Free Richard III by William Shakespeare Page A

him holding what’s supposed to be a withered arm.” 35 As reviewer D. A. N. Jones put it:
    We are in a haunted nursery, with a toy-box full of sharp swords and real skulls … Richard, himself puerile, likes playing with children; he has a dressing-up box, with wigs and rusty armor, which he uses when stage-managing his coups. There’s a fascinating sequence, while he is awaiting news from the Lord Mayor, when he simply fidgets and makes faces, like a bored and repulsive toddler. 36
    The other side of Richard is the side he shows to the audience, the actor, the comedian, the arch-manipulator. By use of humor Richard gets the audience on his side, so that, in the first half of the play, when he commits some hideous act, the audience cannot help but laugh with him. This humor is of the blackest kind, also making the audience complicit, a fact that, if the production is done well, they should later regret. This black comedy, “pushing the extremes of horror and farce,” 37 is very modern and in tune with contemporary tastes, the technique having been adopted by many directors of horror films. *

    3. Richard the showman—Henry Goodman, 2003.
    Many productions have emphasized Richard the self-conscious actor. In 2003 Henry Goodman emerged through a traditional red curtain for his soliloquy and was picked out by a spotlight. Goodman’s intention was to
    make absolutely clear … that Richard has to dress up for this new summer of opportunity … And it sickens him … In performance, I became so debonair and deft as the opening character, audiences thought I was playing an actor who strips off his clothes and plays Richard—but that is never what I intended. 38
    Observer
critic Susannah Clapp described the effect:
    Cock-eyed, hobble-legged, leering with scorn, Henry Goodman gives us Richard III as angry showman. As he nuzzles into Queen Anne’s breast, he rolls a knowing eye at the audience … From the beginning, Sean Holmes’s Edwardian production underlines the idea of Richard as the mapic trickster … He delivers the winter of discontent speech as a rapid music-hall turn, garishly snickering and capering. 39
    The horror of the violence onstage is often relieved by moments of nervous laughter. On the line about dogs barking at him, Goodman’s Richard “limps into the wings and stabs some poor yelping cur to death.” 40 The beheading of Hastings has provided ample opportunity for “horrid laughter.” In 1995 David Troughton explained how:
    During the mock siege of London, Hastings’s severed head … covered in a white, blooded cloth, is brought on by Ratcliffe, invariably causing a laugh of revulsion from the audience as it is hurled into the air, landing on stage with a heavy thud. This is perfectly in keeping with the humorous charade that Richard is perpetrating, and indeed, I heighten the moment by stabbing my knife through it, then presenting the skewered head to the Mayor of London. More laughter follows. The blade, however, gets stuck and only comes free with a struggle … which heightens the audience’s gleeful horror. 41
    In 2003, Hastings’ head was accidentally trodden and tripped over by Richard. Likewise, in Bill Alexander’s 1984 production the head of Hastings was thrown from one character to another like a rugby ball, testing the Mayor’s loyalty to Richard when he is obliged to join in the game:
    When the head was tossed about, the audience froze; but seconds later they were thawed by laughter … He was, flat-out, a man obsessed with power, a man who wanted to attain the throne as quickly as possible, and a man who wanted to have fun along the way … and he demands that we engage in it with him. 42
    Simon Russell Beale (1992) was so repulsive in appearance that when he came onto the stage, the sound of barking dogs heralded his entrance. The historian David Starkey, doubling as a theater reviewer, gave a good account:
    He is wearing Doc Martens,