SOURCE: "The Villain as Rhetorician in Shakespeare's Richard III," in Anglia, Vol. 102, No. 1 & 2, 1984, pp. 37-59.

[In the following essay, Müller discusses Richard Ill's use of rhetoric to further his own ends.]

1. Introduction

In the third part of Shakespeare's trilogy Henry VI Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is presented as a fierce warrior, a ruthless avenger, and an inhuman cynic. Having slain the saintly King Henry VI, he continues stabbing at him, saying: "Down, down to hell; and say I sent thee thither" (V.6.67). The Richard we meet in Richard III is a completely different character, a villain who, except for the final battle scene, never soils his hands with blood. In brutal utterances such as "Off with his head!" (III.4.78) or "I wish the bastards dead. / And I would have it suddenly perform'd." (IV.2.18-19) there is still a reflection of the pitiless butcher of Henry VI, but, as a rule, Richard's villainy now works in a subtler and more infernal way, which manifests itself in his specific use or, rather, abuse of rhetoric. This change in the conception of the villain is forecast in Richard's great soliloquy in 3 Henry VI, IIL2.124-195, which would be dramatically pointless without the succeeding play¹.

It is the object of the present article to scrutinize the hero of Richard III from a rhetorical point of view. This approach has several advantages, one of them being its comprehensiveness. Covering all aspects of persuasion from the use of word and argument to the management of voice, facial expression, and gesture, rhetoric provides a key to the various facets of Richard as a manipulator and intriguer. Also Richard's histrionic performances must be understood as rhetorical efforts, achievements in dissimulation and simulation. The play's immense theatricality derives to a very great extent from its protagonist's virtuosity as a role-player. The conception of Richard as an actor, age-old as it is, has recently received new emphasis and elaboration. Michael Neill, for example, finds the essence of Richard's character in his being "dramatist, producer, prologue, and star performer of his own rich comedy"². Or, to adduce another critic, Thomas F. Van Laan declares that "the hero's play-acting forms the only real subject of the first three acts" of Richard III.³ Richard's histrionic temperament is, admittedly, essential to the play and its continuing success on the stage, but the view of him as an actor—"a charming entertainer", as Van Laan puts it⁴—cannot account for his mastery of the techniques of verbal persuasion and manipulation. Besides, how much Richard may enjoy his own performances, how much he may gloat at them, he never loses sight of his aim which is "to catch the English crown" (3 Henry VI, III.2.179). His role-playing is rhetorical in its essence. There are ample grounds for regarding him as an artist in crime, but it is going too far to say that his "purpose is not what the show may accomplish but the show itself'⁵. It should never be forgotten that his intrigues and crimes lead him in a calculated process step by step toward his great goal. All his machinations in the first three acts are, in fact, targeted to the realization of his ambition.⁶ And once he has reached his aim, his motivation is gone and his character loses much of its theatrical brilliance.

Also rhetoric is essential to a historical and cultural assessment of the play and its protagonist. Shakespeare alludes to two sources for his villain in Richard III, both of which are related to rhetoric. One of Richard's ancestors is the Vice of the old morality plays, the accomplished dissembler, verbal juggler, trickster, inveterate enemy of virtue and peace and lover of evil and mischief. During a dialogue with young Edward, the Prince of Wales, Richard makes a number of ambiguous remarks, saying to himself in an aside:

Thus, like the formal vice, Iniquity,
I moralize two meanings in one word.

(III. 1.82-83)

Richard sees his kinship with the Vice in his verbal duplicity, his habit of saying the opposite of what he means. It is only in the very early examples of the psychomachia that the vice figures use physical aggression as a means to overthrow their enemies, the virtues. Already in the first extant English morality play, The Castle of Perseverance, their military strategy having failed, the vices throw Covetousness into the fight, who succeeds in enticing Humanum Genus by protestations of friendship, flattery and promises. Assault is here replaced by deceit, a military by a verbal strategy, and all through the history of the Vice rhetorical deceit and doubledealing are his trademark.

Richard's second and more recent ancestor is the Machiavel, a type whom Marlowe had introduced to the English theatre with power-thirsty, mischief-making, deceitful and self-congratulatory magnetic personalities such as Barabas in The Jew of Malta. The Machiavel is a theatrical appropriation—and in many ways a distortion⁷—of the type of the power-obsessed amoral politician whom Niccolò Machiavelli had presented in his work Il Principe (1513). At the end of his programmatic soliloquy in 3 Henry VI, where Richard declares his intention "to catch the English crown" by murdering, deceiving, and playing the orator, he says summarily that it is his aim to "set the murderous Machiavel to school" (III.2.193)⁸. The immediate context of this statement with the references to the orator Nestor (188), the deceiving Ulysses (189), the colourchanging chameleon (191) and the shape-changing Proteus (192) makes it quite obvious that the Machiavel here stands for rhetorical deceit. It is one of the doctrines of Machiavelli's Prince that a successful politician must be an excellent rhetorician. In his famous lion-and-fox analogy (The Prince, Chapter 18) Machiavelli says that the ruler should have the strength of the lion but also the cunning of the fox⁹, and that he should know how to hide his nature as a fox. He must, in effect, be a master of rhetorical deceit, "a great pretender and dissembler"¹⁰, who veils his true position by the cunning use of words. Sir Thomas Browne refers to this aspect of Machiavelli's theory of statecraft when he couples it with "the Rhetorick of Satan"¹¹. In his Discorsi Machiavelli has a chapter in which he maintains that he who wishes to rise to an eminent position in the state "must learn to practise deceit" and conceal it¹²>. That a ruler must be able to dissimulate, i.e. to hide his true opinion and intentions, was a common-place in the Renaissance. In his Arte of English Poesie (1586) George Puttenham quotes the Latin proverb: "Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare"¹³. Equally Pierre Charron says: "Now dissimulation [ . . . ] is very necessarie in Princes, who otherwise could not know how to reigne, or well to commaund. And they must many times dissemble [... ]"¹⁴. There were few political philosophers, however, who emphasized rhetorical deceit and hypocrisy as much as Machiavelli did.

