Lantern's 'Richard III'

O, to be a villain

ROBERT ZALLER

Richard III completes Shakespeare’s cycle of meditations on England’s troubled 15th Century struggle between the red rose of Lancaster and the white of York for control of the royal throne, although it was written earlier than Shakespeare’s second Henriad trilogy and bears traces of an earlier stage tradition. This is particularly so in the character of Richard— “Hell’s black intelligencer,” as he is called— who clearly reflects the lingering presence of the Vice figure of medieval drama on the Elizabethan stage. The “Vice” personified evil, and was often the shape-shifting representation of the Devil himself.

Shakespeare’s Richard, not only a real English king but a man of all-too human ambition, is nothing so direct as this; he is only the “intelligencer” who brings as it were the news of Hell, which is to say of Satan’s constant will to corrupt humankind. His relish in villainy, however, his seeming delight in deceit and destruction for its own sake, bears evil’s unmistakable taint.

Richard III thus operates on two levels simultaneously: It narrates the last years of England’s civil wars faithfully if tendentiously, at least as they are represented in Shakespeare’s chief source, Holinshed’s Chronicles; and it offers a morality play in which the other characters, few themselves blameless in England’s broils, are seduced and corrupted, used and discarded, in Richard’s dual quest, human and demonic, to achieve power and sow confusion.

Most remarkable is the scene in which Richard accosts Anne, widow of the Lancastrian King Henry VI slain by him, and, breaking down her resistance, wins her for his own. Even with a dramatist of Shakespeare’s persuasiveness, this scene is difficult to credit unless we allow for its Vice component: Anne, that is to say, is overcome not only by the importunate flattery of a would-be lover, but by a satanic spell. In a broader sense, this spell has worked itself on all of England, and its long civil war, proceeding from the original sin of regicide depicted in Richard II, only culminates in the tyranny of Richard III. If, in Richard, the Devil most nakedly shows himself, it is however because redemption is at hand in the unblemished figure of Henry Tudor, who will vanquish Richard and bring happy days again.

A successful production of Richard III must bear these two levels of meaning in mind, and speak as well to a modern audience no longer attuned to the nuances of Elizabethan discourse. The Lantern Theater production makes do with a cast of nine and a bare-bones set, reflecting not only the physical limitations of the St. Stephen’s Theater space and facilities but also the spare, minimalist approach to staging that has served Lantern well in previous productions. A pair of dress racks atop a stage flat both represents the shape-shifting roles of the ensemble itself and assists the rapid costume changes—generic modern dress for the most part, with gangland-style revolvers for weaponry.

Pete Pryor, best known locally for comedic roles, plays Richard, in a performance that seems too arch by half in the opening monologue but builds in power and authority. Charles McMahon’s direction keeps the play moving briskly--a shade too much so, perhaps, as Shakespeare’s lines get frog-marched at times through a Quentin Tarrantino-style patter, and the results sometimes teeter on confusion. Nonetheless, there is method in the occasional madness. Pryor, as the only actor with a single role, is the pivot around which all the other characters rotate, all being, with the exception of the scathing Queen Margaret (Jane Moore), in his thrall. As Hell’s power is withdrawn, he loses control of the stage, and, in a brilliant scenic stroke, his victims come to him as familiars as he tosses in nightmare before the Battle of Bosworth Field. At the end, Richard lies helpless as Henry Tudor and his guard—all previously seen as Richard’s creatures—surround and execute him.

Richard dies, to borrow Clarendon’s description of Oliver Cromwell, as a brave bad man. In the throes of his human despair, however, he feels conscience assail him with “a thousand several tongues,” and casts himself on the mercy of “Jesu.” It is here at last that he sheds the mask of the Vice, and shows a Christian character. In this, Richard resembles Marlowe’s Faustus, who cries out for Christ’s mercy as his damnation nears. Faustus wins some sympathy from us, but for Richard repentance, however sincere, comes too late. Determined to prove a villain, he has succeeded all too well. If in some sense Shakespeare has cast him as the scapegoat of his bloody times, we applaud his sacrifice as richly deserved.

And what of the real Richard III? The Lantern Theater staged a mock trial before the show’s premiere, and acquitted him of the worst charges laid against him. Most historians have not. Maurice Ashley wrote that he was, indeed, “a villain on a heroic scale. He had inherited the tradition . . . that great magnates with a dash of royal blood in their veins were entitled to fight with their retinues for the crown of England” (Great Britain to 1688, p. 175). These questions, though, are irrelevant to Shakespeare’s grand conception of the long workings of Providence on the stage of 15th-century England. That conception required many flawed characters, and one surpassing villain in whom all their sins were taken a l’outrance, and through his death redeemed. This dramatic Richard has eclipsed the real, historic one, whether that be justice or no.