Richard III (Vol. 39) | Phillip Mallett (essay date 1979)
Phillip Mallett (essay date 1979)
SOURCE: "Shakespeare's Trickster-Kings: Richard III and Henry V," in The Fool and the Trickster: Studies in Honour of Enid Welsford, edited by Paul V. A. Williams, Rowman & Littlefield, 1979, pp. 64-82.
[In the following excerpt, Mallett presents Richard as a Machiavellian Jester, able to fool and control others like puppets by means of his play-acting, but also subject to a jesting providence.]
It might be thought perverse to link Richard III and Henry V as plays seriously concerned with the trickery of their central figures. Why not regard Richard's trickery as simply the cunning of a villain, who is duly defeated when the heroic Richmond finally restores peace and justice to the world? But this just and heroic figure doesn't get on stage until the fifth act, so we can understand that Shakespeare returned to give a fuller account of such a character in the person of Henry V, who is to be...
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