A third source of inspiration for Shakespeare's amalgamation of villain and rhetorician is to be seen in the characteristically Renaissance belief in the irresistible power of rhetoric. It was actually believed in that age that it was possible "with a word to winne Cities and whole Countries"¹⁵. In Richard III the power of rhetoric is demonstrated most drastically by means of the monstrous results it can achieve. Richard is an extreme projection of the contemporary fascination with the word. While in Renaissance rhetoric-books, grammars, and educational treatises eloquence was hailed as a great humanizing and civilizing power, dramatists were often interested in presenting the effects of rhetoric when put to negative uses. The villain-rhetorician must be understood as a dramatically most effective antithesis to the humanistic ideal of the wise statesmanorator.

2. The Villain's Argumentative Skill

One of the essential characteristics of Richard's rhetoric is his mastery of wit, which is displayed most strikingly in what is one of the most amazing rhetorical tours de force in all literature, the persuasion scene with Lady Anne (I.2), where Richard, who has killed the latter's husband and her father-in-law, succeeds in turning her feelings from venomous hatred to a halfacknowledged acceptance of his marriage proposal. Shakespeare has emphasized the grotesqueness of the situation by making the villain woo the widow over the hearse of his victim. The scene is, from first to last, conceived as a rhetorical contest: Richard refers to the dialogue as a wit-combat, "this keen encounter of our wits" (115). And when he kneels before Anne offering his chest to her to be killed, she says, "Arise, dissembler" (184), realizing even at this emotional climax that Richard is dissembling⁶.

In his verbal fencing match with Anne Richard displays a dazzling command of rhetoric ranging from sheer mockery and sophistry to the calculated use of pathos, the appeal to the emotions. Argumentatively, he always has the better of Anne. He is constantly capable of giving the debate an unexpected twist and taking Anne by surprise. When she curses him in the manner of declamatory Senecan rhetoric, asking heaven and earth to destroy him, he, the arch-villain, hypocritically reminds her of her Christian duty of charity; to her overheated wrath he opposes a gentle sanctimonious reproach:

Lady, you know no rules of charity,
Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses.

(68-69)

Or when she says that he is "unfit for any place but hell" (109), he lasciviously suggests that there is "one place else" (110), her "bed-chamber" (111)¹⁷. His sophistry becomes pure cynicism and mockery at virtue and religion when he suggests that King Henry VI—renowned for his saintliness—should thank him, i.e. Richard, for having sent him to heaven, a place for which "he was fitter [ . . . ] than earth" (108). There is no room for a detailed analysis of this scene. I shall just have a closer look at its climax. Richard feigns the suicidal despair of the rejected lover. He offers the sword to Anne, demanding her to kill him. Confronting her with crime, he appeals to her better instincts, to what lies beyond hatred and rage¹⁸. As he expected, she is unable to perpetrate the deed. He, then, outdoes his diabolical strategy by asking her to repeat her earlier wish that he should kill himself:

Speak it again, and even with the word
This hand, which for thy love did kill thy love,
Shall for thy love kill a far truer love;
To both their deaths shalt thou be accessary.

(188-191)¹⁹

These lines abound with rhetorical figures, among which metonymy is most prominent. Richard metonymically substitutes the word "love" for the names of two persons, Anne's killed husband and Richard himself, thus making "love" the keyword of the passage. Love-rhetoric is here employed to palliate crime and deceit. Using the argument of cause (argumentum a causa)²⁰—"for thy love" occurs twice in parallel position—, Richard presents love as the motive for his crime and the hypocritically proffered suicide. Maliciously distorting the facts, he implicates Anne in the guilt: "To both their deaths shalt thou be accessary".

Richard's cunning mixture of protestations of love and accusations of Anne makes her resistance break down. She stops arguing, saying with intense curiosity: "I would I knew thy heart" (192).

3. Machiavellian Rhetoric

Richard marries Anne for a "secret close intent" (I.1.158), and it is his mastery of persuasion that engineers this political marriage²¹. Equally, he uses rhetoric in a sly and underhanded manner in order to ensnare his enemies, i.e. whoever stands in his way to the crown. He also practises persuasion on the great stage of state affairs, where he uses it for political manipulation. This aspect of Richard III is strongly indebted to Thomas More's History of King Richard III. With its concern with the acquisition of the crown as an end in itself and with its autonomous representation of the techniques of rhetorical deceit and manipulation, Shakespeare's play is to a large extent "the product of the Machiavellian view of politics"²². It differs in this respect from one of its presumable sources, The True Tragedie of Richard the Third²³, which does not represent Richard as a Machiavellian deceiver.

