SOURCE: “Last Words and Last Things: St. John, Apocalypse, and Eschatology in Richard III,” in Shakespeare Studies: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews, Vol. 18, 1986, pp. 25-40.

[In the following essay, Hassel studies the allusions in Richard III to St. Paul and St. John's Apocalypse, highlighting the parallels between the “argument” of the play and that of the Book of Revelation.]

Although attempts to understand Richard's Pauline allusions have become almost epidemic recently, they have also usually been interesting. John Dover Wilson holds the most traditional view: he sees them as part of Richard's gleeful hypocrisy, specifically his characteristic “mock-Puritan piety.” Geoffrey Carnall thinks that Richard is “positively impersonating, with mischievous exhilaration, the unscrupulous Apostle of the Gentiles.” Other connections are argued by John Harcourt, particularly a parallel to Acts 23:12, when certain Jews swore like Richard with Hastings that they would not eat “till they had killed Paul.” Alistair Fox develops Harcourt's idea of “the theme of grace in its Pauline context.” Paul, like Richard, was afflicted with thorns in the flesh, but with patience and humility he bore his infirmities, in fact gloried in them, and was therefore richly rewarded. “Unlike Paul, Richard cynically repudiates providence so that his outward deformity, instead of being an occasion for regeneration, becomes emblematic of inner distortion.” As Harcourt suggests, “Man may accept grace or he may reject it; and therein, for Paul, lies his freedom or his misery. … Richard, freely avoiding grace, shapes his own destiny and others'.”¹ Queen Elizabeth understands her vicious adversary in just such theological terms: “True: when avoyded grace makes Destiny” (l. 2998).²

Curious about other possible uses of these Pauline oaths, and about the one by St. John as well, I searched through Renaissance theological works for other Pauline commonplaces that might be applicable. One concerns Paul's confrontational temperament, his skills as a debater. John Calvin in his commentaries on Corinthians, Galatians, and Ephesians stresses the “earnestness and vehemence of Paul's confrontation of ‘false doctrines’ and ‘false apostles,’ the ‘disputing’” that is so characteristic of these epistles. In similar terms, Martin Luther calls I Corinthians 15 “a whole long chapter in strong and solid proof of [one] article of faith and in refutation of their injurious prattle.” The “Arguments” summarizing the contents of each of these Pauline epistles in the Geneva Bible make a similar point. In Galatians, Paul “earnestly reasoneth against … false Apostles”; in I Corinthians he skillfully sets “before their eyes the spiritual vertue, & heavenlie wisdome of the Gospel” and “correcteth divers abuses in their Church.” A modern commentator also describes Paul as “a powerful dialectician … with the native temper of a debater.”³ We need only recall Richard's scenes with Lady Anne and Queen Elizabeth to acknowledge this possible if perverse connection to St. Paul. In the first encounter, Richard is as brilliant in debate as his predecessor, overwhelming both Anne's fury and her arguments with his own clever responses. Two of his oaths by St. Paul preface the debate. With Elizabeth, however, the result is reversed, spelling a diminishing wit and fortune that will culminate in despair and defeat at Bosworth Field. St. Paul's name is not invoked before this second encounter; neither are his dialectical skills.

A related irony may concern Richard's use of four of his five Pauline allusions to stifle debate or dissent. He threatens the Halberds: “Villaines set downe the Coarse, or by S. Paul, / Ile make a Coarse of him that disobeyes.” Further: “Advance thy Halbert higher then my brest, / Or by S. Paul Ile strike thee to my Foote, / And spurne upon thee Begger for thy boldnesse” (ll. 211-12, 216-18). These first two oaths will brook no parley, and receive none. In the third case, Richard is again opposing himself to dissent in his Pauline oath: “By holy Paul, they love his Grace but lightly, / That fill his eares with such dissentious Rumors.” Here, not a blow but an implied charge of treason is his threat against the queen and her allies. As she does in IV.iv, Elizabeth stands up to Richard here, defending herself against his “vile suspects” (ll. 511-12, 554) of slander and political intrigue. Finally, when Richard wants to cut off all dissent in the council chamber, he orders Hastings' head cut off with another Pauline oath: “Off with his Head; Now by Saint Paul I sweare, / I will not dine, untill I see the same” (ll. 2047-48). Herod-like, this ranting tyrant wants the head of the one man dumb or brave enough to question his evil. Of course, this Hastings is no John the Baptist. Still, Richard “will not dine” until he sees his head. Interestingly, when Richard first speaks to Hastings, before the Tower, he swears not by St. Paul but by St. John. Could he have meant the Baptist? At that same moment Richard has been protesting, prophet-like, against the king his brother's physical excesses: “O he hath kept an evill Diet long, / And over-much consum'd his Royall Person: / 'Tis very greevous to be thought upon” (ll. 147-49). Just before, he has been trying to get Brakenbury the Lieutenant to speak “naught” of Mistress Shore. Is this poor woman about to play her unwilling Salome to Hastings' unwitting Herod? Is Richard both Herod and John the Baptist in this strange interlude? The parts fit askew, but interestingly. I wouldn't put the scenario past Richard.

