reaches out and touches Catesby. . . then, satisfied, falls exhausted upon his friendly breast. The effect of this new business. . . was electrical' <2(Boston Herald,>2 22 October 1899, quoted in Sprague, <2Stage Business,>2 p. 105). 214 "I fear, I fear.' Cibber characteristi- cally omits this confession. Olivier in his film stressed the second- "I' as if he were surprised at himself. lan Holm stressed it as if "he was more concerned with his own importance, than with his fear' (Russell Brown, p. 150). john Wood "quavers' here at last, "referring to much more than the danger of death' (Nightingale, <2HS,>2 12 October 1979). 219 Cibber cut the last few lines, again characteristically and inserted first a few cheering words from Catesby, and then a terrific burst of defiance from Richard: "Hence, Babbling dreams, you threaten here in vain: <21>2 Conscience avaunt; <2Richard's>2 himself again. / Hark! the shrill Trumpet sounds, to Horse: Away! / My Soul's i Arms, and eager for the Fray.' Francis Gentleman said that "Conscience avaunt' was usually "roared out' whereas he thought the words ought to be spoken "with deep discontented anguish' (note in Bell, III p. 65). Hackett describes Kean here "exultingly brandishing his sword' probably like every other Cibberian Richard before and since. Olivier put "Richard's himself again' into his film, leaning down from the side of his horse, to speak it privately into the camera. <2His oration to his soldiers>2 In Charles Kean's New York production (1846) Richmond's army charged after the oration "with loud hurrahs', and "actually drew loud responsive hurrahs from the audience' <2(The>2 <2Albion,>2 10 January 1846 quoted in Odell <2Annals,>2 V, p. 176). In Hirsch's production (Stratford Ontario, 1967) with Alan Bates as Richard, the two orations were intercut, and delivered almost simultaneously: "The synchronization depicts Richmond's words as suspect as Richard's. Henry's white cloak must have been to show that in a power struggle the real bad guys are those who claim to be good guys' (Burnes Jackson, <2Hamilton Spectator,>2 13 June 1967, quoted in Borden, p. 490). <2Enter King Richard, Ratcliffe, [Attendants>2 <2and Forces]>2 Cibber makes a new scene here, and the <2Gentleman's Magazine>2 (June 1800) at this point.observes that, in spite of the various references to armour and weaponry, "not one of the <2dramatic personae>2 hath the smallest particle of armour on his person'. Only Richmond is excepted, and he has a "breast-plate and thigh-pieces'. The critic continues "nor are there any archers, though so strongly called on by Richard'. from the pictures of him it would seem that Kean did not reform the custom of wearing his usual clothes, though he did at least wear boots. Kemble "learned and judicious as he was' Marched to "the fatal field' and fought "arrayed in spotless silk stockings and long- quartered dancing shoes adorned with the Rose of York' (Mangin, <2Parlour Windows>2 (1841), quoted in Odell <2Shakespeare,>2 II, p. 101). Charles Kean appeared in New York in "gold armour, with a surcoat emblazoned with the Royal Arms' <2(The Albion>2 10 January 1846, quoted in Odell, <2Annals,>2 V, p. 176). Perhaps it was here that Calvert entered on White Surrey. The reviewer for the <2Manchester Guardian>2 (6 September 1870) only says that the horse was not present "at the crisis of the play' and that it stood "with commendable patience through a very lengthy dialogue of his betters, and only looked round occasionally as if to solicit a little sawdust and some papered hoops should his active service be required'. 306 Cibber's variation of Shakespeare's line has some force: "A weak invention of the enemy.' It became one of the points. Kemble threw the paper away disdainfully, (Martin, p. 35) but Cooke dwelt on it, reading it with growing attention as though fearing "that he is betrayed. His great mind surveys in a few moments the whole occurrence. . . He slowly throws aside the scroll and says it is an invention of the enemy with such a voice and in such a manner as lets us into his whole soul, and leaves us suspicious of those about him, and in admiration of his prudence and ability' <2(Remarks on the Character of Richard III as>2 <2prayed by Cooke and Kemble,>2 London, 1801). From Hackett's note Edmund Kean combined both these interpretations: "Takes the paper from Norfolk -- eyes him very suspiciously for a moment, then reads it -- strikes it to the ground scornfully with the blade of his sword.' Kean's "treatment of the paper' pleased Hazlitt, giving him, on his second visit, "fresh cause for admiration' (Hazlitt, V, pp. 183-4). 346 "Mr Cooke fastened upon this precise point of time to affect <2deliberation,>2 and stood. . . swaying his body backwards and forwards till he settled the fate of young George, and relieved the almost agonised spectators by "after be it then" (Boaden, II, p. 281). Thus Cibber tied up Shakespeare's loose end. 350 Cibber replaced "the spleen of fiery dragons' with "the Rage of Lyons'. More heroic perhaps, but as Genest remarks, St George is not known to have had anything to do with lions (Genest, II, p. 213). 