Richard III (Vol. 39) | John J. McLaughlin (essay date 1977)
John J. McLaughlin (essay date 1977)
SOURCE: "Richard III as Punch," in The South Carolina Review, Vol. 10, No. 1, November, 1977, pp. 79-86.
[In the following essay, McLaughlin represents Richard III as a comic-villain who is intended to evoke laughter through his wit and the slapstick excess of his aggression for the sake of domination.]
There is a sure-fire show stopper in the Punch and Judy show: Punch takes his stick to one of his victims—usually Scaramouche—swings mightily, and the puppet's head is knocked clear off its shoulders. When Buckingham asks of Richard III, "Now my lord, what shall we do if we perceive / Lord Hastings will not yield to our complots?" Richard's reply is a Punch-line: "Chop off his head." It has the finality of Punch's stick; we can almost see the head topple. Our delight at the sudden audacity and directness of Richard's answer is equal to a child's joy at watching Punch's victim lose his...
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