THE FREELANCE WRITER 61
His verbal skills are to the fore
when he persuades Lady Anne
to be his wife (1.2), and Queen
Elizabeth to let him marry her
daughter (4.4). Strategically placed
at each end of the play, these
parallel scenes chart the rise
and fall of Richard’s fortunes. He
approaches Queen Elizabeth with
the same bravado but she turns his
tactics back on him. This time the
woman leads the debate. Her put-
downs are delivered with such
feeling that they stifle Richard’s
efforts to defend his evil actions.
At the end, Richard stops the
performance and no longer draws us
into his confidence. When he tries
not to despair on the night before
Bosworth, his soliloquy addresses a
fresh audience: his conscience. The
debate is a judicial examination,
devoid of witty self-deceptions, with
Richard both the prosecution and
defense. Finally his conscience
tells him that he is the villain he
promised to be: “My conscience
hath a thousand several tongues... /
And every tale condemns me for a
villain” (5.5.147, 149).From sun to shade
Now we watch as Richard is
disturbed by prophesies and curses.
He can’t sleep before his final battle
and the sun fails to shine the day he
dies. Ultimately he’s defeated both
by history in the form of Richmond,
and by himself—“Myself, myself
confound” (4.4.330). He admits that
he has no pity even for himself. Inperformance, it’s the strength of
Richard’s prowess in the battle that
often determines our feelings about
him at the end. Perhaps his cry
“A horse! A horse! My kingdom for
a horse!” (5.7.7) reminds us that
he was always happiest in a fight.
Richmond ends the play, but the
final focus rests also on Richard.
Behind Richmond’s perfect picture
of “smiling plenty, and fair
prosperous days” (5.7.34) there
lingers a shadow of Richard’s
sun-filled opening words. ■Tudor propaganda? John Rous, a historian writing
during the reign of Richard III,
described his king as a “good
lord” with a “great heart” who
enacted just laws. But by the reign
of the first Tudor king, Henry VII,
Rous had reversed his opinion.
Richard, he wrote, was a freak:
stunted and physically weak, he
was responsible for killing Henry
VI and for poisoning his own wife.
Other historians, among them
Sir Thomas More, joined in the
vilification of Richard, citing
his “crook-backed” deformity as
evidence of inward corruption. It
may be that More and others wereseeking to legitimize Tudor rule
with anti-Yorkist propaganda.
But it is from their accounts that
Shakespeare drew his material.
More described Richard as
being devious and flattering
while he plotted, but also clever
and courageous. Shakespeare
retained all these features, and
gave the king added depth
by encumbering him with a
formidable conscience. The
character is so enduring that
the historical Richard has been
obliterated. Indeed, there is no
surviving account by anyone
who knew him in person.American actor Kevin Spacey played
Richard as a self-hating, power-crazed
despot, who revolted the play’s women,
in Sam Mendes’s acclaimed 2011
production at the Old Vic, London.