Richard's Machiavellian rhetoric, as it may be termed, emerges most prominently in the third act of the play, where Shakespeare presents the techniques of persuasion and manipulation by which his hero manages to create the impression that his accession to the throne is legitimate and that the crown is urged on him through official solicitation and public acclamation. Richard's political campaign is carefully rehearsed. First, he makes Buckingham, his propaganda minister, deliver a speech to the citizens of London. Buckingham is to slander the late king and to insinuate that his children are bastards, thus implying that Richard is the only possible successor to the title. Shakespeare directs attention to the fact that this is a commissioned speech with the arguments provided and prescribed by Richard. Richard is, in fact, shown to instruct Buckingham in the art of persuasion. Shakespeare here gives us a demonstration of the manipulatory processes taking place in power politics. Buckingham's speech itself is not rendered directly. He retells the whole scene after the event in a dialogue with Richard. This mediate mode of presentation enables Shakespeare to reveal to us the ulterior motives of the two plotters' machinations. The speech abuses King Edward and praises Richard as a soldier and statesman. It culminates in Buckingham's request to the people to proclaim Richard King of England. The citizens, however, remain totally silent, unmoved "like dumb statues or breathing stones" (III.7.25). A few claqueurs shout: "God save King Richard" (III.7.36). With the cynicism of the perfect demagogue Buckingham interprets these shouts as general acclaim:

'Thanks, gentle citizens and friends,' quoth I.
This general applause and cheerful shout
Argues your wisdoms and your love to Richard.'

(III.7.38-40)

In a carefully staged performance, Richard seizes power in a final verbal coup, which Shakespeare presents like a play within the play (III.7). The technique of the staged scene is here used as yet another device to expose manipulatory strategies in politics. Richard enters between two bishops with a prayer-book in his hand. He feigns piety, thus following Machiavelli, who thinks that to appear virtuous and religious is very necessary for a ruler, whereas to have virtue and religion and always to observe them is disadvantageous to him²⁴. Argues your wisdoms and your love to Richard.' Richard presents himself as a pious Christian prince who will only reluctantly take on the cares of state because the public demand that he do so is overwhelming. The two plotters perform their political theatricals with great gusto. First there is a persuasive dialogue, in which Buckingham offers or, rather, implores Richard to accept the crown. Richard's refusal, which is most cleverly packed with insinuations, is an ironic strategy which is meant to provoke further entreaties. This rhetorical device, the feigned refusal of that which is earnestly desired, is called accismus (Greek akkismos). It is employed by Julius Caesar when he thrice refuses the crown Antony offers him. More recounts that some of the people present condemn Richard's behaviour as a prearranged stratagem, while others excuse it as a ritual, comparing it with the consecration of a bishop, who must "bee twise asked whyther he wil be bishop or no, and he must twyse say naye, and at the third tyme take it [. .. ]"²⁵. Buckingham advises Richard in Shakespeare's play to "Play the maid's part: still answer nay, and take it" (III.7.51).

When Richard—after the repeated alternation of denial and renewed entreaty—finally accepts the crown, he adds a finishing touch to his performance, which is not, in this form, to be found in More's account of the matter. He declares that since the crown has been forced upon him, he stands acquitted of having tried to gain it by dishonest and criminal means:

Since you will buckle fortune on my back,
To bear her burden, whe'er I will or no,
  I must have patience to endure the load;
But if black scandal or foul-fac'd reproach
Attend the sequel of your imposition,
Your mere enforcement shall acquittance me
From all the impure blots and stains thereof;
For God doth know, and you may partly see,
How far I am from the desire of this.

(III.7.228-236)

With great cunning he forestalls the rumours and scandals that are bound to arise from his accession to the throne. The whole third act of the play with its vivid deployment of manifold techniques of rhetorical deceit and manipulation could be called a lesson in Machiavellian politics.

4. Dissimulation as Richard's Chief Rhetorical Strategy

The hallmark of Richard's dealings with other people is dissimulation, the concealment of his true feelings and intentions. Shakespeare's conception of his protagonist as a dissembler owes much to Thomas More, who describes Richard as "close and secrete, a deepe dissimuler, lowlye of counteynaunce, arrogant of heart, outwardly coumpinable where he inwardely hated"²⁶. When recounting how Richard deceives his young nephew with feigned kindness, More cannot refrain from adding the heartfelt marginal comment "O dissimulacion"²⁷, a comment which Holinshed took up in his chronicle²⁸ and repeated once more in an extended form in the margin of the account of Richard's pretended refusal of the crown: "O singular dissimulation of King Richard"²⁹. On the same page Holinshed adds yet another marginal comment in the same vein: "King Richard spake otherwise than he meant"³⁰. Another source for Richard as a dissimulator is, of course, the Vice Dissimulation, who appears in Bale's King John (1530-36) and in a very late morality play, Robert Wilson's The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (1589), is inveighed against by Love³¹.

O gall in honey, serpent in the grass!
0 bifold fountain of two bitter streams,
Dissimulation fed with viper's flesh,
Whose words are oil, whose deeds, the darts of death!

Richard's emphasis on his dissimulatory powers in the above-mentioned soliloquy in 3 Henry VI

Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,
And cry 'Content!' to that which grieves my heart,
  And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
  And frame my face to all occasions.

(III.2.182-185)

can be paralleled with Cloaked Collusion's boast of his faculties of dissimulation in Skelton's morality Magnyfycence (1513-16)³²:

I can dyssemble, I can bothe laughe and grone;
Playne Delynge and I can neuer agree; (698-699)
Two faces in a hode couertly I bere; (710)
Paynte to a purpose Good Countenaunce I can, (724)
My speche is all Pleasure, but I stynge lyke a waspe. (730)

"Dissemble" and "dissembler" are key-words in Richard III, and the technique of dissimulation is ever and again referred to. In one of his soliloquies Richard declares that it is his intention to "clothe" his "naked villainy" (I.3.336). Introducing his young nephew into "the world's deceit", he explains to him that a man's "outward show" hardly ever "jumpeth with the heart" (III.1.8-11), that behind "sug'red words" "the poison" of the "heart" is hidden (III.1.13-14). Richard's mother, the Duchess of York, is an exception among the play's characters in that she looks through the villain³³:

Ah, that deceit should steal such gentle shape,
And with a virtuous vizor hide deep vice! 

