Dear Members of SHAKSPER, I am making this paper available for the SHAKSPER mailing list as an "offprint." I retain all publication rights to this material. Anyone who wishes to quote from this paper should contact me first for permission. Having said this I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions for revisions. I am currently considering submitting it in a revised form to "Moreana," but would be open to alternate suggestions for publication. Romuald Ian Lakowski N.B. I have used the following sigla in this essay: e t t \ye = y [the]; \yt = y [that]; \wt = w [with] In addition, footnotes have been indented and enclosed in {} in the body of the paper. Address: Romuald Ian Lakowski c/o 3793 West 24th Ave. Vancouver, B. C. Canada, V6S 1L7 (604) 224-3018 4th October, 1992 EMAIL: Romuald_I._Lakowski@mtsg.ubc.ca usercong@ubcmtsg ___________________________________________________________________ The Misogyny of Richard III in More's History of King Richard III And Shakespeare's Tragedy of King Richard the Third By Romuald Ian Lakowski Richard III stands out in the minds of many readers as one of the great villains of English history. That this is so is largely due to the combined efforts of Sir Thomas More's History of Richard III and of Shakespeare's Tragedy of King Richard III. Whatever one thinks of the veracity of the early historical accounts of Richard III's reign, there is no question that the portrayal of the character of Richard III in More's history and Shakespeare's play is highly memorable. One characteristic that stands out, especially in Shakespeare's play, is the strong element of misogyny. Although the treatment of women in Tragedy of King Richard III partly reflects strong Senecan influences,1 {See A. Hammond, ed., King Richard III (London: Methuen & Co., 1981), 80--82, and H. F. Brooks, "Richard III, Unhistorical Amplifications: The Women's Scenes and Seneca," Modern Language Review 75 (1980), 721--37.} the tradition of misogyny is also to be found in the historical sources, especially in More's History of Richard III.2 {Vol. 2 of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), ed. Richard S. Sylvester. Hereafter CW 2.} Shakespeare, however, strikingly transforms and expands parts of More's account in order to heighten certain aspects of his portrayal of Richard III's antagonistic relationships with the female characters. Richard III is remarkable as a play for the way in which it deals so extensively with the themes of political corruption and dissimulation. Richard's reign is portrayed as a period in which nothing is sacred; neither on a political or social level, nor on a personal one. Richard will stop at nothing, not even at betraying his friends and murdering his kin, in order to become king. The opening soliloquy sets up an immediate and remarkable dichotomy between Richard's outer semblance or persona, and his true inner feelings. Within the first forty-one lines of the play we are introduced to all the essential themes of the play, including political and social disturbances, sexual dissoluteness and the corruption of language itself through the prophecies "that 'G' / of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be" (I. i. 39--40). Most criticism of the text seems to centre around the theme of political corruption and ambition, but the theme of sexual corruption and the hatred of women is also strongly developed in the play. Richard comes across in the opening soliloquy, in contrast to Edward IV's dissolute behaviour, as something of a sexual puritan and a malcontent: Grim-visag'd War hath smooth'd his wrinkled front: And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds 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 shap'd for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph: Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun, And descant on mine own deformity. And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain, And hate the idle pleasures of these days. (I. i. 9--17, 25--31) Ironically, we do see Richard in the next scene playing the role of a lover, albeit a totally villainous one. The theme of conflict between the sexes is introduced very early in the play in Richard's words to Clarence: "'Tis not the King that sends you to the Tower; / My Lady Grey, his wife, Clarence, 'tis she / That tempers him to this extremity" (I. i. 63--65). To which Clarence replies: "By heaven, I think there is no man secure, / But the Queen's kindred, and night-walking heralds / That trudge betwixt the King and Mistress Shore" (I. i. 71--73). The hostility between the Queen's kindred and Clarence and Richard is suggested in the historical sources. More suggests a couple of different explanations for Clarence's downfall in his History of Richard III: For were it by the Queene and the Lordes of her bloode whiche highlye maligned the kynges kinred (as women commonly not of malice but of nature hate them whome theire housebandes loue) or were it a prowde appetite of the Duke himself entendinge to be king: at the lest wise heinous Treason was there layde to his charge, and finallye wer hee fautye were hee faultlesse, attainted [condemned] was hee by parliament, and iudged to the death, and thereupon hastely drouned in a Butte of Malmesey, whose death kynge Edwarde (albeit he commaunded it) when he wist it was done, pitiously bewailed and sorowfully repented. (CW 2, 7/5--15) Dominic Mancini in his contemporary account, The Usurpation of Richard the Third, also reports that the queen "concluded that her offspring by the king would never come to the throne, unless the duke of Clarence were removed; and of this she easily persuaded the king.3 {Ed. and trans. by C. J. Armstrong, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 63.