351ff. "Upon 'em -- charge -- follow me!' is Cibber's line, and as Kemble spoke it "by a sudden irresistible impulse the audience seemed hurried to rise' (Martin, p. 36). <1Scene 4>1 On the Elizabethan stage the alarum and excursions can have been no more than the "four or five vile and ragged foils' that Shakespeare was to lament over in <2Henry V.>2 Cibber's direction is not much more ambitious: "Six soldiers drove across the stage by Richard' (1718). Not until the nineteenth century is much attention paid to anything but the single combat itself. Sometimes the management of supers went well: Charles Kean made this moment "wondrously life-like and exciting. A shower of arrows is really shot off, and the men rush from the stage in a body with an earnestness unusual in mimic warfare' (<2T,>2 22 February 1854). Phelps had been more ambitious still, as his prompter's notes show. The two parties entered one on each side of the stage, and advanced on each other. A front wood cloth was lowered before which twelve of each party crossed fighting R to L and all the rest got behind, where they disposed themselves round a bridge. After Catesby and Richard had spoken their lines and made their exit, the cloth was rung up to reveal "another part of the field' with the bridge at the back and "a profile of men and horses scattered about'. Richard and Richmond then entered and exited fighting. Richard entered again "very weak' and after a "few strokes' fell. At that point everyone came on, "the soldiers fight down the bridge and ground their arms perceiving Richard dead'. Sometimes the result was less orderly: in one of Edmund Kean's productions "the combatants Were so numerous that they received more annoyance from their own party than from the enemy, and the rear could seldom get off the stage without a shower of hisses from the spectators' ( <2T>2, 9 November 1819). In Edwin Booth's: "Supers at twenty-five cents per night cannot be expected to devote their attention to the performance even if they possessed the requisite intelligence. Therefore an army in motion becomes simply a mob in masquerade' (<2The New>2 <2 York Sttnday Weekly,>2 13 January 1878, quoted in Borden, p. 345). And in modern times Guthrie's "highly intellectual supers throwing themselves into attitudes reminiscent of the forty-seventh proposition of the first Book of Euclid' (Agate, <257>2, 7 November 1937) so muddled the battle- scene that no one heard "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse' (Williamson, p. 76). When more than the single combat has been attempted recently the answer has been a sort of dance: in Hirsch's production with Bates, the soldiers fought in masks to mechanized music like "nightmarish war-making machines' <2(Kitchener- Waterloo Record,>2 13 June 1967, quoted in Borden, p. 477). In Morahan's production they fought in slow motion to a "smithy-like clangour' (Billington, <2G,>2 5 October 1979) circling their prey with a great net which eventually they threw over him. Cibber brought Richard on first, howling for Richmond "to come forth and single face me'. Gentleman's note (Bell, III, p. 67) remarks that "Here the actor is called upon for an uncommon glow of rage, and a most rapid climax of expression'. Cibber's speech ends with "Richard is Hoarse with Daring thee to Arms' and Cooke was commended for "separating [the line] from the rest of the speech, and pronouncing it in an undertone, instead of grating upon the word hoarse, as if to prove the truth of his assertion' <2(The Monthly Mirror,>2 November 1800). Obviously it was customary to roar indiscriminately, and Edmund Kean's voice, by this stage of the evening, sounded "like a hackney coachman's at one o'clock in the morning' (Hunt, Houtchens, p. 1 13). It was here that Wilkes Booth, Junius Brutus's brother, would appear covered in blood. <2Enter [King] Richard>2 Cibber adds "in disorder'. 7 This line is perhaps the only "point' left in modern times, though Michael Bogdanov left it out of his modern war. 9 Ian Holm answered <2"striking down>2 <2Catesby'>2 (stage direction in Barton/Hall <2The>2 <2Wars of the Roses,>2 BBC, 1964). <2Enter [King] Richard and>2 <2Richmond...