Richard III Was One of Shakespeare\'s Earliest

Richard III was one of Shakespeare's earliest plays, and possibly aside from Titus Andronicus, one of his most brutal. This violence is contrasted with Shakespeare's use of supernatural elements such as dreams and curses, because these supernatural elements grant certain characters power who would otherwise be powerless in the face of the physical violence upon which Richard and his rise to power depend (even though Richard himself shies away from violence). However, in the 1995 film adaptation of Richard III, these supernatural elements are largely removed due to the fact that the fascist Britain in which the story is set has no room for the supernatural; by definition, under fascism the state itself takes on the status of an ultimate, divine power. While this is a necessary consequence of the "transposition and cutting of entire scenes" that is required when adapting Shakespeare to film, the change actually manages to reveal the importance of certain narrative elements (Jackson 17). Specifically, within the film the power of curses remain even as notions of Christian judgment recede from view, demonstrating the utility of performative, verbal violence in a state governed almost entirely by physical violence. By examining the role of the supernatural in Richard III, one is able to see how supernatural elements like dreams and curses essentially function as dramatic interventions into the dominant power structure of the play, interventions that disrupt Richard's coercive power in the play but must find different outlets in the film.

This study's primary methodological approach is rooted in critical analysis, but as will become clear, a discussion of the changes between Richard III and its 1995 film adaptation will necessarily depend on a discussion of either text's immediate historical and political context, because these contexts end up having an important influence on the presence and function of the supernatural. In particular, the political context of story ends up determining which supernatural elements are most effective and important, because ideas of Christian judgment, retribution, and redemption have differing degrees of relevance depending on whether the setting is feudal England or a 1930s fascist Britain. Thus, while this study will not have any need for substantial biographical or secondary texts, it will be helpful if the reader keeps in mind the impact that historical and political context have on the reception and deployment of supernatural or religious ideas.

Before examining the two versions of Richard III in greater detail, it will be helpful to introduce some extant interpretations of the play's supernatural elements. To begin, one may examine the use of dreams in Richard III, because Clarence's dream in particular represents something divergent from the traditional role of dreams as simple foreshadowers (Arnold 51-52). Clarence is eventually murdered on the orders of his brother Richard, but not before Clarence is able to relate to his jailer a lengthy dream he had (1.4.10-63). As Arnold points out, dreams in Elizabethan drama were frequently and most commonly used for foreshadowing, but in the case of Clarence, this foreshadowing is only element of the dream's purpose (Arnold 51). Instead, Arnold argues that "Clarence's dream can be divided into three parts," with only the first part functioning as foreshadowing regarding Clarence's eventual murder (Arnold 52).

The distinctions between these sections of the dream are important because they allow the audience to understand the role of Christianity and religious belief in the world of the play, and in particular the degree to which Richard's fate is already circumscribed within the context of Christian redemption and retribution. By examining Clarence's dream in detail, one is able to see how it is actually about far more than Clarence's own impending doom and desire for Christian redemption. In fact, the dream ends up being as much about Richard as it is about Clarence, a fact that is easy to overlook when focusing exclusively on the dream's foreshadowing of Clarence's death.

The other portions of the dream relate to Clarence's metaphorical journey to a land of the dead before connecting the events of Richard III to Shakespeare's previous plays by laying out Clarence's past misdeeds (1.4.48-57; Arnold 52). Arnold suggests that Clarence's dream serves to contrast him with Richard, because by highlighting Clarence's misdeeds as well as his remorseful attitude, the play introduces notions of Christian repentance into the play, which serves to make Richard's actions appear all the more devilish (Arnold 53). This is important because the interjection of Christian authority and the idea of supernatural retribution serves to undercut the secular, violent authority and power wielded by Richard, because Christianity, and indeed any religion, by its very nature presents a power or legitimacy above and beyond what political organization happens to be in power.

That Clarence's dream is an example of a peaceful, supernatural, Christian authority being interjected into the play and thus disrupting Richard's secular, violence-based authority is supported by other examinations of the play as well. For example, Anthony Narkin notes how the first portion of Clarence's dream includes "day-residue" from his earlier interactions with Richard, and by way of psychoanalytic analysis, connects the particular way in which Clarence's unconscious mind has translated his earlier experiences with his Christian repentance (Narkin 148). Narkin's analysis is useful because it further demonstrates how the supernatural quality of Clarence's is an explicitly Christian kind of super-naturalism, because in many ways his prophetic and allegorical dream functions in precisely the same way as dreams in the Bible. Clarence's dream predicts his future fate while encouraging him to repent in the knowledge of his almost certain doom, which can be seen as a supernatural power working to undercut Richard's plots from the beginning.

