The Tragedy of King Richard the Third: The Labeled Body

Actor Antony Sher as Richard

Masquerade...paper faces on parade...masquerade...hide your face, so the world will never find you—(from The Phantom of the Opera)

William Wordsworth once wrote:

Of Childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human Soul,
Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. (The Prelude I, 406-14)

Wordsworth is self-reflecting on how his mind, body, and spirit grew as a child, and has concluded that it was through his interaction with nature. Thus, Wordsworth is alluding to the idea that if higher order internal perceptions, such as morals and ethics are going to manifest, they would do so through nature—through ones external environment. However, in the world of life, Wordsworth’s perception is problematic, for not all individuals travel the same road. What happens when an individual is born into the world, and feels nature has affronted his body, poisoning it unnatural so that he is left bare to the vulgar perceptions of others? What happens when this man encounters a life filled, not with purification, but with hostility—with vulgarity?

In William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, Shakespeare plays with the idea of evil being associated with disfigurement, for Richard III views his exterior form, his body, as an unnatural byproduct of nature. Nature, in Richard’s eyes, has crippled him, and through Richard’s internal self-awareness, along with his interaction with those considered or deemed normative, embodies the role of alienation, welcomes the part of difference, and offers nothing less than disguised contempt for all other individuals he comes into contact with.

It is my intention to offer a “disability studies reading” of Richard, for the majority of scholarly debate focuses on what Shakespearian scholar Martine Van Elk writes as, “[a] center[ing] on the overall presentation of history in the play, and specifically on its status as a providential narrative in support of the Tudor Myth, or as a secular, humanist, or even Machiavellian text that looks to human action in this world as a primary cause for historical change” (2). It is through the lens of disability and difference, not power, but status in how exterior perception shapes the interior self, for Shakespeare has latched onto ideas, of what would be called centuries later as the “heteronormative” or “politicized body.” For even in Shakespeare’s time—the body was politic.

In Rosemarie Garland Thomson’s book, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature, Thomson writes, “The disparity between disabled as an attributed, decontextualizing identity and the perceptions and experiences of real people living with disabilities suggests that this figure of otherness emerges from positioning, interpreting, and conferring meaning upon bodies” (10). We note Thomson’s viewpoint in Richard’s opening soliloquy, for Richard politicizes his body in the soliloquy—bestowing it different. Richard remarks:

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks
Nor made to court an amorous looking glass,
I, that am rudely 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
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them— (I.I.14-23)

Richard views his body as one with limitations, but more importantly, one that was “cheated” by nature. Similar to Shelley’s “Monster” in Frankenstein, Dr. Suess’s “Grinch,” or J. M. Barrie’s “Captain Hook,” all individuals who are aware of their otherness, Richard specifically describes his body in detail as being “deformed” and “unfinished.” In short, in Richard’s eyes, a wrong has been committed against him, which begs the question: Why does Shakespeare open the play with Richard’s internal perceptions of self?

Thompson sheds light on such literary devices or self-perceptions, writing, “Focusing on a body feature to describe a character throws the reader into a confrontation with the character that is predetermined by cultural notions about disability” (11). Immediately, Shakespeare confronts us with Richard, for in the opening forty lines we learn that Richard’s only friend in the play—is us the audience. Through his multiple asides, and moments alone on stage, Richard confides in us, sharing his perceptions of self.

Further, Richard is in direct confrontation with his body, for Thomson writes, “The disabled figure profoundly threatens this fantasy of autonomy, not so much because it is seen as helpless, but rather because it is imagined as having been altered by forces outside the self” (45). We note these “outside forces,” for Richard remarks disgustedly, “Look how I am bewitched. Behold, mine arm / Is like a blasted sapling, withered up;” (III.V.68-69). Here, through the perception of external forces, as exemplified through nature’s bewitchment, Richard notes his deformity, one as Thomson potently points out, has been “altered” by external forces.

However, nature’s role only shows half the coin, for Richard is fighting a war on two fronts. While Richard sees his body as malformed, or “withered up, it’s the internal perceptions of others, of those who Richard comes into contact with that help code his body. In the famous “wooing scene,” Lady Anne sees through Richard’s false piety for the late Henry the Sixth, for in Act I Scene II, Anne refers to Richard as, “[a] lump of foul deformity” (57), a “hedgehog” (103), and the “[foulest] toad” (147). In the following scene Shakespeare wastes no time, for Richard continues to be torn down, dehumanized, for Queen Margaret vehemently chimes in with her inner perceptions of Richard’s spirit, mind, and malformed body, spiting:

Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog,
Thou that wast sealed in thy nativity
The slave of nature and the son of hell,
Thou slander of thy heavy mother’s womb,
Thou loathed issue of thy father’s loins,
Thou rag of honor, thou detested— (I.III.228-33)

Richard, through the perceptions of Lady Anne and Queen Margaret (representative of the normative others), who are the young, the beautiful, the able-bodied, has been delineated to an animal—a grotesque individual who is deemed grotesque by others. In his book, The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery, Wolfgang Clemen writes:

We cannot exaggerate the imaginative value of these revolting animal- images. Without our becoming conscious of it, the repulsive figure of the hunch-backed Richard as we see it upon the stage is repeatedly transformed into animal bodies conforming to his nature, and thus his brutal, animal character is illuminated from this angle too. Richard III is Shakespeare’s first play in which the chief character is delineated by symbolical images. (51)

Thomson writes of that delineated bodily feature in a chapter dealing with “American Freak Shows,” replying, “On the freak show stage, a single, highlighted characteristic circumscribed and reduced the inherent human complexity” (61). Is not Richard on a similar stage? Is not his body viewed, reduced, and labeled by those who seek to tear him down? Through the perceptions of others, Richard views his body as a sulking beast, for as Wolfgang Clemen indicates, how could one not become conscious of it?

In Power on Display: The politics of Shakespeare’s Genres, author Leonard Tennenhouse parallels Thomson’s words and connects it to Shakespeare’s “grotesque” individuals. Tennenhouse writes, “[...] the grotesque body is constituted out of the curses, obscenity, laughter, spittle and oaths of marketplace and carnival [...] Shakespeare uses the stage to represent . . .social reality” (42-43). Thus, Shakespeare has presented us with a man who, through the tradition of carnival and freakery, is performing on society’s stage—for Richard’s maladaptive body is comodified to the social politics and perceptions of the time.

In the minds of others, Richard is no longer an individual—he is a caricature. Richard is T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock, an animal who is “[...] not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be” (13). For as Thomson poignantly points out, “The rhetorical effect of representing disability derives from social relations between people who assume the normate position and those who are assigned the disabled position” (10). Like John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, Richard III is assigned a role, one who is “[...] destin’d to Eternal woe” (II.160), but as the play unfolds the reader watches Richards actions, for he shares Satan’s outlook of, “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n” (I.254-55). We make this connection in Act I Scene II, for Lady Anne sees Richard’s appearance, his animalistic displays, and labels (defines) Richard, commenting, “Foul devil, for God’s sake, hence and trouble us not, / For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell, / Filled it with cursing cries and deep exclaims” (I.II.50-52). Lady Anne and Queen Margaret’s defining Richard as a deplorable beast, that is unwanted sexually, and has made earth its playground, fits well with Robert McRuer’s Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability, for McRuer writes, “Stigmatized in and by a culture that will not or cannot accommodate their presence, crip performers . . . have proudly and collectively shaped stigmaphilic alternatives in, through, an around that abjection” (35-36). Thus, Richard performs, playing the part of the devil, through others defining his body and his mind.

In his book, Shakespeare and Masculinity, Bruce R. Smith writes that Richard’s childhood played a huge role in the shaping of his identity writing, “Richard III [was] despised and rebuked by his mother, [and] can only parody the principles of paternal emulation and sibling rivalry” (70). Thus, from early childhood Richard is unwanted and must “play the part,” or offer the “appearance” of normalcy.

Richard remarks, “I am determined to prove a villain [...] As I am subtle, false, and treacherous” (I.I.30-37). Richard’s separation from normate to other began in his early childhood, and came to fruition in adulthood. In her book, King Richard III, Janis Lull comments on Richard’s submission and embodiment to the role of villain, citing, “[...] his villainy is predestined, and the strong providentialism of the play ultimately endorses this meaning” (8). This coalesces well with Richard’s earlier remark of “bewitchment,” for Richard truly believes that the “events [of his life] are predestined by God or fate” (OED). This parallels well with Simi Linton’s similar perception of self as an individual being divided into a separate class, for in her book, My Body Politic, Linton writes, “For it wasn’t until some time after I sustained the injury to my spine that immobilized my legs, after I learned to use a wheelchair, and after I had reckoned with myself and the world for a while in this new state—it wasn’t until then that I gained the vantage point of the atypical, the out-of-step, the underfooted” (3).

It is interesting to note, that many authors believe that Richard’s perception of self, in his opening soliloquy, presents an individual who is envious for power. In his book, The Shapes of Revenge: Victimization, Vengence, and Vindictiveness in Shakespeare, Harry Keyishian offers, “[...] the play instructs us in the ways such feeling can distort a personality and cause it to pursue bogus reparations [...] to Freud, persons acting vindictively may feel like victims when they are in fact only expressing their envy at those who are more capable, successful, or happy” (104). Keyishian further cites Freud’s viewpoint of Richard, for Freud remarks, “We all think we have a reason to reproach nature and our destiny for congenital and infantile disadvantages; we all demand reparation for early wounds to our narcissism, our self-love” (104).