(II.2.27-28)

The central terms of this statement are linked by alliteration and paronomasia (vizor, vice), which makes for an intense characterization of Richard's dissimulation. The metaphor of the visor (vizard) used to describe vice masquerading as virtue has a long tradition. It appears, for instance, in Lewis Wager's morality The Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalene (c. 1550), where Infidelity, the play's Vice, declares that he conveys his "matters cleane!/Like as I haue a visour of vertue" (37-38)³⁴. In The Belman of London Thomas Dekker, speaking of the vices, uses the same metaphor in a statement which hardly deviates from the words of the Duchess of York in Richard III: "All Vices maske themselues with the vizards of Vertue [ . . . ]"³⁵. To adduce yet another example, Pierre de La Primaudaye says: "It is most certaine, that vice putteth on a vizard, and goeth disguised and couered with goodly shewes that belong onely to vertue [ . . . ]"³⁶.

Richard's dissimulation works on two levels. He does all to mask his villainous intentions, and he takes great pains to conceal his rhetorical skill. The ideal of making one's art look artless, the celare artem, had already been formulated in Aristotle's Rhetoric (III.2.1404b) and Cicero's De Oratore (II.4.177). In the Renaissance it was taken up by Baldassare Castiglione in his Book of the Courtier (1528), where that kind of art is defined as "a verie arte, that appeareth not to be arte". Castiglione speaks of "most excellent Orators" who "enforced themselves to make everie man believe, that they had no sight in letters, and dissembling their cunning, made semblant their Orations to be made verie simply, and rather as nature and truth ledde them, than Studie and arte"³⁷. As a rhetorician Richard follows this practice. In Machiavelli's terminology, he is always intent on hiding his character as a fox, i.e. his art of verbal deception. In his dialogue with Lady Anne, for instance, he denies his practice and talent of persuasive speech, pretending that it is only in this unique case of true love that his heart makes him speak persuasively:

I never sued to friend nor enemy;
My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing word;
But, now thy beauty is propos'd my fee,
My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak.

(I.2.167-170)

An even stronger denial of his rhetorical ability is to be found in the succeeding scene with Queen Elizabeth, where he—just as Antony does in Julius Caesar—presents himself as a "plain man" who thinks "no harm" and speaks "his simple truth", while his opponents are "silken, sly, insinuating Jacks" (I.3.51-53). It is one of his ironic strategies to acquit himself of any verbal duplicity and to describe his political adversaries as devilish dissimulators. In his epitaph on Hastings he cynically characterizes the victim of his machinations as a perfect dissembler who "daub'd his vice with show of virtue" (III.5.29). Repeatedly denouncing his enemies as dissimulators, he, most ironically, gives a series of portraits of himself. Richard's thinking is so centred round the concept of dissimulation that he even considers nature, which sent him as a cripple into the world, a dissembler. In his first soliloquy he declares that he is "curtail'd of this fair proportion, / Cheated of feature by dissembling nature" (I.1.18-19). For him the origin and medium of all evil is dissimulation. Accordingly, he explains his physical deformity as a swindle of dissembling nature³⁸.

5. Rhetorical Role-Playing (Simulation) as a Perversion of Courtly Conduct

It was pointed out above that the tradition of the morality Vice and the Machiavel merge in the conception of Richard as a dissimulator. Now it is to be suggested that for a proper understanding of Richard's art of dissimulation it must be related to the Ideology of courtly conduct developed by Castiglione and his successors as a third and at least equally important source. For Castiglione the courtier is a man who does not follow his natural impulses (natura); he rather disciplines them by means of artistic rules (ars), and he does so in such a manner that his conduct appears as natural as an altera natura named sprezzatura by the Italians. The already-mentioned celare artem is of the utmost importance for the courtier. He has to disguise his art; he has to practise dissimulation in all his public activities, be it singing, painting, poetry-writing, courting a lady, or politics. The more perfect his command of the art of dissimulation is, the more successful he will be in courtly life. He must be able to play his part in the pervasive role-playing characteristic of courtly culture. Heinrich F. Plett has shown that tropic diction, i.e. the figurative use of words, receives its special aesthetic and social function in this context³⁹. Figures such as metaphor, metonymy, irony and allegory are the ideal instruments of the indirect mode of dissimulatory expression. It is highly interesting in this context that George Puttenham, in his Arte of English Poesie (1589), should call allegory "the Courtly figure" or "the figure of [false semblant or dissimulation]"⁴⁰ or even, towards the end of his poetic, "the Courtier or figure of faire semblant"⁴¹. Puttenham explains this remarkable terminology by pointing out that the courtier cannot be successful in any of his endeavours without using allegory as a means of dissimulation. Tropic diction is the medium of courtly communication.

The twofold characterization of "the Courtly figure" of allegory as a figure of "faire" and "false semblant" reveals the ambiguity of the ideal of courtliness, the ever-present possibility that it may degenerate into deception, hypocrisy, imposture and intrigue. The courtier may turn out to be nothing but Machiavelli's fox. His dissimulatory rhetoric may prove to be a mere instrument of deception and intrigue. From a rhetorical point of view the intrigue can be defined as a plot carried on by dissimulation⁴². Puttenham is not unaware of the unpleasant fact of the courtier's deception. He gives a whole catalogue of courtly vices, insisting, however, that his "Courtly Poet" is "an honest man", not "an hypocrite", who leaves "these manner of dissimulations to all base-minded men" and is "a dissembler only in the subtilties of his arte"⁴³. It is well-known that hypocrisy and dissimulation belong to the main targets of court satires. The courtier came to be identified with the hypocrite in the Renaissance⁴⁴. Pierre Charron calls "hypocrisie and dissimulation" "a notable quality of Courtiers, and in great credit amongst them as vertue"⁴⁵, and Thomas Gainsford describes the courtier as a "schollar of deceit⁴⁶". In The Unfortunate Traveller Jack Wilton advises one of his dupes, "the vgly mechanicall Captain", to "haue the Art of dissembling at his fingers ends as perfect as any Courtier"⁴⁷. Deceitful or dissimulatory rhetoric was felt to be the hallmark of courtly communication. In Robert Wilson's late morality play The Three Ladies of London (1581) the Vice Dissimulation says⁴⁸:

Mass, masters, he that cannot lie, cog,
dissemble and flatter now-a-days,
  Is not worthy to live in the world, nor in the
court to have praise.