One might be hesitant to consider Clarence's dream as an instance of a supernatural power intervening to hinder Richard, because the dream's prophetic power is not enough to forestall Clarence's death. However, a close examination of Clarence's dream reveals that it doomed Richard as much as it doomed Clarence, because Clarence's death in the dream is caused by Richard's own fall. Clarence says tells the jailer that:

As we pac'd along

Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

Methought that Gloucester stumbled, and in falling

Strook me (that thought to stay him) overboard into the tumbling billows of the main. (1.4.16-20)

While it is true that Richard is responsible for Clarence's fall in this tableau, it is equally true that Clarence's fall is the result of Richard himself stumbling, and, one might suggest, falling overboard himself. While one might be tempted to read this passage as Clarence misunderstanding his brother's attempt to kill him, when read in the context of the play's larger narrative, it seems safe to presume that this passage is indicating to the audience that all of Richard's activities from the start of the play do not actually represent the process of his rise to power, but are rather the downward motions of a man who was doomed from the start. This scene comes after Queen Margaret curses Richard, and even though he is only in the early stages of his plan, this portion of the dream reveals that Richard's fate has already been supernaturally determined.

Reading Clarence's dream as a foreshadow of both Clarence and Richard's doom helps make the contrast set up by Clarence's Christian faith that much more explicit, because this reading would suggest that Clarence is privy to this secret knowledge precisely because he is "a Christian faithful man," who recognizes his own misdeeds and simply asks that his guilt not carry over onto his family (1.4.4, 71-72. In this view, both Clarence and Richard are guilty and doomed to die even before the start of play, but due to the intervention of a supernatural Christian power, Clarence is at least offered the opportunity to repent. As will be seen later, the 1995 film largely excises this discussion of Christianity, because in the fascist state of the film, even the possibility of supernatural, transcendent power is ultimately enshrined in the images and organs of the state.

In addition to dreams, Richard III also makes use of curses, and it with these curses that the play's most explicit supernatural interventions are made. This is because the characters who use these curses, the Duchess of York and Queen Margaret, would have had little real power otherwise, at least in the face of the immediate physical violence upon which Richard's power is based. In many ways Richard III is a study of where power comes from, because although the central machinations of the plot depend on lines of succession and relation, Richard's actions reveal that real power ultimately stems from being willing to use violence to achieve one's ends, because there is no other social construct that can actually challenge the brute impact of physical force. Because social standards like lines of succession are ultimately made meaningless by Richard's willingness to kill anyone who might gain the throne before him, the only means of undercutting Richard's violent secular authority is through the introduction of supernatural powers that can operate outside the systems of meaning and control that Richard has already subverted through his violent deeds.

Interestingly, the power of curses seems linked to women not only in the play itself, but also historically, and it is reasonable to presume that this link is a direct result of women's relative powerlessness in a patriarchal society. In fact, in a 2003 essay, Mary Steible actually makes a connection between Margaret's cursing of Richard and an actual real-life curse directed at Richard by Jane Shore, one of Edward IV's mistresses whom Richard persecuted (Steible 1). Steible argues that cursing should be interpreted as a particular form of political act, because "cursing became secularly controversial with the advent of statues or acts against witchcraft" (Steible 3). In a society that actually believes in witchcraft and prophesy, the act of cursing someone becomes a performative attack, because even if no supernatural influence actually exists, an internalization of the curse on the part of the victim can make its influence felt through a kind of self-fulfillment. The individual is so afraid of the effects of the curse that he ends up carrying them out himself, albeit unconsciously.

The connection between curses and women is of course the result of a deeply misogynistic culture that needs to identify female power as supernatural in order to promote the legitimacy of a patriarchal hegemony, but this should not take away from one's appreciation of how Richard III uses the notion of curses. Even though the play is relying on a well-worn trope regarding the potentially dangerous power of women (and particularly their words), it is also subverting this patriarchal idea by giving these women power in the first place. Because they live in a society where power is ultimately rooted in violence, they must be able to deploy their own kind of violence if they have any hope of taking some power for themselves. Thus, one may read the play's use of curses not as an uncritical recapitulation of patriarchal anxiety regarding women and power, but rather a critical look at how this anxiety actually gives women some power in a practical sense.

This fact is especially relevant in the case of Margaret's curse, because every thing she tells Richard to do he ultimately does, even if he does not realize it at the time. For example, Margaret tells him to "take deep traitors for thy dearest friends," foreshadowing Buckingham's abandonment of Richard (1.3.222). Furthermore, she asks heaven to forestall its judgment of Richard until "thy sins be ripe," which lends further credence to the notion that Richard is doomed from the start, and the appearance of his temporary success is merely the effect of a supernatural judgment allowing Richard to fulfill the full extent of his villainy (1.3.218). Margaret's curse is notable because it engages in a long tradition of performative supernatural horror in Elizabethan drama without making its engagement with this tradition too explicit (Rozett 127). In particular, Margaret focuses on Richard's body, and part of her curse depends upon linking Richard's physical demeanor and appearance to his moral depravity in an attempt to paint him as a literal and figurative monster.

