Lying Shakespeare\'s Historical Plays, Richard

Lying

Shakespeare's historical plays, Richard III and Henry IV are both centered around very important political figures- Richard III and Henry IV. The plays have as characters two of the most famous villains in Shakespeare's theatre: Richard III, formerly the Duke of Gloucester, and Falstaff, prince Hal's friend. Both characters are known for their extreme lack of morality, although they are very different in other ways: Richard III is Shakespeare's absolute villain- a duke who, driven by his immeasurable ambition, commits a great number of crimes so as to obtain the crown of the kingdom. Falstaff, on the other hand, is more like a jester, known for his great witticism, but at the same time, a great dissembler who always lies, steals or cheats on somebody else.

Richard III uses lying, dissembling and plotting in almost all his actions, and therefore, he is likened many times by the other characters, to the devil himself. This is certainly the case in the way Richard manages to tempt lady Anne, the widow of king Edward IV, in spite of the fact that she knew he was the murderer of both her husband and her husband's father:

Was ever woman in this humour woo'd?/Was ever woman in this humour won?/I'll have her; but I will not keep her long./What! I that kill'd her husband and his father- / to take her in her heart's extremest hate,/With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,/"The bleeding witness of my hatred by[...]"(Richard III, 1.2.253-259)

Thus, the duke of Gloucester becomes a king through a series of murders but also through much lying and dissembling constantly imitating the works of the devil himself. All his morally unjustifiable acts help him ascend to the throne and become a powerful political leader. He smoothes his path towards power by killing all those who might be an obstacle to him, and in this, his lying helps him greatly, as it builds up the blind trust in him of his future victims. Therefore, lying and dissembling can be considered two of the most important skills required for political success and quick ascension to power.

However, this ascension is very short lived, as Shakespeare proves in his play. Richard III is soon overthrown and killed, as the people begin to understand the terrible crimes behind Richard's acts. The political power gained through lying and crimes becomes problematic because it impinges on most of the moral laws that men in general respect. Eventually, Richard III proves a bad liar, although at first he is intelligent enough to deceive a great number of people. He is certainly a skilled and brilliant speaker and many of his speeches are monologues directed to the audience itself, and thus, Shakespeare manages to create a double effect: Richard manages to deceive and fascinate the other characters in the play, and tries his spell on the spectators and readers as well. His first speech, which also opens the play, already shows Richard as a victim himself, because of his physical deformity, which he openly uses as an excuse for his terrible acts. However, throughout the play his evil nature eventually appalls everyone and his skilled discourse fails to impress after all.

Thus, it can be argued that Richard is a bad liar because his absolute lack of morality drives him to open abuse and attacks on almost everyone around him, with no exception. Although to lie is not a morally approved act, it could prove to be to help political ascension in a valid way, as it is in prince Hal's case, from Shakespeare's other play, Henry IV. Richard III proves to be a bad liar precisely because he is very bad, that is, very evil and his actions obviously get out of control. Richard's famous line at the end of the play, "my kingdom for a horse," proves that the main root of his evil nature is his self-centered mind- he is willing to give up everything to save his own life. He is certainly not fit to be a political leader, since the state means nothing to him and he would renounce it at once just to have a horse that would help him run away and would save his life. Therefore, Richard is not intelligent enough to maintain his power as he alienates everyone around him, until he stands completely alone, and therefore can not defend himself anymore.

The situation is different in Henry IV, where the main character, prince Hal as he is called by his friends, will ascend to the throne in the second part of the play in spite of his past as a villain. As the play begins, we see the king Henry IV, prince Hal's father, caught up in the midst of a civil conflict with Hotspur and the entire Percy branch of noblemen, because of a debt he had failed to pay to them.

During this conflict, Henry shows his bitterness at not having his eldest son, prince Hal to help him in the military matters. Hal is, at this time, with a group of rogues and villains who accompany him in his unlawful actions. Falstaff is the most famous of these, and seems to be Shakespeare's best known personification of falseness (a word from which his name is undoubtedly derived) lying and deceit. Falstaff uses dissembling as a means to achieve both fortune and fame, pretending even to have killed Hotspur in the battle. But even more so, he achieves through permanent lying to create almost a myth about himself, arguing through such skilled rhetoric that he even overtake Richard III, that honor and morality are of no use whatsoever and that they lose their value as soon as they are opposed to the only true thing there is: life.

Although Falstaff proves to resemble Richard III in his designs and in his love for his own self, and also in his skill for lying, nevertheless, he is not altogether evil as Richard is, but rather a villain who is also an Epicurian philosopher and who believes that life and its pleasure are the only realities of the world.

There are other dissemblers in Henry IV, and Hal is perhaps the best example. He keeps company with Falstaff and his other friends and participates in their depravity and cheating for a long time, and his behavior determines his father to threaten him with disinheritance and loss if his rightful claim to the throne,

However, in one of his speeches he clearly proves that his behavior and his villainous deeds were part of a sort of political scheme that will help him ascend to fame in a more dramatic way than being an exemplary prince would have:

Yet herein will I imitate the sun, / Who doth permit the base contagious clouds / to smother up his beauty from the world, / That when he please again to be himself, / Being wanted, he may be more wondered at / by breaking through the foul and ugly mists / of vapours that did seem to strangle him. / So, when this loose behaviour I throw off / and pay the debt I never promised, / by how much better than my word I am, / by so much shall I falsify men's hopes;"(1 Henry IV, 1.2. 175-189)