At first sight Richard looks the very opposite of the courtier. In his introductory soliloquy he characterizes himself as "not shap'd for sportive tricks, / Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass" (I.1.14-15), and he adds:

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
  I am determined to prove a villain
  And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

(I.1.28-31)

Yet the next scene already, the persuasion scene with Lady Anne, belies his assertion, when he plays the role of the lover with stunning perfection. To illustrate how tropes serve the purpose of dissimulation in this scene we can go back to Richard's earlier-cited use of metonymy ("This hand [ . . . ] shall for thy love kill a far truer love"). When he substitutes for his own person the quality of love, he slips into the role of the lover. Dissimulation is here realized verbally by the use of tropic diction, which is precisely what Puttenham means when he calls allegory "the Courtier" or "the figure of [false semblant or dissimulation]".

Richard's villainy manifests itself in a variety of dissimulatory acts which usually coincide with simulatory acts. Dissimulation and simulation here are two complementary activities. Richard's attempt to conceal his villainy concretizes itself, accordingly, as an attempt to put on a show of saintliness: "And thus I clothe my naked villainy [. . . ] And seem a saint" (I.3.336-338). With great perfection he plays one role after the other, his histrionic talent being one aspect of his character which More had emphasized very strongly in the Latin version of his history⁴⁹. It is important to realize that in his play-acting Richard never changes his name and garment, a trick of which the morality Vice had been so fond⁵⁰ and which is a constitutive element of Elizabethan plays with a disguise plot⁵¹. The parts Richard plays with so much gusto⁵² are, in fact, social roles, which he can put on with a protean swiftness and facility. He presents himself, for instance, as the devoted brother (commiserating with the victim of his own machinations—1.1.42-116), the courting lover (I.2), the plain man wronged by his deceitful enemies (I.3.42-53), the innocent lamb, "too childish-foolish for this world" (I.3.142), thanking "my God for my humility" (II. 1.72), the sage uncle letting his nephew in on "the world's deceit" (III. 1.8), the crippled victim of treachery and witchcraft (III.4.61-74), and, most triumphantly, the meditating holy man who is, against his resistance, called to the duty of kingship (III.7).

The rhetorical basis of Richard's play-acting should not be lost sight of. The playlet which precedes Hasting's fall in III.4—Richard affably asking the Bishop of Ely for some of his "good strawberries" and putting on a captivating show of geniality and, then, inveigling Hastings into proposing his own execution—has been called "totally unnecessary"⁵³. But this vignette must be understood as a highly effective dramatic illustration of the perfidy of the dissimulatory process as set forth by Richard himself in his dialogue with Prince Edward: the victim is lulled into security with "sug'red words" only to be killed by "the poison" of the heart (III.1.13-14).

Richard's role-playing is, to a considerable part, of a parodistic nature. By means of parody he mocks and sneers at human virtues and the moral order. Mockery of moral values is according to Innocent Gentillet's so-called Contre-Machiavel the effect of the Florentine's precept that the politician should simulate virtues rather than have them: "For what man is so brutall or ignorant, that seeth not with his eie, how Machiavell delights to mock & play, with the most excellent virtues amongst men?"⁵⁴. Role-playing as an essential ingredient of the Renaissance concept of courtly conduct is deliberately put to negative use by Richard. It is degraded by this arch-actor, reduced to an instrument of intrigue and mockery. What we have in Richard's histrionics is an abuse of the ideal of Renaissance rhetoric and a deliberate perversion of the Renaissance ideology of courtly conduct⁵⁵.

Play-acting is even in a deeper sense essential to the protagonist's character in Richard III. His status as a villain seems to depend on his ability to play the role of the villain. Richard refers to his rhetorical performances as "playing the orator", which is a very frequent formula in Shakespeare's earlier plays (3 Henry VI, III.2.188, Richard III III.5.95)⁵⁶, and, similarly, he comments on his villainy as playing "the devil" (Richard III I.3.338) or playing "the dog" (3 Henry VI V.6.77). He obviously tries to play his role as a villain as well as possible. This is also the meaning of the programmatic declaration in his first self-expository speech—"I am determined to prove a villain" (I.1. 30)—, which has puzzled so many commentators. He is determined to prove the villain by the superior skill with which he can play the part of a villain. This is a role which he, with great gusto, plays before the audience, with whom he establishes, right from the beginning, an almost conspiratorial complicity. Richard acts for two audiences, the gulls in the play who are deceived by his rhetorical and histrionic performances, and the auditors in the theatre whom he takes into his confidence in his soliloquies and virtually makes his accomplices⁵⁷. Considering the theatrical metaphors of the play, it is not going too far to say that Richard is presented to us as a character who himself chooses and creates his role as a villain. Richard is not a realistic portrait of an amoral power-seeking man, but, to borrow Wilbur Sanders' phrase, "a magnificent theatrical fiction"⁵⁸.