While the connection between evil and an unattractive appearance is common throughout Western literature, Margaret's condemnation of Richard as an "elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog" simultaneously informs the audience that Richard is supernaturally marked for condemnation while setting the stage for the particulars of Richard's fall (1.3.227). In addition, it helps Margaret's curse take root in Richard's mind, because she explicitly connects his condemnation with his deformity, something that he can never escape despite all of his scheming. In this sense, Margaret exemplifies the notion of a curse as a performative political weapon in opposition to more traditional methods of violent oppression. As will be seen, it is this performative nature of curses that allows this particular supernatural element to function in the film even as ideas of Christian judgment and morality are less relevant to the fascist Britain portrayed.

Having examined extant interpretations of the Richard III's supernatural elements in order to see how dreams and curses function, one may now begin a discussion of the way these elements are translated into Richard Loncraine's 1995 film version. To start, one must point out the rather obvious differences between the play and film, because these differences are what recontextualize and change the effect and function of the story's supernatural elements. The film takes the general structure and text of the play, but transports the story from fifteenth-century England to an England from an alternate history, where the 1930s sees the rise of a fascist British government. The narrative translates fairly well, and although there are some redactions and omissions (such as the conflation of the Duchess of York and Queen Margaret into a single character), in terms of this study the most relevant portions of the story remain. However, by changing the time period and particular form of governance, the film manages to recontextualize the story's supernatural elements, which in turn demonstrates the ultimate powerlessness of even religion in the face of total political domination.

To make this point clearer, one must remember that the monarchical system of government that is taken as a given in the play version of Richard III takes as its underlying justification the idea that God has given royalty a divine right to rule. This belief is rooted in a particular, arguably inaccurate interpretation of a story from the Gospels wherein Jesus acknowledges the authority of secular government over secular matters by telling someone to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." As such, concepts of Christianity, divine power, and the inherent righteousness of the larger political order are deeply embedded in the story, even if, for example, Richard himself care little for religion, morality, or the supposedly inherent right to rule. In fact, one can see Richard's actions as a direct challenge to the notion of divine right, because even though Richard is seemingly cursed with deformity, he nevertheless decides to use violence, deceit, and coercion in order to get his way, in direct opposition to the notion that royal rulers are implicitly or explicitly chosen and legitimized by God.

In return, one can interpret the play's supernatural elements to be a kind of response to Richard's denial of this divine right. However, one must make a distinction between the dreams and curses, because while the dreams participate in a tradition of Christian prophecy, the curses are somewhat independent of a particular Christian belief; instead, as discussed above, they function performatively. Thus, while Clarence's dream can be seen as a sign of divine right asserting itself by way of Christian prophecy, the use of curses must be seen as a kind of supernaturally violent response to Richard's own violence, because the curses are not interested in reestablishing the legitimacy of divine right and the process of succession, but rather are strictly geared towards punishing and hurting Richard for his rebellion.

Understanding the relation between the political system of the play and its particular use of the supernatural is important, because the altered political situation of the film means that the supernatural elements must work differently. In particular, because in the film Britain is ruled by a fascist government rather than a traditional monarchy, notions of Christian judgment and divine right recede into the background as the harsh realities of violence and coercion take the forefront. Put simply, in a fascist state, there is simply no room for a genuinely transcendent or superior religious or supernatural authority, because the state itself and its fascist leadership is elevated to the level of the highest authority. While this might seem like a subtle distinction, considering how frequently monarchs attempt to conflate themselves with a god, the distinction is nevertheless important in this case because it helps to explain why the film differs from the play in its use of the supernatural.

Specifically, while there is no place for Christian authority in the film, and as a result Clarence's premonitions and Christian repentance are downplayed or absent, there does remain a space for the use of curses, because curses, unlike prophecy and foreshadowing, do not need to rely on genuine Christian or supernatural authority in order to work. Curses function just as well in a monarchy as in a fascist state, because in either case the point is to get the victim to act out the consequences of the curse, and whether or not that curse seems back up by Christianity or simply malice is of little consequence. Furthermore, the curse retains its power in a fascist state because it targets the individual, rather than the institution or practice, and as such it does not depend on any particular set of morals. Instead, it merely affects whoever is targeted, regardless of whether that person if good or evil. Finally, because the curse targets the individual, it manages to separate the individual from the larger power structure that supports him. This is especially important in a fascist state and the story of Richard III in general, because "Richard's manipulation of the masses" in the story is a perfect analogy for the leader-worship that is central to the fascism represented in the film's "twentieth-century recasting of the play" (Johnson 49). By targeting the individual, rather than the organization, a curse cuts through this leader-worship and reveals the weak individual beneath the public facade.