While Keyishian’s use of the word “successful” holds value, in that Richard’s opening remarks of self can be arguably viewed as what D. A. Traversi calls in his book, An Approach to Shakespeare, as “[...] established elements of envious villainy” (29), Keyishian’s word choice, using words like “capable” and “happy,” doesn’t coalesce well with an individual striving for power, and in many ways makes envy subordinate to status. Richard, like Bob Flanagan, is a much more complex individual to write off with the label of envious in the hopes of attaining power. Wolfgang Clemen’s, A Commentary on Shakespeare’s Richard III, reaffirms this, writing, “Richard’s cool and objective description of his own state of mind, his appearance, and his present situation, is a complex character study” (10). Rather, one could argue, status drives Richard—not power, but rank. Richard wants to be in the same class of individuals as the king’s he served. Richard doesn’t want to remain the disfigured individual who “cannot prove a lover” (I.I.28), but instead wants to transcend and transform into an individual who’s body, whose very stature demands servitude, respect—neutrality.

New perspectives or perceptions are key ideas concerning the disabled body, for like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, it is through Scout’s eyes, where we witness a society that shuns and falsely labels individuals through their own collective constructed narrative. One can argue, that in Shakespeare’s Richard III, the presentation of Richard, like Scout in Mockingbird, offers the idea that if individuals differentiate their collected perspectives, they will see the underpinning duality in the word difference. It’s through perspective in Act V Scene III, where the reader notes a shift in Richard’s character—for by the play’s end, Richard sees himself “truthfully” for the first time, and transforms.

However, it’s not the “good” transformation, similar to Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, where we in the postmodern world observe a repentant Scrooge who decides to share a goose with everyone. Here, after being visited by multiple ghosts, Richard—losses his identity completely, and says, “Oh coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me [...] What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by. / Richard loves Richard; that is I and I [...] Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good [...] O no, alas, I rather hate myself [...] There is no creature loves me” (180-201). In The Philosophy of Shakespeare, K. J. Spalding writes, “[Richard] is a creature without the love that teaches man that thou and I am one; an egoist self-parted from his partners; Richard lives a stranger in the world—a solitary in a [carnival] crowd. Thus, disnatured . . . he must show himself to them the being he is not” (29). This is vital, for Richard has found his true self. Here, the two soliloquies act as bookends, for the two complement each other in that they both deal with Richard’s conscious but, it is the ending soliloquy that is based in truth. In Clemen’s Commentary, Clemen observes:

Richard’s introspective monologue comes as a surprise. Up till now he has assessed every situation in terms of the external . . . here, however, we see him vanquished and punished by something within himself . . . appearance is once more contrasting to reality; appearance seems more menacing to Richard than even the reality. (223)

In the end, Shakespeare’s Richard is an individual who feels he never got fair shot, an individual who replies, “And I no friends to back my suit withal / But the plain devil and dissembling looks?” (I.2.235-36). In his book, Identity in Shakespearian Drama, James P. Driscoll comments, “Self-disclosure provides a forum for critical self-examination” (45). Thomson writes, “Stigmatization not only reflects the tastes and opinions of the dominant group, it reinforces that group’s idealized self-description as neutral, normal, legitimate, and identifiable by denigrating the characteristics of less powerful groups of those considered alien” (31).

Richard lives in a world that compartmentalizes his body. He has no friends in the play—except us the audience. Richard confides in us, for in his world, the world of exterior definition, we are the rational interior. That is, we note the falsities of Richard’s interior thoughts, and his subsequent embodiment of the irrational world. For Richard’s “power is veiled by a rhetoric of neutrality that creates the illusion of meritocracy” (Thomson 40). Like the “sneeches” in Dr. Seuess, where a star on ones belly signifies status over a non-starred belly—Richard has no star on his belly, and like the Phantom from “The Phantom of the Opera,” Richard is just a paper face on parade.

Works Cited

Clemen, Wolfgang. A Commentary on Shakespeare’s Richard III. Great Britain: Butler & Tanner Ltd, 1968.

---, The Development of Shakespeare’s Imagery. New York: Hill & Wang, 1962.

Driscoll, James P. Identity in Shakespearean Drama. London: Bucknell University Press, 1983.

Eliot, T. S. “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Waste Land and Other Poems. Ed. George Stade. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005. 9-13.

Keyishian, Harry. The Shapes of Revenge: Victimization, Vengence, and Vindictiveness in Shakespeare. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1995.

Linton, Simi. My Body Politic. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2009.

Lull, Janis, ed. King Richard III. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. Merritt Y. Hughes. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 2003. 211-469.

Orgel, Stephen and A. R. Braunmuller, ed. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.

Spalding, K. J. The Philosophy of Shakespeare. Oxford: George Ronald, 1953.

Tennenhouse, Leonard. Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare’s Genres. New York: Methuen, 1986.

Wordsworth, William. “The Prelude.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period. Vol. 2A. 7th ed. Ed. M. H. Abrams. New York: Norton & Company, 2000. 305-383.

Van Elk, Martine. “Determined to Prove a Villain: Criticism, Pedagogy, and Richard III.” College Literature 34.4 (2007): 1+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Apr. 2010 http://go.galegroup.com.libproxy.csun.edu.