6. Rhetorical and Theatrical 'Actio '

As a rhetorician and politician Richard is a perfect actor. In order to carry on his intrigue he slips, chameleon-like, into a multitude of roles. His rhetorical playacting is the most obvious expression of his dissimulatory strategy. Now there is one part of rhetoric which forms the connecting link between rhetoric and the art of acting, namely actio, the management of voice and body during the delivery of a speech. The rhetorical actio was given much weight in the age of Shakespeare, though there were some theorists who followed Cicero in warning of the exaggerated use of gestures. Thomas Nashe parodied excessive actio in his description of a theological disputation in The Unfortunate Traveller; "Luther had the louder voyce, Carolostadius went beyond him in beating and bounsing with his fists"⁵⁹. In his essay Of Boldness Francis Bacon retells an anecdote on Demosthenes⁶⁰:

Question was asked of Demosthenes, what was the chief part of an orator? He answered, action; what next? action; what next again? action.

That action, i.e. "that part of an orator which is but superficial, and rather the virtue of a player", "should be placed so high", Bacon attributes to the foolish nature of man. The high estimation of actio is expressed most concentratedly in Volumnia's definition from Shakespeare's Coriolanus: "Action is eloquence" (III.2.76). This is an abbreviated and distorted version of Cicero's definition: "est enim actio quasi sermo corporis" (De Oratore, III.59.222), which Thomas Wilson renders in his Arte of Rhetorique as: "The Gesture of Man is the speech of his body"⁶¹. By shortening this definition to "Action is eloquence", Volumnia identifies actio and rhetoric. This extreme emphasis on actio quite often goes together with the concept of rhetoric as an art of dissimulation and simulation as is evidenced in Coriolanus itself, in Julius Caesar (III.2), Othello⁶² and in Richard III. At the climax of the persuasion scene with Lady Anne Richard most effectively resorts to actio by giving her his sword, laying his chest open and asking her to kill him. The persuasive power of actio is here used at the decisive moment in the scene. Similarly, actio plays a great role in the final manipulatory scene of Richard's rise to supreme power when he appears between two clergymen with a prayer-book in his hand. In addition to such explicit references to actio there are a great many implicit or indirect allusions to it, for instance in II.2, where Clarence's orphaned son relates how his "good uncle Gloucester [ . . . ] wept, / And pitied me, and kindly kiss'd my cheek". (20-24). Feigned tears belong, by the way, to Richard's favourite tricks (cf. I.2.163-166). In Richard III there is even a scene where the two plotters, Richard and Buckingham, discuss the importance of actio as an element of their manipulatory strategies:

RICHARD
Come, cousin, canst thou quake and change thy colour,
Murder thy breath in middle of a word,
And then again begin, and stop again,
  As if thou were distraught and mad with terror?

BUCKINGHAM
Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian;
Speak and look back, and pry on every side,
Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,
Intending deep suspicion. Ghastly looks
  Are at my service, like enforced smiles;
And both are ready in their offices
  At any time to grace my stratagems.

(III.5.1-11)

The whole passage is a sequence of actio-signals referring to the management of voice, facial expression, and gestures. The rhetorical actio is here described in theatrical terms. Buckingham stresses the fact that he can "counterfeit the deep tragedian" (III.5.5). The function of the two plotters' play-acting is, in Buckingham's words, "to grace my stratagems" (III.5.11). Their histrionics are thus characterized as being political and rhetorical in intention. Richard's and Buckingham's discussion on actio must be recognized as a part of the rehearsal of their coup d'état. What the scene tells us is that politicians who wish to be successful must above all be good actors.

7. Conclusion

In the Renaissance—just as had been the case in classical antiquity—language was felt to be the measure of the difference between man and beast. Speech and eloquence were regarded as means of moving men to reasonable and virtuous ends⁶³. The other side of the coin was, however, not overlooked, namely that the abuse of language and rhetoric could disfigure man beyond recognition and reduce him to the moral status of the devil. In the course of the Renaissance the attitude towards eloquence became increasingly ambiguous. "The tongue is the best and the worst thing that is", said Pierre de la Primaudaye⁶⁴. And Pierre Charron put it in almost the same words: " [ . . . ] there is nothing better, nothing worse than the tongue"⁶⁵. Shakespeare never leaves us in doubt about the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad in Richard III, but, in the full presence of the unblurred values of vice and virtue, he makes us suspend our moral judgment, so that we may be fascinated by the mastermind of his villain-rhetorician, who pursues his plans untrammelled by conscience and pity⁶⁶. Richard is the man who will kill, or rather liquidate, whoever stands in his way, but on the stage his villainy is, for the most part, shown to work by rhetorical deceit and rhetorical role-playing used for veiling murder and intrigue. In many scenes of Richard III the protagonist seems to be a dramatic exemplification of Samuel Daniel's dictum: "For men doe fowlest, when they finest speake"⁶⁷. With this hero Shakespeare presents a dramatically most effective portrait of a supreme artist in persuasion whose rhetoric is totally divorced from moral considerations and who constantly tells "lies well steel'd with weighty arguments" (I.1.148). One of the reasons for the enormous theatrical success of Richard's role derives from the fact that the actor playing his part has the unique opportunity of impersonating a man who is himself a consummate actor, whose roleplaying is, in fact, the most important means of furthering his criminal plans. While Renaissance writers of educational treatises such as Sir Thomas Elyot's The Book named The Governor (1531)⁶⁸ or Lodowick Bryskett's Discourse of Civili Life (1609) wanted dissimulators, i.e. people who "cary one thing in their tongue, and another in their heart", to be "hunted out of all ciuill society"⁶⁹, dramatists of the age such as Marlowe or Shakespeare brought them on the stage because they recognized the formidable theatrical potential contained in the figure of the villain-rhetorician.

