This is both a tragedy and a history play

We have done very little to dramatize our American history

Not a major form except in the Elizabethan period -- recognized by some at the time -- the first Folio gave equal prominence to the history plays -- a history play was defined by subject matter

With Shakespeare the plays focus on the political (King) histories -- each is named after the King, but the plays don’t always have the King as the main character -- they can end happily or tragically

English -- Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra are not considered history plays

History -- the playwright may take liberties with the play as long as the result is felt to reflect the perceived conception of the time -- Richard III courts Anne, but in reality there is no information about the courtship and they ended up having a child -- but Shakespeare’s dramatization gives us further insight into Richard -- he could not have changed a major event: but he was willing to do that with semi-mythic histories (Lear, Cymbilline)

History was important to the Elizabethans --there was a flood of historical writings -- Shakespeare read from Hall and Hollinshed (chief source) -- there were also poets and a lot on the stage -- we know of at least 70 plays on English history -- ‘this was big stuff; a major theatrical mode’ -- in about 15 years -- 1588 to the death of the queen

Why don’t we do this? We don’t really know what the meaning and utility of history is. It may be a confused mixture of events -- if we do find meaning we will phrase it in a series of very abstract terms -- drama has to deal with individuals, so it is difficult to dramatize abstract things -- but if you are going to write about people you must believe that they had something of meaning in them

History was important to the Elizabethans in 4 ways: (Tillyard, everybody rejects him now)

1) History is ‘the trumpet of fame’ it preserves worthy deeds and ancestors -- they believed strongly in ancestry -- the acts of the ancestors invest the people with abilities and responsibilities -- it is the means by which old deeds live on --

2) They believed that history repeats itself -- the same patterns crop up -- recurring patterns -- then to some degree at least you can predict the future, so you can take steps to provide for the future -- practical use for people -- but history is usually a bunch of disasters -- succession -- when these plays were written the queen was in her 60s and still a virgin -- not clear who would be the next king -- playwrights could warn of the dangers of a disputed succession -- it can be politically instructive

3) Moral instructions -- a whole gallery of examples -- still happens with groups exerting their identities, no so much with mainstream -- we don’t always see much of relevance in the past: we believe in change -- the Elizabethans did the opposite: they said the big things remain the same that humans don’t really change that much, so they had an easier time taking it -- the ancient Athenians in his plays are very much like the English of Shakespeare’s time

4) History reveals something larger than individuals or deeds -- as a whole it has a meaning -- it shows us the will of God -- the design is at times obscure to us -- this is the great theological view of history (St. Augestine, "The City of God") --

History was meant to celebrate great deeds, repeats itself, moral instruction, and a divine plan

For the Elizabethans English history was their own -- they felt themselves to be at a high point -- Spanish Amarda -- so they turned to history to celebrate

There is a great outburst of writing in the 1580s, but the theaters were big -- even a successful play would exhaust its interest quickly -- so there was a lot of pressure to write more plays -- used the history as a source -- a lot of them were just hack-work as they were just pushed out from Hollinshed

it’s a lot harder to write a good history: the material is rambling and diffuse -- Hollinshed was really just a compiler from many other sources -- it is difficult for a playwright to find a real center for a play in the history -- Marlowe wrote one -- Shakespeare wrote 10 plays -- his career extends for 25 years, for about half of it he wrote history plays. this evidences a considerable desire to change the historical view of England

it is only after the history plays that he starts the tragedies -- they are vital preparation for the tragedies -- through the history plays he explored the intimate connections between private and public actions and characters

Growing traffic between the private world of the individual psyche and the world of the public -- this allows him to set Hamlet in the setting of a corrupt nation -- the

8 of the plays go together -- they are almost an epic -- they are fairly coherent -- but it isn’t at all clear that they were planned that way -- but he didn’t -- he started in the middle -- why go at it in this disorganized manner? -- a guess: he did the writing about the fun part, but then realized that he really hadn’t covered the important parts, so he went back to write the beginning parts

