King Richard III
by William Shakespeare, Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Collins Classics

Act I, Scene I: London. A street.
Enter RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, solus.
GLOUCESTER: Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
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 –
I – that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform’d, unfinish’d, 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 –
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
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 pleasure of these days.

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who will become King Richard III by dint of murder and scheming, addresses us, his audience. We are immediately informed of his undertakings to develop his evil side. He is a Shakespearean Darth Vader brought to life in verse. He describes himself to us in the most bitter, disparaging way not to elicit our pity but to cement the foundation of the malevolent force he wishes to become.

Historically, Richard seems to have been far more benevolent, but in the same way that few modern filmmakers would allow truth to divert their imagination, so it is with 16th-century playwrights. Nor, apparently, was Richard a hunchback as often depicted.

“Now is the winter of our discontent” he tells us, which means the worst of an unpleasant situation. He immediately dispels the gloom with the line: “Made glorious summer by this sun of York”. It is apparent that in the Wars of the Roses (Lancaster v York, 1455-1487) the House of York has the upper hand at this point, and there is momentary peace.

He talks of war as a man who has “smooth’d his wrinkled front”, who now goes off to make love instead, leaving Richard without purpose for he cannot follow suit, regarding himself as so physically unlovable that even dogs bark at him; “Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time/ Into this breathing world scarce half made up.”

Shakespeare imposes upon him the character of a man who wishes to be as deformed in mind and spirit as he believes himself to be in body: “I am determined to prove a villain/ And hate the idle pleasures of these days.” What is sometimes seen as Tudor propaganda in Shakespeare’s maligning of Richard, might, of course, be nothing more than the joy of having a character who is already the victim of bad press, be dead, and available for reinvention.

In life, it doesn’t matter what our afflictions might be, physical or otherwise; what matters is how we handle them. We are in control of our own actions and reactions although our human weaknesses trip us up constantly, so it requires a great deal of application to master the way our minds work. It is easier not to bother and allow life to blow us along like feathers, or to become a conniving schemer, deluding ourselves that because we’re actually doing something which requires thought and action, we’re being useful and clever, when the truth is that the destruction we cause makes us worthless. The negative aspects of Richard’s character are believable because they are drawn from the human library of emotions to which we can all relate, and from which we make our (sometimes foolish) choices.

Villains are necessary for a good plot, so in these first lines Richard makes obvious his decision to be wicked, planning to dispatch his enemies and so eventually become king. He actually ruled for only two years (1483-85) before he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth.

But if Shakespeare had not imagined Richard to be deformed and cruel, and believed instead that he was actually a reasonable man and a responsible ruler for his all-too-short reign, there would have been no play to entertain us.

frieda.hughes@thetimes.co.uk

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