Though the Folio oath by St. John has often been emended to St. Paul, there are several good reasons to let it stand. The oath may refer to St. John the Baptist, but it may also refer to St. John the Evangelist, popularly thought in the Renaissance to have been the author of both the fourth Gospel and the Book of Revelation, or the Apocalypse of St. John.⁴ Several close parallels between Richard III and the tone, structure, language, and vision of Revelation may make this the most pertinent of Richard's pious oaths.

Perhaps the most impressive connections to Revelation are the parallels between its “Argument” and that of the play. The Geneva Bible describes the contents of Revelation as

a summe of … prophecies … adding also suche things as shulde be expedient, aswel to forewarne us of the dangers to come, as to admonish us to beware some, and encourage us against others. Herein therefore is lively set forthe … the providence of God for his elect, and of their glorie and consolation in the day of vengeance: how that the hypocrites which sting like scorpions the members of Christ, shalbe destroyed. … The livelie description of Antichrist is set forthe, whose time and power notwithstanding is limited, and albeit that he is permitted to rage against the elect, yet his power stretcheth no farther then to the hurt of their bodies: and at length he shal be destroyed by the wrath of God, when as the elect shal give praise to God for the victorie; nevertheles for a ceason God wil permit this Antichrist, and strompet under colour of faire speache and pleasant doctrine to deceive the worlde. … Satan that a long time was untied, is now cast with his ministers into the pit of fyre to be tormented for ever, where as contrariwise the faithful … shal enjoye perpetual glorie.⁵

Soften the theological edge a bit, and this could be the argument of Richard III, so often does it parallel the play in action, structure, tone, and meaning.

Margaret, of course, is our most extraordinary prophet of last things in the play, foretelling as she does most of the death, desolation, ruin, and decay that will occur before the promised end. When such diverse characters as Hastings, Rivers, Grey, Vaughan, and Buckingham all die, formally affirming the efficacy of her curses and the accuracy of her prophecies, the motifs of prophecy and eschatology are further strengthened. Their own prophecies and curses add still more potency to the common motifs of Revelation and Richard III. Of course, in Revelation, the prophetic visions pertain to the end of the world, eschatology, or last things. The seven seals unfold the plagues and portents that will accompany the second coming of Christ to reward and punish the quick and the dead. In Richard III, the scope is limited to the last days of the Wars of the Roses. Richard is only devilish, not the beast himself; Richmond is Christlike, not Christ. But these actors, like their actions and the tones of some of their apocalyptic speeches, are not unlike their counterparts in Revelation.

Buckingham, whose death comes second only to Richard's in the long, formal sequence of such prophesied judgments, directly links the dramatic motif of prophecy with apocalypse, eschatology, and doomsday:

Buc. This is All-soules day (Fellow) is it not?
Sher. It is.
Buc. Why then Al-soules day, is my bodies doomsday
.....This, this All-soules day to my fearfull Soule,
Is the determin'd respit of my wrongs:
That high All-seer, which I dallied with,
Hath turn'd my fained Prayer on my head,
And given in earnest, what I begg'd in jest.
Thus doth he force the swords of wicked men
To turne their owne points in their Masters bosomes.
Thus Margarets curse falles heavy on my necke:
When he (quoth she) shall split thy heart with sorrow,
Remember Margaret was a Prophetesse:
Come leade me Officers to the blocke of shame,
Wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame.