3 chief patterns

1) "Decline and Fall" -- of the house of Platagenet -- dynastic and semi-religious -- the story of a doomed and cursed family where its members unnaturally hate and kill each other -- similar to greek tragedies -- Shakespeare knew the greek stories from roman tragedy (Seneca) -- Seneca was very popular as he was very bloody -- he influenced tragedy dramatically

2) "War and Peace" -- social and secular pattern -- chaos and order -- we tend to think these are much greater things -- they tended to think they were made more by the ambitions and personalities of individuals

3) "Crime and Punishment" -- God visits his justice on individuals -- the sins of the fathers will be visited on the children -- Richard II was the last truly legitimate king -- 85 years until the Tudors restore peace

Decline and Fall -- the Lancastrians have been destroyed -- Henry VI and his funeral and Margaret cursing the others for the death -- destruction of the Yorkists and their Woodville inlaws -- most of the men are dead, leaving only the women to mourn

Once Richard has the thrown in act 4, who is alive to notice? -- The court is only represented by a few uninteresting people -- the kingdom is empty

War and Peace -- not that much in this play -- one big battle at the end -- discord functions more on the level of the family

Crime and Punishment -- really dominates this play -- Richard occupies a very interesting role -- Richard is the big criminal and he is the object of God’s punishment -- as well as the object of divine punishment he is also the agent of it in his punishing the Yorkists and the Woodvilles for what they have done to English -- he is hell’s agent to bring souls back into hell -- it is through Richard’s hatred for his relatives that God punishes the others for their misdeeds.

Tragedy is a well discussed genre -- the notion that tragedy should adhere to some formula is a modern notion -- tragedy became a way of viewing life in Hagle and Nitche

Death of a Salesman -- can a normal person be the hero of a tragedy when we are used to the heroes being kings?

The anxiety about tragedy was not around in Shakespeare’s time -- Aristotle’s tragedies arrived in Europe quite late -- Shakespeare knew it, but he did not regard it as a prescription as to how it must be -- Aristotle can be useful, but not a formula for Shakespeare

Tragedy is and abstract classification -- the real concern is the actual play -- we must be careful of high discussions of Tragedy -- if you try to fit his plays into some same model you will miss the point

Tragedies have the same variations as other forms

What is a Tragedy about? An attempt at a definition.

A fall from power and felicity to death and destruction -- they are powerful and then are wiped out

The hero is bound to be extraordinary purely because he has a high place from which to fall

This lack of definition provides a very fruitful basis for Shakespeare -- his characters can reflect on the meanings of their fortunes themselves

Richard III

A famous man who falls: what causes the fall and what is the personality of the man

He is not a real human -- no one is this wicked and could do this many evil things -- this is not an attempt at a wholly realistic character -- he is an artistic embodiment -- Shakespeare’s characters embody certain realities and truths so even if they are not real people they are in some ways better

What does Richard embody? Evil. He embodies those characteristics in nature which bring peace to war -- all the bad things in human society.

Henry VI (Tragedy of Richard of York) the previous play

Richard’s soliloquy -- from right in the middle -- has most of the overt fighting of the war of the roses -- in the middle the Yorkists temporarily have the upper hand -- Edward is King at the moment and the first thing he does is to woo Elizabeth Woodville -- his brothers Richard and Clarence make comments -- prior to this Richard has not been a remarkable character -- he has been the most blood thirsty, but not different in kind, only degree -- here the Shakespearean Richard creates a new self for himself -- he takes stock of his hatreds for his relatives and frustrations and creates a new self who can overcome these

Early Shakespeare -- a speech directly to the audience -- it is only gradually that Shakespeare develops a sense of self-exploration in soliloquies -- this was one of his great inventions --

Difference between the medieval and renaissance views:

Richard comes out and says this is me, here’s what I’ll do --

0 -- his hatred: opens in a declaration of hatred for all who are between Richard and absolute power -- Edward, Henry, Clarence, their sons -- he wants them all dead -- here is the villain