>2 At this moment wrote Francis Gentleman a "general murmur' always went up from the audience (Bell, III p. 68, note). Before the fight itself Cibber introduced ten lines of mutually complimentary insult during which Hackett notes that they "stand rasping swords together'. The sword in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a foil (Hackett's note at the beginning of the scene is "here change for foil'), and the <2 Gentlentan's Magazine>2 called the fight scornfully "a fencing match, not that semblance of martial prowess which distinguished the mortal strife between two old English warriors with battle-axe, lance and shield' (June 1800). Later, as the descriptions show, they changed to broadswords, and other pieces of medieval weaponry. <2...they fight. Richard is slain>2 Kemble "chills and curdles' Henry Martin's blood with his "diabolic glare' and "horrid laugh'. "When he felt his deathwound he seemed rather to throw life away than to wait until it was wrested from him.' "He bounded ere he fell as if to leap into eternity' (Martin pp. 37, 38). Cooke, on the other hand, prolonged his dying struggles: "One time . . . he makes an ineffectual effort to rise, and failing in it dashes away his sword in despair; another time he drops his sword, and, in making a vain effort to recover, falls again. . . But that which gives the finishing stroke to the picture is the look which, raising himself on his elbow, he darts to Richmond. It was terrible. . . it looked a testamentary curse' <2(Philadelphia Mirror of>2 <2 Taste,>2 March 1811, quoted in Sprague, <2 Stage Business,>2 p. 106). And again the "ineffectual struggle to snatch, in his expiring moments, at his fallen sword was well conceived' <2(The Monthly Mirror,>2 November 1800). Edmund Kean developed Cooke's approach and, at least in Hazlitt's description, lifted it into the sublime: "He fought like one drunk with wounds: and the attitude in which he stands with his hands stretched out, after his sword is taken from him, had a preternatural and terrific grandeur, as if his will could not be disarmed, and the very phantoms of his despair had a withering power" (Hazlitt, V, p. 182). Thomas Barnes was overcome: "we have felt our eyes gush on reading a passage of exquisite poetry, we have been ready to leap at sight of a noble picture, but we never felt stronger emotion, more overpowering sensations than were kindled by the novel sublimity of this catastrophe. , . Every heart beat an echo responsive to this call of elevated nature, and yearned with fondness towards the man . . .' (Barnes, p. 99). After Kean's return from Ireland later that year, the stretched out hands had become doubled fists with which he fought, to Hazlitt's disgust, "like some helpless infant' (Hazlitt, V, p. 202). "Richmond, to please Kean, was obliged to stand like a fool with a drawn sword in his hand, and without daring to use it' (Genest, VIII, p. 495). After receiving the mortal blow he looked at Richmond "as if he was already a disembodied spirit searching him with the eyes of another world' (Hunt, Archer, p. 229). However sublime, the fight was closely organized, as Hackett's "blocking' shows: "fights furiously back and forth -- in turning loses balance, falls on his knee, and fights up -- in turning, receives Richmond's thrust -- lunges at him feebly after it -- clenches -- [?] -- is shoved from him -- staggers -- drops the sword -- grasps blindly at him -- staggers backward and falls -- head to R.H. turns upon right side -- writhes -- rests on his hands -- gnashes his teeth at him (L.H.) as he utters his last words -- blinks and expires rolling on his back'. Cibber wrote in the dying speech -- "But oh! the vast Renown, thou hast acquired / In conquering <2Richard.>2 . . ' and as Kean spoke it he grew "calmer and calmer. . . till his mighty heart is hushed forever' (A fellow-actor quoted by Hunt, Archer, p. 229). Kean's fighting with his hands after being disarmed passed into custom. Explaining why J.B. Booth's performance was so like Kean's the reviewer for <2The Champion>2 wrote that Kean's success had made certain things obligatory: "every personator of Richard must fight like a madman, and fence on the ground, and when disarmed and wounded, thrust with savage, impotence with his naked hand, -- "And sink outwearied, rather than overcome". . . No one but Mr Kemble can be allowed to parry like a schoolboy, and drop like a gentleman' (16 February 1817). The back fall it seems had become traditional: Dickens parodies it in his advice to amateur players: "One-two- three-four-over; then, one-two-three-four- under; then thrust, then dodge and slide about; then fall down on one knee; then fight upon it, and then get up again and stagger. You may keep on doing this as long as it seems to take -- say ten minutes -- and then fall down (backwards if you can manage it without hurting yourself), and die game: nothing like it for producing an effect' ("Private Theatres', <2Sketches by Boz).>2 Crito in <2The American>2 (16 October 1821) was scornful of the "pugilistic feast' to which J.B. Booth "seemed disposed to treat us' but Thespis in the <2National Advocate>2 (21 October 1821) was impressed, and noticed particularly the "Satanic smile' which in his last agonies "played upon his lips' (both quoted in Odell, <2Annals,>2 III, pp. 112-13). Macready, "after receiving his deathblow. . . retires to the side-scene, and then, with superhuman energy lifts himself to more than his natural height, and comes pouring down upon his adversary till he reaches him, and then falls at his feet like a spent thunderbolt' <2(Blackwood's Magazine,>2 January 1820). Later in the century actors no longer used foils: Irving, whose fight was arranged over the carcass of White Surrey, "slashes