(ll. 3382-84, 3390-3401)

This All Souls' Day to which he twice alludes is November 2, “a liturgical day of the Roman rite, commemorating all the faithful departed.” Its celebration is also rich in images of last things, last judgment, reward, and punishment at doomsday. One of the prescribed readings from the Catholic missal is the famous Pauline passage from I Corinthians 15; it occurs at “the last trumpet,” and reads: “O death, where is thy sting?” The other is appropriately from John 5:25, 29, which reads: “The houre shal come, and now is, when the dead shal heare the voyce of the Sone of God. … And they shal come forthe, that have done good, unto the ressurection of life: but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of condemnacion [judgment].”⁶ Buckingham knows that his body is doomed to die this All Souls' day. With all of the crimes on his head, and in light of his own testimony to God's providence in the punishment of “wicked men,” he is certainly worried about his immortal soul in the judgment to come. Unlike Richard, however, this liar and conspirator in murder does not die in despair, but in contrition. He humbly acknowledges, “Wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame.” There is hope yet for his spotted soul.

The “resurrection of condemnacion,” judgment hereafter, is vividly described in Revelation 20:12, 13, 15:

And I sawe the dead, bothe great & smal stand before God: and the bokes were opened, & another boke was opened, which is the boke of life, and the dead were judged of those things, which were written in the bokes, according to their workes. And the sea gave up her dead, which were in her, and death and hell delivered up the dead, which were in them: & they were judged everie man according to their workes. And whosoever was not founde written in the boke of life, was cast into the lake of fyre.

Hastings' works are none too good. Worse, they may have been “determined,” just as this judgment has been prophesied. If so, Buckingham is a reprobate who will as surely as Richard be “cast into the lake of fyre” at the fearful “seconde death.” Like All Souls' day, eschatology is much in Hastings' mind as he nears his first death.

Clarence and Richard both dream of last things, death, and judgment, as their own deaths approach. Clarence's dream of death actually comes across in a prophetic, visionary style reminiscent of Revelation:

O Lord, me thought what paine it was to drowne,
What dreadfull noise of water in mine eares,
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes.
Me thoughts, I saw a thousand fearfull wrackes:
A thousand men that Fishes gnaw'd upon:
Wedges of Gold, great Anchors, heapes of Pearle,
Inestimable Stones, unvalewed Jewels,
All scattred in the bottome of the Sea,
Some lay in dead-mens Sculles, and in the holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept
(As 'twere in scorne of eyes) reflecting Gemmes,
That woo'd the slimy bottome of the deepe,
And mock'd the dead bones that lay scattred by.

(ll. 857-69)

This is one of the most impressive pieces of visionary poetry in Shakespeare, or anywhere, for that matter. Clarence's dream of judgment is even more vivid, even more frightening:

O then, began the Tempest to my Soule.
I past (me thought) the Melancholly Flood,
With that sowre Ferry-man which Poets write of,
Unto the Kingdome of perpetuall Night.
The first that there did greet my Stranger-soule,
Was my great Father-in-Law, renowned Warwicke,
Who spake alowd: What scourge for Perjurie,
Can this darke Monarchy affoord false Clarence?
And so he vanish'd. Then came wand'ring by,
A Shadow like an Angell, with bright hayre
Dabbel'd in blood, and he shriek'd out alowd
Clarence is come, false, fleeting, perjur'd Clarence,
That stabb'd me in the field by Tewkesbury:
Seize on him Furies, take him unto Torment.
With that (me thought) a Legion of foule Fiends
Inviron'd me, and howled in mine eares
Such hiddeous cries, that with the very Noise,
I (trembling) wak'd, and for a season after,
Could not beleeve, but that I was in Hell,
Such terrible Impression made my Dreame.

(ll. 880-99)

With Brakenbury, we are afraid to hear Clarence tell this terrible vision of last things. “Apocalyptic” is the best term for the eschatological style and content of his vision. Again and again, Renaissance theologians link apocalypse and eschatology. In a sermon on Revelation, George Gifford called it “First … a prophecie which openeth the state of things to come … even to the great day of the generall judgement.” To Hugh Broughton, eschatology was the “Summe of the Argument” of Revelation: “Johns Apocalyps telleth, that Christ shewed the state to come, to the ende of the world.” John Napier repeatedly discussed “the latter day” or last things, “the day of judgment and general resurrection” in his treatise on Revelation. Augustine Marlorat concluded of Revelation: “Finally it sheweth (and that most plenteously) what shall be the ende at length both of the chosen, and the reprobates.”⁷ Clarence's dreams of dead bones, reprobation, and judgment fit comfortably within this apocalyptic, eschatological context.