} More, however, suggests elsewhere that Richard may have been also involved in plotting Clarence's death: "Somme wise menne also weene, that his drifte [scheme] couertly conuayde [carried out], lacked not in helping furth his brother of Clarence to his death: whiche hee resisted openly, howbeit somwhat (as menne demed) more faintly then he \yt wer hartely minded to his welth" (CW 2, 8/22--25). Shakespeare obviously used his sources very freely. Sometimes a single line or a brief passage in More or one of the other historical sources, by a process of rhetorical and dramatic amplification, will suggest a whole scene or part of a scene; at other times a long rhetorical speech or passage in the History of Richard III is abbreviated to a few lines. Shakespeare responds readily to the dramatic possibilities inherent in the text.4 {For 'dramatic' interpretations of More's History: see A. F. Pollard, "The Making of Sir Thomas More's Richard III," Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait, ed. J. G. Edwards, V. H. Galbraith and E. F. Jacob (Manchester: for the Subscribers, 1933), 223--38, rpt. in Essential Articles for the Study of Thomas More, ed. R. S. Sylvester, and G. Marc'hadour (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1977), 421--31, 658--63; Alice Hanham, "Thomas More's Satirical Drama," in Richard III and his Early Historians, 1483--1535 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 152--190; Damian Grace "More's Richard III: A 'Satirical Drama?'" Moreana 57 (1978), 31--38; A. N. Kincaid, "The Dramatic Structure of Sir Thomas More's History of King Richard III," Studies in English Literature: 1500--1900 12 (1972), 223--42, rpt. in Essential Articles, 375--87, 650--1 (reviewed by M.-C. Rousseau, Moreana 38 (1973), 95--96); T. G. Heath, "Another Look at Thomas More's Richard," Moreana 19/20 (1968), 11--19; D. Kinney, "Kings' Tragicomedies: Generic Misrule in More's History of Richard III," Moreana 86 (1985), 128--50.} However, Shakespeare seems to be following very much in the spirit of More's 'satirical drama'. It is More who reports that, "as menne constantly saye," Richard was responsible for murdering Henry VI (CW 2, 8/13--21). And it is More, above all through his sympathetic portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Mistress Shore, and through his description of Richard's hostility towards them, who introduces the theme of Richard's "war with women," despite Buckingham's ironical words to the contrary: Womannishe feare, naye womannishe frowardenesse [perversity] (quod the Duke of Buckyngham.) For I dare take it vppon my soule, she well knoweth she needeth no such thyng to feare, either for her sonne or for her selfe. For as for her, here is no manne that wil bee at warre with women. (CW 2, 28/19--23) However, long before this we have been told that Richard did everything possible to foment trouble between the Queen's kindred and the young Prince Edward (CW 2, pp. 9--10, 14--15), and also that Richard had done everything to turn Hastings and Buckingham against the Queen: These two not bearing eche to other so muche loue, as hatred bothe vnto the Quenes parte: in this poynte accorded [agreed] together wyth the Duke of Gloucester, that they wolde vtterlye amoue [remove] fro the kynges companye, all his mothers frendes, vnder the name of their enemyes. (CW 2, 15/31--16/3) Had More solely been concerned with Richard as usurper and tyrant, he would not have given the Queen such a prominent part in this account. But, as it stands, the Queen and Mistress Shore have a part to play either directly or indirectly in much of the middle part of More's History (CW 2, pp. 20--67). It is true that Mistress Shore does not figure directly in Shakespeare's play (though several modern productions, including Olivier's film and Jane Howell's BBC production, have been unable to resist giving her a non-speaking part) but she is mentioned prominently several times. As the new Arden Shakespeare edition puts it, she was "the most famous absentee from the dramatis personae of the play" (p. 129). The queen does figure prominently in the play; however, much of the dramatic conflict between her and Richard is transferred by Shakespeare to Queen Margaret, who is unhistorically alive at this point.5 {She died on the 25th August 1482 in France, where she had been living since 1476. See Charles Ross, Edward IV (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 237--38.