Richard’s enemy is life itself, or at least fertility -- he hates it so much that he even exaggerates its power -- Henry is locked up and his son is 9 or 10 -- he hates it enough to be quite nasty about how they might perish -- rotting the marrow and the bone which is what he wishes for their deaths -- it can also infect the offspring

These savage desires run into frustration -- their are too many to hope they will all die

134 -- next part: his frustration -- fulfillment seems impossible so the desire turns into self-punishment -- self destructiveness of his lusts appear -- the metaphor: he is on a cliff and can’t get across a bay to another land -- why pick this metaphor? a very airy metaphor, not an image involving enclosure -- the idea is that if he starts heading towards it he will fall (off the cliff) -- an image of suicide

desire -> self torment -> destruction

146 -- what alternatives are available? -- he talks about women and woowing them but says he will never get there as he is so disfigured that he would be more likely to get 20 crowns that love from women -- can’t have sex as he is too ugly -- he exaggerates, later on he is spectacularly successful -- and just look at his position: he could get anyone he wants -- what they point out is not so much the unlikelyhood of him getting sex, but the unlikelyhood of him being satisfied -- because he is incapable of feeling love -- as drawn from a highly orthodox medieval idea

Medieval: the great chain of being -- that is one of the standard images of the world -- but it is not the only view of the world -- not the one Shakespeare uses most heavily as it is a very static organization -- not very good for drama -- instead he uses: love (152), nature (155), chaos (161) -- these relate Richard’s personal situation to the medieval wold view -- initial state of the universe was chaos all in strife -- now when God created the universe his spirit moved down and formed it into orderly manner (the spheres) known as nature, created and sustained by love -- Richard is at odds with the order of nature as he has no love and will then be damned to chaos -- love is what holds the universe together -- Richard is saying that love forswore him once he was a fetus -- he emerged both unloving and unloved -- the physical result of this abandonment is that his body is nearly chaotic -- the psychological result is that he hates all his fellow human beings: he doesn’t see them as his fellows

5.6 -- he makes a statement that love is not in him -- that he himself is alone -- he is not his brother’s keeper -- he is not his brother! -- similar to Angelo’s ignoring his kinship with Claudio or Isabella denying that Claudio is her brother -- in Richard’s embodiment this is the great crime -- to say that you share nothing with other human beings

There is some ambiguity -- that his deformity causes his hatred and that we might feel sorry for him -- in the long run it makes moral nonsense of the play -- it makes you feel that we should let him kill a few people if it makes him feel better -- Greenbaltt goes on to say that the deformity is an effect of the hatred

He sees himself as outside the human and divine order of love -- he concludes that there is no chance of satisfying his power-lust in sex.

165 -- power lust and frustration -- the image of the man longing on the cliff is replaced by an image of a man trapped in thorns -- the image is tactile and intensely claustrophobic -- not just those in his way, but he is also dragging himself forward with his own agony -- at this moment we get a real hint of the desperation -- normally he has everything under great control, here we can see his raw desperation -- is the escaping from the thorns similar to birth? -- in these lines he is born into the new Shakespearean Renaissance villain, not the Medieval one -- he disregards all the medieval views -- he is an actor -- he comments that he can easily get the crown this way

the new villain has better weapons -- machiavellian ideas, good oratory abilities, he has his ability to play roles -- these are the means by which he will rise -- pretending to be all these things -- he falls at the end of the play because he stops playing roles

1) Machiavelli -- to many these politics appeared to jettison all the medieval divine power structures and ideas -- he advocates constant role playing -- the English created a nightmare villain who delights in evil