Notes

¹ Cf. M. Mincoff, "Henry VI Part III and The True Tragedy", English Studies, 42 (1961), 272-288, esp. 279. Quotations from Shakespeare are taken from William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, ed. P. Alexander (rpt. London, 1968).

² M. Neill, "Shakespeare's Halle of Mirrors: Play, Politics, and Psychology in Richard III", Shakespeare Studies, 8 (1975), 99-129, cit. 103.

³ T. F. Van Laan, Role-Playing in Shakespeare (Toronto, 1978), p. 72.

⁴ Ibid., p. 141.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ "Richard also shows evident pleasure in tricking his victims, but his attack on them is guided by a settled purpose." (M. E. Prior, The Drama of Power. Studies in Shakespeare's History Plays [Evanston, III., 1973], p. 291).

⁷ "[ . . . ] the stage Machiavelli was saddled with crimes and misdemeanours to which no reference can be found in any of the Florentine's works." (F. Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli [London, 1964], p. 56).

⁸ In the bad quarto of 3 Henry VI, The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of York, the last line of Richard's soliloquy reads: "And set the aspyring Catalin to schoole."

⁹ Speaking of two types of injury—"by violence or by fraud"—Sir Thomas Elyot equally uses the lion-andfox analogy: "[... ] fraud seemeth to be properly of the fox, violence or force of the lion" (The Book named The Governor [London, 1970], p. 168). For the humanist Elyot fraud and dissimulation belong to the devil's art, of course. In his Unfortunate Traveller Thomas Nashe declares that "the foxes case must help, when the lions skin is out at the elbowes." (The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. R. B. McKerrow, II [Oxford, 1958], p. 210). Wyndham Lewis made the lion-andfox figure the starting-point of his rather eccentric study The Lion and the Fox. The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare (1927; rpt. London, 1966). He does not deal with Richard III.

¹⁰ Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, transl. W. K. Marriot (London, 1978), p. 98.

¹¹The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. C. Sayle, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1912), I, p. 33. In his Christian Morals Browne has a section condemning hypocrisy and simulation (The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, III, p. 499-500).

¹² Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses, ed. B. Crick (Harmondsworth, 1981), II. 13, p. 310-312.

¹³ George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, ed. G. D. Willcock and A. Walker (Cambridge, 1936), p. 186.

¹⁴ Pierre Charron, Of Wisdome Three Bookes, transi. S. Lennard (London, 1608), p. 360.

¹⁵Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique 1560, ed. G. H. Mair (Oxford, 1909), "The Epistle". Cf. my study Die politische Rede bei Shakespeare (Tübingen, 1979), p. 11.

¹⁶ Cf. Neill, op. cit., 104.

¹⁷ E. Leisi calls Richard's attack "ice-cold and calculating", contrasting it with the intensely sensuous rhetoric of Donne's love elegy "On his Mistress going to bed" (Paar und Sprache. Linguistische Aspekte der Zweierbeziehung [Heidelberg, 1978], p. 68-69).

¹⁸ W. Clemen, Kommentar zu Shakespeares Richard III (Göttingen, 1957), p. 60.

¹⁹ Italics mine.

²⁰ See H. Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik (München, 1960), p. 208-210.

²¹ For the political motive of Richard's marriage with Anne see J. P. Cutts, The Shattered Glass: A Dramatic Pattern in Shakespeare's Early Plays (Detroit, 1968), p. 127; W. F. McNeir, "The Masks of Richard the Third", Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 11 (1971), 167-186, esp. 174.

²² D. L. Frey, The First Tetralogy. Shakespeare's Scrutiny of the Tudor Myth. A Dramatic Exploration of Divine Providence (The Hague, 1976), p. 75.

²³The Mahne Society Reprints, ed. W. W. Greg (London, 1929).

²⁴ Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 99-100.

²⁵The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, ed. R. S. Sylvester (New Haven, 1963), II, p. 80.

²⁶op. cit., 8. In his "Introduction" Sylvester notes the parallel between More's portrait of Richard and Tacitus' description of Tiberius as a dissimulator (xcvi).

²⁷op. cit., p. 42.

²⁸Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 6 vols. (London, 1808), III, p. 378.

²⁹op. cit., p. 395.

³⁰ Ibid. A similar verdict is passed in Holinshed on Edrike de Streona, "a man of great infamie for his craftie dissimulation, falshood and treason, used by him to the ouerthrow of the English estate" ( Holinshed's Chronicles, I, 728). As a villain-rhetorician who strives for the aim of kingship Edricus, the leading character of the chronicle play Edmond Ironside is akin to Shakespeare's Richard. ( Edmond Ironside, ed. E. Boswell. The Malone Society Reprints. [Oxford, 1928]).

³¹ R. Dodsley, A Select Collection of Old English Plays, 4th ed., rev. by W. C. Hazlitt, 15 vols. (London, 1874-1876), VI, p. 421.

³²Magnyfycence. A Moral Play by John Skelton, ed. R.L. Ramsay. Early English Text Society. Extra Series, 98 (London, 1908), p. 23-24.

³³ Italics mine.

³⁴ Lewis Wager, The Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene, ed. F. J. Carpenter (Chicago, 1902).

³⁵The Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. A. B. Grosart, 5 vols. (1885, rpt. New York, 1963), III, p. 116.

³⁶ Pierre de La Primaudaye, The French Academie, transl. T. B. (London, 1618), p. 29.