} More does briefly introduce the figure of the Duchess of York, Richard's mother, in his account of Edward IV's wooing of Lady Elizabeth Grey (CW 2, pp. 60--66), which Shakespeare makes use of in 3 Henry VI. (Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard's wooing of Lady Anne in Act I, scene ii represents in many ways an ironic inversion of More's account of Edward IV's wooing of Lady Elizabeth.) However, in More's account, Richard plays no part in the lively debate between Edward and his mother. More does report Richard's unnatural birth: It is for trouth reported, that the Duches his mother had so muche a doe in her trauaile, that shee coulde not bee deliuered of hym vncutte: and that hee came into the worlde with the feete forwarde, as menne bee borne outwarde, and (as the fame runneth) also not vntothed, whither menne of hatred reporte aboue the trouthe, or elles that nature chaunged her course in hys beginninge, whiche in the course of his lyfe many thinges vnnaturallye committed. (CW 2, 7/23--30) Shakespeare does make use of this passage (II. iv. 16--30), but elsewhere goes even further in having Richard's own mother curse him: Duch. O ill-dispersing wind of misery! O my accursed womb, the bed of death! A cockatrice hast thou hatch'd to the world Whose unavoided eye is murderous. (IV. i. 52--55)6{See also IV. iv. 168--175.} Queen Margaret, also, in cursing the Duchess goes even further in declaring: 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... That foul defacer of God's handiwork Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves. (IV. iv. 47--50, 53--54)7{See also IV. iv. 137--39.} Richard has become the hell-hound who devours "the issue of his mother's body" (IV. iv. 57). The dramatic conflict between the queen-mothers and Richard is almost wholly Shakespeare's creation, but perhaps it was suggested by the attacks that Richard makes on his mother in the historical sources, especially in More:8{But see also Mancini, p. 95.} But the chief thing & the weighty of al that inuencion, rested in this \yt they should allege bastardy, either in king Edward himself, or in his children, or both. So that he should seme dishabled to inherite the crowne by the duke of Yorke, and the prince by him. To lay bastardy in kynge Edward, sowned [appeared] openly to the rebuke of the protectours owne mother, which was mother to them both: for in \yt point could be none other colour, but to pretend that his own mother was one aduouteresse which not \wt standing to farther this purpose he letted not: but Natheles he would \ye point should be lesse & more fauorably handled, not euen fully plain & directly, but that \ye matter should be touched a slope [indirectly] craftely, as though men spared in \yt point to speke al the trouth for fere of his displeasure. But \ye other point concerning the bastardy that they deuised to surmise in king Edwards children, \yt wold he should be openly declared & inforsed [stressed] to the vttermost. (CW 2, 59/18--35) Shakespeare's most brilliant addition in this regard is the figure of Queen Margaret. The most obvious prototypes for her that Shakespeare could have drawn on, are the cursing and wailing women of Senecan tragedy such as Medea, Cassandra and Hecuba. She is an obvious embodiment of the Jungian archetype of the Terrible Mother,9 {See E. Neumann, The Great Mother, Bollingen Series 47 (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1963).} and, as such, has definite resemblences to the wicked step-mothers of traditional folk-lore and fairy-tales.10 {See S. Birkhauser-Oeri, "The Mother : Archetypal Image in Fairy Tales," ed. M.-L. von Franz, trans. M. Mitchell (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1988). See also M.-L. Franz, An Introduction to the Interpretation of Fairy Tales (Zurich: Spring Publications, 1973), for a Jungian approach to the interpretation of fairy tales.} As a witch-like or hag-like figure she definitely is most closely related to the figures in Macbeth of Hecate and the three witches and Lady Macbeth herself and, perhaps, also to Regan and Goneril, the wicked daughters in King Lear. Such is Shakespeare's dramatic skill that at first we sympathize with Richard in his encounters with Margaret. But, as the play progresses, we are gradually prepared for the climactic scene in Act IV, scene iv, where the Duchess of York, Richard's own flesh and blood mother, joins with the 'wicked step-mother' in cursing her own son. (The doubling of an archetypal motif is a very common theme in fairy-tales. Richard III is in a sense doubly damned---by both the real and the 'archetypal' mothers.) Just as there are two mother figures in the play, so also are there two wives: the Lady Anne, his own wife and Queen Elizabeth, his sister-in-law. Richard's relationship with them is every bit as destructive as that with the two 'mother figures' in the play, though they are not paired in the same way. Richard commits against them the two worst crimes that a man can commit against a woman: the violation of the woman herself, and the destruction of her offspring. Before the play begins Richard has already murdered Lady Anne's father-in-law (Henry VI) and her husband (Prince Edward, son of Henry VI). Nevertheless, he then proceeds to woo