2) Renaissance Medieval business -- what does the renaissance mean? rediscovery of ancient Greece? nationalism? science? -- here we are using it to mean something that happened between 1400 and 1600 in different places at different times: people discovered or thought they discovered that the world picture was not fixed -- machievelli discovered that princes were not fixed but merely clever -- copernicus: earth around the sun -- above all that the fixed ranks of humans in the great chain and the feudal system were not fixed -- a man might redefine himself -- this was a new concept -- passage from Pico: man released from the rigid structures of the medieval view -- we have no defined role then we may do horrible things as well as beautiful things

we can role-play our way into heroes or villains -- the ability to shape the world yourself is terrifying if the person is evil -- by making Richard an actor Shakespeare changed him into a Renaissance villain who exposes the bad side of our freedom to be what we want and change ourselves

Kings have to be actors -- they play a part

He is smart and he lets us into his mind

The others are either dumb (except for Buckingham) or unrelentingly monotonous -- they all hit one tone and hold it (Margaret: grief, Elizabeth: fear)

His gallery of acted roles makes us like him -- he discusses his plan, we watch him act, he criticizes his own performance

He plays out immoral feelings we all have so we like him -- it’s a moral holiday for us

He is the most attractive actor on stage

Richard vs. Everyone else

(1.3 p. 526) -- Scene where Margaret comes in on them -- Richard’s role -- he is playing a plain blunt man who just must release his own feelings

60 -- Richard enters saying the inlaws are being nasty to the King, the Queen responds that he is the one being nasty

In a scene of argument he never gets caught -- he changes the conversation rather than answering the accusation -- he charges the Woodvilles as being upstarts -- Elizabeth counters -- 77 -- he comes up with another accusation (Clarence in tower) -- and then he accuses them of putting Hastings in the tower -- then he goes back to the Woodvilles as upstarts -- demonstrates his abilities -- he is never at a loss -- he even gets margaret

Why is he doing it? to amuse us, to amuse himself -- but really there is a very practical purpose -- p. 532 line 322 -- he says that his plans allow him to have others think that he didn’t do it so that he can sway the middle people -- Buckingham, Hastings -- Richard has to convince him that the King is wrong by the woodvilles -- that if the boy is left in protectorateship they will have too much control

Richard’s wowing Anne

Why does she yield? -- he is not commenting that all women are absurd as he has other strong women -- we have to understand her political position -- widow of the last Lancastrian heir and has no male protection -- emotional: she is grieving for the late King with the respect due to him, but the city is run by Yorkists -- risky to do this openly

Her response to this vulnerability -- she responds with a high degree of emotional outburst -- but she doesn’t have margaret’s skill or elizabeth’s experience -- she is lost with richard

(1.2.104 p. 522) -- she is mourning the old king

Part of Richard’s strength is that he is in the answering position in these one-line exchanges -- he lets her commit herself and he just keeps twisting it

Then he challenges her to do her worst, to stab her -- eventually he overwhelms her -- he is a masterful man -- the scene is not about Anne, it’s about how skillful Richard is

He is very good at this play acting, so why does he lose? -- He loses control over events and people -- he has problems with long-range strategies -- he doesn’t realize that in order to keep the crown he needs to continue using these techniques

(4.2.9 p. 568) as soon as he has gotten on the thrown he begins to talk about keeping it -- he testes Buckingham about murdering the young princes

You can read Buckingham in two ways:

1) He may really not know what the King wants -- but he is smart so this is unlikely -- but it is possible --

2) Buckingham does see what is coming, but he is so horrified that he refuses to understand until Richard explains it directly -- he seems to be playing for time -- he is at the end of the passage

It is quite clear what Richard’s mistake is -- he should recognize that Buckingham is bukling at this notion -- he fails to observe this and he fails to adjust to it -- what has Richard III got to do with being dull? his success has laid in not naming things: in playing roles and squirming around but here he is forgetting this

He could have saved the situation later on, but instead he makes it a real problem by welching on Buckingham by not giving him the promised land -- Richard here forces Buckingham into self defense -- he forgets himself and loses control

Courting of Elizabeth for her Daughter -- he loses control

He lets others control him -- Courting of Elizabeth for her daughter -- the two scenes balance each other -- the contrast is meant to make a point which works to Richard’s disfavor in the second scene