and hacks and wields his sword as though he were in reality defending his life' (Grein, I, p. 187). Edwin Booth, whose "jaws worked convulsively like. . . a furious wild animal', fought with his dagger when disarmed (Winter, <2Shakespeare,>2 I, p. 113). Mansfield's fight was "no mere child's play. . . but a hacking at each other that should the shield of either.. . fail to receive the blow would probably be very painful to the unlucky recipient' ( <2The Theatre,>2 1 April 1889). Grein's description of Irving's actual death implies the tradition he broke: "he does not crawl along the stage in a ghastly death- scene; no, he makes a single gesture and passionately tearing his gauntlet from his stiffening fingers, he flings it defiantly at the conqueror's feet, valiant unto death' (ibid). But in his first revival (1877) his business at this point was different: "he clung to the blade of Richmond's sword with hands and teeth, and the sword was slowly drawn through them as life ebbed away, and he fell on his face dead. . . he never indulged in the backfall beloved of the gallery, but always fell. . . face downwards' (Dickins, p. 32). In the first half of the twentieth century the fight itself and Richard's death drew less comment, though Olivier's death; said Hobson, was "tremendous': flat on his back under Richmond's foot, he "convulsively' freed himself, and then "still lying on his back, he performs what with its shooting out of the legs like the darting tongue of a viper, can only be described as a horizontal dance' (Hobson, p. 137). Not until Peter Hall's production is there any real innovation. Here Ian Holm, completely encased in armour, with his visor down, fought with a sword and a spiked ball and chain, while Richmond fought only with a sword. The heroism was gone. He was a "tiny, obscene figure. . . trapped in black armour like a snorting, revolting animal' <2(Stratford-upon-Avon Herald,>2 17 January 1964); ". . . as he went widdershins reeling about Bosworth Field, blindly swinging ball and mace, he looked hideous with the ferocity of a poisonous reptile' (Hope- Wallace, <2G,>2 13 January 1964). He died "crooning to himself like a baby inside his visor' (<2T>2, 21 August 1963). "A horse, a horse" was weak as well as terrible and mad, and his death pangs were prolonged close to the audience at the centre of a vast empty stage. Here was little intimation of tragedy, little scope for any reaction to Richard besides aversion' (Russell Brown, p. 150). Alan Bates threw Richmond his dagger, in effect committing suicide. Bogdanov and Sturua both avoided realism. Bogdanov's Richmond, looking like an intellectual, left- wing guerrilla leader, with gold-rimmed spectacles and camouflage cap, brought on a real pig's head and placing it on a stand, cut it in two with a cleaver. The audience, too close for this, gasped and tittered. Sturua's combatants got themselves under a huge map of England painted on cloth and, with their heads poked through holes, lunged at each other with outsize swords while the map-country was convulsed about their shoulders. Finally Richard emerged and died on the floor away from the map, dispossessed. Since the eighteenth century, and perhaps before, Richard's death has marked the end of the audience's interest. Irving and Edwin Booth knew this when they brought the curtain down immediately after the fight. Cibber lingered over Richard a little longer, giving Richmond a speech almost in praise of him and of course cutting "the bloody dog is dead'. But it is unlikely that the "loudest gratulations of applause' which met Garrick's death (Davies, <2Life,>2 I. p. 41) and the deaths of all the other notable actors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would have subsided for the sake of Richmond's pious vision. Hackett cuts everything after Derby presents the crown, crying, as he does in Cibber, "Long Live Henry the Seventh, King of <2England'>2 at which there is a <2"Flourish>2 -- all kneel'. This may well have been followed in other productions of the period. Charles Kean gave his New York audiences a tableau of "The Field of Battle after the Action" with a graphic view of the carnage and devastation caused by the conflict' followed by a tableau of the assembled armies (<2The Albion,>2 10 January 1846, quoted in Odell, <2Annals,>2 V, p. 177). Into this flnal tableau in London was introduced the figure of "the dying Norfolk borne on a shield, and surrounded by priests who are directing his thoughts to another world' (<2T>2, 22 February 1854). 19 Oxberry's (1818) and Cumberland's (1829) editions both direct a waving of banners here; Peter Hall's Richmond joined the two standards of Lancaster and York at which the army knelt (Barton/Hall, <2The>2 <2Wars of the Roses,>2 stage direction). Most productions are still content to allow Richmond his virtue. Only the one in Warsaw described by Jan Kott (see Introduction, p. 72) and Hirsch's in Stratford, Ontario, suggested that the new reign was the start of a new cycle of tyranny.