her in one of the most bizarre courting scenes in any Shakespeare play: Was ever woman in this humour woo'd? Was ever woman in this humour won? I'll have her, but I will not keep her long. What, I that kill'd her husband and his father: 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... (I. ii. 232--39) Again, such is Shakespeare's skill in manipulating his audience that we identify with Richard's success and laugh at Anne for being so weak and gullible. Only later on in the play does she acquire a certain dignity, if not strength of character, and we feel very differently about her in Act IV, scene iv when Richard arranges to have her murdered. It is interesting that for all of Richard's apparent success as a wooer there is more than a suggestion that he is unable to satisfactorily fulfill his marital 'duties': "For never yet one hour in his bed / Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep, / But with his timorous dreams was still awak'd" (IV. i. 84--86).11{See also V. iii. 161--64.} Presumably, Anne would have slept more soundly if Richard had shown her the normal tendernesses that go with married life. Lady Anne seems to be almost entirely Shakespeare's creation; the historical Anne seems to have been quite happy with Richard, though there were rumours that he had killed her.12 {See Charles Ross, Richard III (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 26--30.} If Richard's treatment of Anne introduces the theme of uxoricide, then his treatment of Queen Elizabeth introduces the other major themes of infanticide and incest. Queen Elizabeth figures prominently in More's account; but her role is somewhat obscured in Shakespeare's play by the introduction of the other female characters: Lady Anne, Queen Margaret and the Duchess of York. In More's account, it is true she is paired with Mistress Shore, ironically, since there was no love lost between them. However, the two women embody two different aspects of the Eternal Feminine: Queen Elizabeth as wife and mother, and Mistress Shore as companion and mistress. Through his favorable descriptions of the repentance and life of Mistress Shore (CW 2, pp. 54--57), and his retrospective description of Edward IV's courtship of Lady Elizabeth Gray (CW 2, pp. 60--66), More not only humanizes the memory of the dead king, glossing over the darker, more predatory aspects of his dissolute lifestyle,13 {See Mancini, p. 67, and Buckingham's speech in CW 2, p. 69.} he also by contrast degrades the character of Richard into the archetypal Bluebeard figure, the woman hater and lady-killer. It is More who, more than anyone else, seems to have invented the charges of sorcery and witchcraft against the queen and Mistress Shore "ye shal al se in what wise that sorceres and that other witch of her counsel shoris wife \wt their affinite [companions], haue by their sorcery & witchcraft wasted my body" (CW 2, 48/7--9). Shakespeare not only makes use of this in the famous council scene (III. iv. 67--77), but also the charges of witchcraft in More's History of Richard III may have suggested to Shakespeare the possibility of portraying Queen Margaret (in sharp contrast to her portrayal in the Henry VI plays) as a 'witch'. One senses here Shakespeare's extremely fertile poetic imagination running riot, responding to the many dramatic possibilities in More's text, that are so obviously lacking in the more chronicle-like accounts in Holinshed and Hall for the reigns of other English kings. It is not just Shakespeare's developing dramatic artistry, but also the superiority of the source as literary and historical narrative, that makes Richard III in many ways a much more successful play than the three Henry VI plays.14 {See J. Candido, "Thomas More, The Tudor Chroniclers, and Shakepeare's Altered Richard," English Studies 68 (1987), 137--41, for the ways in which Skakespeare's play was shaped by his historical sources. Candido suggests the the change in Richard's character in Shakespeare's play after Act III, is due partly to a switch in underlying sources from More to Hall (who is following Polydore Vergil's account).} More gives Queen Elizabeth an important role in the History; as well as the description of her courtship by Edward, there is the important exchange between her and the Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury (CW 2, pp. 34--42), in the course of which she grows in dignity and respect in the eyes of the reader. At this point she is characterized primarily by her language; later, in the description of her courtship by Edward we also see her character being revealed through action. In Shakespeare's play she paradoxically seems a much weaker character, perhaps because so much dramatic energy has been tied up in the two queen-mother figures. She has the same kind of weakness of character that we have already seen in Lady Anne. Even after Richard has murdered her two sons and she has greater reason to hate him than even Anne, she succumbs to his incestuous wooing of the hand of her daughter Elizabeth in Act IV, scene iv. Though she herself has already joined with Queen Margaret and the Duchess of York in cursing Richard, she