³⁷ Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, transl. Sir Thomas Hoby. Everyman Ed. (London, 1975), p. 46. Cf. W. A. Rebhorn, Courtly Performances. Masking and Festivity in Castiglione 's "Book of the Courtier" (Detroit, 1978), p. 32-33.

³⁸ Cf. W. Sanders, The Dramatist and the Received Idea (Cambridge, 1968), p. 91.

³⁹ "Konzepte des Allegorischen in der englischen Renaissance", Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie. Symposion Wolfenbüttel 1978, ed. W. Haug (Stuttgart, 1979), p. 310-335, esp. p. 324-328; "Elisabethanische Hofpoetik. Gesellschaftlicher Code und ästhetische Norm in Puttenhams 'Arte of English Poesie'", Europäische Hofkultur im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Vorträge und Referate, ed. A. Buck, G. Kauffmann, B. L. Spahr und C. Wiedemann, 3 Bde. (Hamburg, 1981), II, p. 41-50; "Hamlets Rede an die Schauspieler. Zur 'actio' als Theorie des fiktionalen Handelns bei Shakespeare", Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft West (1981), 133-153, esp. 151-153.

⁴⁰ Puttenham, op. cit., p. 186.

⁴¹ Ibid., p. 299.

⁴² Louis Adrian Montrose's connection between Puttenham, Castiglione and Machiavelli is bold but entirely to the point: "In Puttenham's 'figure of faire semblant', Castiglione's Courtier masks Machiavelli's Fox". ("Celebration and Insinuation: Sir Philip Sidney and the Motives of Elizabethan Courtship", Renaissance Drama, 8 [1977], 3-35, cit. 6).

⁴³ Puttenham, op. cit., p. 302 (catalogue of vices, p. 300-302).

⁴⁴ Cf. C. Uhlig, Hofkritik im England des Mittelalters und der Renaissance. Studien zu einem Gemeinplatz der europäischen Moralistik (Berlin, 1973).

⁴⁵ Pierre Charron, op. cit., p. 445.

⁴⁶ Thomas Gainsford, The Rich Cabinet (London, 1616), p. 18.

⁴⁷The Works of Thomas Nashe, II, p. 220.

⁴⁸ Dodsley, op. cit., VI, p. 279.

⁴⁹The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, II, p. 8.

⁵⁰ Cf. A. Wierum, "'Actors' and 'Play Acting' in the Morality Tradition", Renaissance Drama, 3 (1970), 186-214.

⁵¹ Cf. V. O. Freeburg, Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama. A Study in Stage Tradition (New York, 1915).

⁵² For descriptions of Richard's roles see S. Thomas, The Antic Hamlet and Richard III (New York, 1943); Sanders, op. cit., p. 89; McNeir, op. cit.; Van Laan, op. cit., p. 138-141; King Richard III, ed. A. Hammond. The Arden Shakespeare (London, 1981), p. 112-113.

⁵³ Van Laan, op. cit., p. 141.

⁵⁴ Innocent Gentillet, A Discourse vpon the Meanes of Well Governing and Maintaining in Good Peace, a Kingdome [ . . . ] Against Nicholas Machiavell the Florentine, transi. S. Patericke (London, 1602), p. 275.

⁵⁵ Michael Neill is one of the few critics to notice this aspect of the play: "[... ] Richard's flair makes him only the most accomplished performer in a court of hypocrites, as the pageant of dissimulation in II. 1 shows." ("Shakespeare's Halle of Mirrors", 109).

⁵⁶ Cf. A. Righter, Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play (London, 1962), p. 95-96.

⁵⁷ Cf. McNeir, op. cit., 173. The self-congratulatory tone of several of his soliloquies and asides makes it obvious that there is still a third audience in the play: Richard also performs for himself, in other words, with himself as an applauding audience. See, for instance, his soliloquy after the persuasion scene with Lady Anne (I.2.227 ff.), which is, in fact, a self-gloating review of his own performance.

⁵⁸ Sanders, op. cit., p. 104.

⁵⁹The Works of Thomas Nashe, II, p. 250.

⁶⁰ Francis Bacon, Essays. Everyman Ed. (London, 1975), p. 35.

⁶¹Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique 1560, p. 221.

⁶² Cf. H. F. Plett, "'Action is eloquence'. Zur rhetorischen Aktionstypik in Shakespeares 'Othello'", Germanischromanische Monatsschrift, N. F. 32 (1982), 1-21.

⁶³ For a number of humanist authors praising speech and eloquence see my Topik des Stilbegriffs. Zur Geschichte des Stilverständnisses von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Darmstadt, 1981), p. 22-25.

⁶⁴ Pierre de la Primaudaye, op. cit., p. 53.

⁶⁵ Pierre Charron, op. cit., p. 44.

⁶⁶ A narrow moralistic approach to the play does not do justice to its theatricality. John Dover Wilson, for instance, finds cause to complain "that this of all plays should be the joint product of the two greatest minds of the Tudor age [More, Shakespeare], since it afforded little or no scope for the humanity, tenderness and spiritual depth which characterize them both." (Richard III, ed. J. D. Wilson [Cambridge, 1954], p. xivxv). Similarly, Lord Macaulay argues that uniting vice and attractiveness is a very bad thing for a playwright to do. See Critical and Historical Essays by Lord Macaulay, ed. F. C. Montague (London, 1973), p. 12.

⁶⁷ Samuel Daniel, Musophilus, ed. R. Hymelick (West Lafayette, Ind., 1946), p. 75.

⁶⁸ See in particular the chapter "Of fraud and deceit, which be against justice" (III. 4).

⁶⁹ Lodowick Bryskett, A Discourse of Civili Life (1609; rpt. Amsterdam, 1971), p. 39.