Commentary on Shakespeare's Richard III by Clemen Wolfgang;

Author:Clemen, Wolfgang;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1474504
Publisher: Routledge

Cf. Richard III, III, i, 79, 94. Cf. also King Henry VI’s words concerning young Henry, Earl of Richmond, 3 Henry VI, IV, iv, 71 ff.

3 Cf. Cambises, 536 ff.; 2 Tamburlaine, 3437; Massacre at Paris, 1057 ff.

1 For references to classical and pre-Shakespearian lament cf. Clemen, English Tragedy before Shakespeare, ch. 14.

2 This is one of those pictorial stage-directions which distinguish the text of F from that of Q. There are similar stage-directions in Parts 2 and 3 of Henry VI, but elsewhere in Shakespeare they are rare. Shakespeare himself appears responsible for these directions. Cf. Greg, The Editorial Problem, p. 87; E. K. Chambers, Shakespeare I, p. 300; A. Walker, Textual Problems, p. 18.

1 On the conventional gestures appropriate to a lamentation-scene cf. A. I. Perry Wood. The Stage History of Shakespeare’s King Richard the Third (1909), p. 39.

2 Cf. A. P. Rossiter, ‘The Structure of Richard the Third’ DUJ (1938).

1 J. W. Cunliffe (The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy, 1925, p. 79) compares 80 ff. with Seneca’s Troades, 1060–1062 (Hecuba’s Lament), a comparison which shows Shakespeare’s lament to be much stiffer and more contrived.

2 On the topos of outdoing, cf. E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 1953, ch. 8, § 6, pp. 162 ff.

3 Other plays had made use of these disputations; cf. for instance Hey-wood’s Interludes and The Foure PP.

1 Cf. III, iv, 27.

1 Cf. an early instance, Ambidexter in Cambises; also Kyd, Spanish Tragedy, Marlowe, Jew of Malta, Massacre at Paris. Cf. also C. V. Boyer, The Villain as Hero in Elizabethan Tragedy (1914).

2 B. Spivack sees Richard’s liking for asides as deriving mainly from his literary descent from the character Vice. Pointing to Richard’s asides in the final scene of 3 Henry VI, Spivack notes that ‘Richard in this scene becomes a creature of asides, an histrionic homilist who puts on a show of love and honesty and turns away with a grin to share his jest and register his art with the audience’ (Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil, 1958, p. 306).

3 e.g. I Henry VI, III, iii, 44–77; IV, i, 134–173; V, v, 48–78; 2 Henry VI, I, i, 175–201; 3 Henry VI, II, ii, 9–42.

1 In fact the image used here — ‘broken rancour … but lately splinter’d, knit …’ — stresses former dissension rather than present unity. ‘The image is that of an ulcerated wound swollen with the poison of hatred to bursting point, and recently dressed’ (J.D.W., p. 195). Buckingham uses a similar image at 125.

2 The final acquiescent ‘with all our hearts’ (145) spoken by the Queen and the Duchess is found in Q but not in F (Al. does not print it but J.D.W. does. Cf. J.D.W.,p. 146). In its favour is the fact that Richard’s question at 143–144 seems to call for, if not to require, an answer, and also that the phrase echoes Anne’s final ‘with all my heart’ (I, ii, 219).

1 On the bridging of intervals of time, cf. especially A.

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