falls for the seductive offer of the empty joys of the position of queen-mother in place of the role that she had formerly enjoyed as queen and wife to Edward IV: If I did take the kingdom from your sons, To make amends I'll give it to your daughter; If I have kill'd 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 Than is the doting title of a mother; They are as children but one step below; Even of your metal, of your very blood; Of all one pain, save for a night of groans Endur'd of her, for whom you bid like sorrow... Again shall you be mother to a king, And all the ruins of distressful times Repair'd with double riches of content. (IV. iv. 294--304, 317--19) To all the crimes that Richard has already committed he is willing to add one more, incest, and Queen Elizabeth seems reluctantly to agree to the match; though we find out later that she has been in secret communication with Richmond. There is an element of desperation, however, in his wooing: "Without her follows to myself, and thee, / Herself, the land, and many a Christian soul, / Death, desolation, ruin, and decay" (IV. iv. 407--09). Under Richard's rule England has become a veritable Waste Land, and he hopes by marrying the Princess Elizabeth to restore the fertility of the land and its people. But as an embodiment of destructive male sexuality, that cannot be until Richard himself has been destroyed. Not only has Lady Anne cursed Richard's offspring and unwittingly also herself early in the play: If ever he have child, abortive be it: Prodigious, and untimely brought to light, Whose ugly and unnatural aspect May fright the hopeful mother at the view, And that be heir to his unhappiness. If ever he have wife, let her be made More miserable by the death of him Than I am made by my young lord, and thee. (I. ii. 21--28) but his own mother also wishes she had destroyed him in her womb: K. Rich. Who intercepts me in my expedition? Duch. O, she that might have intercepted thee--- By strangling thee in her accursed womb--- From all the slaughter, wretch, that thou hast done. (IV. iv. 136--39) and she even calls him at one point an "abortive hog". It is More again who introduces the motif of Richard as the wild boar, which though based on his heraldic shield, is also clearly symbolic: For the self night next before his death, \ye lord Standley sent a trustie secret messenger vnto him at midnight in al the hast, requiring hym to rise & ryde away with hym, for he was disposed vtterly no lenger to bide: he had so fereful a dreme, in which him thoughte that a bore with his tuskes so raced [slashed] them both bi the heddes, that the blood ranne aboute both their shoulders. And forasmuch as the protectour gaue the bore for his cognisaunce [coat of arms], this dreme made so fereful an impression in his hart, \yt he was throughly determined no lenger to tary, but had his horse redy, if \ye lord Hastinges wold go \wt him to ride so far yet \ye same night, that thei shold be out of danger ere dai. (CW 2 49/29--50/9)15 {For the use that Shakespeare makes of this motif, see III. ii. 9--13, 25--32, 71--72; III. v. 82--83.} Richard is the wild boar who has gored the loins of England: The wretched, bloody and usurping boar, That spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful vines, Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough In your embowell'd bosoms---this foul swine Is now even in the centre of this isle... (V. ii. 7--11) Richard III is the Terrible Son of the Terrible Mother, a figure often symbolized in fairy-tales and myths by the wild boar. In the myth of Adonis, for instance, which Shakespeare treated in Venus and Adonis in serio-comic fashion almost contemporaneously with Tragedy of King Richard III, Adonis is slain by being gored in the thighs by a wild boar (ll. 1105--1116).16 {For the image of the boar as usurper, see A. T. Hatto, "Venus and Adonis And the Boar," MLR 41 (1946), 353--61.} Richard is the wild boar who is goring the English Adonis, and thus in turn causing the 'sterility' of the land. It is fitting then that after the battle scene in which Richard is killed, which in the BBC production at least was turned into a ritual hunting of the boar, that the play should end with the promise of marriage between Richmond and Elizabeth, and with a prayer for the healing and regeneration of the land and of its people: O now let Richmond and Elizabeth, The true succeeders of each royal House, By God's fair ordinance conjoin together, And let their heirs, God, if Thy will be so, Enrich the time to come with smooth-fac'd peace, With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days. Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord, That would reduce 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 stopp'd; peace lives again. That she may long live here, God say Amen. (V. v. 29--41) Thus the play finishes not only by bringing an end to all the previous political conflicts of the Wars of the Roses, but also by bringing to an end the terrible destruction of human relationships, especially between the sexes and within the family, that have come to a climax dramatically in the reign of Richard III.