(4.4.275 p.580) -- Richard is weaker dramatically -- now Elizabeth is in the answering position in the game -- she can appeal to the facts as well -- she is on top rhetorically -- 305 -- her attempts at swearing by something and she cuts him off

More importantly Elizabeth wins: he thinks he wins, but she doesn’t -- she went straight out and promised her daughter’s hand to Richmond -- it works well if it is a lie on her behalf

If she is lying then it is a real reversal as she is the one now confiding in the audience (if it is played with her looking aside to the audience)

She certainly dose double-cross him

Loss of skill and control

very serious

he loses his control over the audience

we are amused at his crimes before he becomes king (emotional, not moral analysis) but after he becomes king we are no longer on his side -- he becomes the authority -- killing the little princes is no fun at all

courting lady Anne can be funny in a harsh manner can be funny, but announcing her death isn’t

insulting the woodvilles is reasonable, but ordering trumpets when his mother wishes to speak is too much

hi loses his skill and unites the society against him -- so everyone else is united against him -- his own deeds do more to destroy him

Richmond

There isn’t much to say about him -- he’s not much of a character -- ‘the perfect eagle scout’ -- which is totally unhistorical: he was much more devious and subtle than Richard III

his characterization is dictated by the Tudor myth -- they saw him as England’s savior from the war of the roses and who created that really great ruler (grandfather) Elizabeth

Richmond generated a lot of propaganda -- shakespeare’s Richmond does see himself as a savior of God sent to save England (5.5.61) -- but the Elizabethans did believe that God would and did intervene through people -- his prayer is confirmed by 11 ghosts who enter -- Shakespeare dose not go into the details of what such a position would do to the man Richmond -- he is no more than he stands for -- purely symbolic for the power of nature’s re-ordering love -- that the love is personal too he marries Elizabeth -- there is no psychological depth to him

Richard’s Self-realization

Richard gets terrible dreams and talks about them -- he is exactly like Hermia in her dream (not awake yet)

1) this is our first example of ‘anagnorosis’ recognition -- Aristotle meant it in a literal sense (disguise) -- shakespeare develops this into something more -- he realizes who he is, what kind of person he is, what he has done, it is a much fuller coming to grips with who he is -- has an egoism and a newly awakened conscience -- it is not very subtle -- just two voices going back and forth -- but even here there is a psychological experience (even if it is crudely done) -- why should he lose control?

Everyone must know that he caused their death (not the anonymity of him as a Duke) -- but that isn’t enough to cause his failure

The real cause is not psychological -- he has a much stronger opponent -- God himself -- large-scale structure --

The play operates in large circles of meaning

We being in the narrow closed world of Richard’s egoism -- then he overcomes his opponents -- then the woodvilles -- then margaret (just barely)

the final scene in Act 1 is Clarence’s death -- his dream reveals that there are things outside of Richard’s control -- there is a God out there

the play as a whole goes from Richard’s closed egoism to Richard’s dream with the ghosts speaking for the spiritual world outside of him

The idea for Richard’s bad dream is historical, but Shakespeare takes it and puts it in Clarence as well

Richard seems to be operating in an iron world of necessity

Is this just? Does justice happen? -- for margaret yes -- she curses and then rejoices in their fulfillment -- it makes sense that now Elizabeth must mourn -- God must be something very much like margaret as the princes’ death pays for some previous murders -- bitter justice --

Is Richard’s fall just -- of course yes! but, yes, he does deserve to die, unless you ask why he is bad in the first place -- his first speech makes him seem damned from the beginning -- maybe his fall is predestined -- Calvin -- ‘I am determined to prove a villain.’ -- if you look at the line more closely this could be him being predestined or it could be him deciding -- Shakespeare puts these two possibilities before us -- if he has no choice in the matter is it just? The effect is artistic -- he creates mystery and terror even in the fall of a bad man in a Christian universe by this ambiguity