But the surest test here is aesthetic: the passage also shares the style and feeling of apocalyptic literature. Listen to similar passages from Revelation⁸:

And I heard a great voyce out of the Temple, saying to the seven Angels, Go your wayes, and powre out the seven viales of the wrath of God upon the earth. And the first went, and powred out his vial upon the earth: and there fell a noysome, and a grievous sore upon the men, which had the marke of the beast, & upon them which worshipped his image. And the second Angel powred out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man: and everie living thing dyed in the sea. And the thirde Angel powred out his vial upon the rivers & fountaines of waters, and they became blood. … And the fourth Angel powred out his vial on the sunne, and it was given unto him to torment men with heat of fyre. … And the fift Angel powred out his vial upon the throne of the beast, & his kingdome waxed darke, & they gnewe their tongues for sorowe. … And there were voyces, and thundrings, and lightnings, & there was a great earthquake, suche as was not since men were upon the earth.

(Rev. 16:1-18)

In substance, however, the best visionary passages of Revelation usually describe the new Jerusalem, not hell. These have more of the abundant imagery of Clarence's first dream:

And the buylding of the wall of it was of Jasper: and the citie was pure golde like unto cleare glasse. And the fundacions of the wall of the citie were garnished with all manner of precious stones: the first fundacion was Jasper: the second of Saphire: the third of a Chalcedonie: the fourth of an Emeraude: … the twelveth an Amethist. And the twelve gates were twelve pearles, and everie gate is of one pearle, and the strete of the citie is pure gold, as shining glasse.

(Rev. 21:18-21)

In Clarence's vision, torment predominates over blessedness. Both speeches possess brilliant apocalyptic imagery.

Richard's tormenting dream is relentlessly judgmental, each witness concluding his little vision with “dispaire and dye.” By force of will, Richard, unlike Clarence, resists these “afflictions” of a “coward Conscience,” particularly as they concern judgment hereafter. His brief slip into contrition and confession, “Have mercy Jesu,” is immediately countered by denial: “Soft, I did but dreame” (ll. 3640-41). There is no judgment hereafter. But even here, in Richard's mind and in his kingdom, the judgment is “Guilty, Guilty.” There will be “to morrowes vengeance on the head of Richard” even if he can reject for a while the later tomorrows and tomorrows. Judgment hereafter sticks deep in Richard's mind. As he addresses his troops, the possibility of judgment slips out again: “March on, joyne bravely, let us too't pell mell, / If not to heaven, then hand in hand to Hell” (ll. 3668, 3782-83). Like the fallen in Revelation before the final harvest of God, Richard begins to “Feare God, … for the houre of his judgment is come”; he begins to hear the third Angel,

saying with a loude voyce, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his marke in his forhead, or on his hand, The same shal drinke of the wine of the wrath of God, … and he shalbe tormented in fyre and brimstone before the holie Angels, & before the Lambe. And the smoke of their torment shal ascende evermore: & they shal have no rest day nor night, which worshippe the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the print of his name.”

(Rev. 14:9-11)

Richard, of all men, is marked his own forever. Richard's apocalyptic dream marks the beginning of his discovery of this eternity of torment.

In Revelation, Satan and his worldly allies are defeated in a final battle and cast into hell:

And I sawe the beast, and the Kings of the earth, and their warriers gathered together to make battel against him, that sate on the horse & against his souldiers. But the beast was taken, … and them that worshiped his image. These bothe were alive cast into a lake of fyre, burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slayne with the sworde of him that sitteth upon the horse.

(Rev. 19:19-21)

“A Horse, a Horse, my Kingdome for a Horse” (l. 3834). In Richard III we see the unhorsed Richard, God's enemy, slain by God's champion Richmond. His hellish hereafter has been widely predicted throughout the play. We have no reason to expect him to jump the life to come.

Like Revelation itself, Brother Edward has a double vision of last things. At the beginning of his end (II.i), his vision is all redemption: “I, every day expect an Embassage / From my Redeemer, to redeeme me hence. / And more to peace my soule shall part to heaven, / Since I have made my Friends at peace on earth.” By the end, he is less sure: “O God! I feare thy justice will take hold / On me, and you; and mine, and yours for this” (ll. 1126-29, 1259-60). Revelation 21:8 warns that “the feareful and unbeleving, and the abominable and murderers, & whoremongers, and sorcerers, & idolaters, & all liars shall have their parte in the lake, which burneth with fyre and brimstone, which is the seconde death.” The Geneva gloss includes among these sinners “Thei which feare man more then God,” and “Thei which mocke & jest at religion.” How few of these sins have Richard and his brothers Clarence and Edward avoided. How accurate their mutual prophetic visions of last things. Like his brother Clarence, Edward may be weighted down with sins, but he is also contrite: Richard never is. Their family portrait makes an interesting apocalyptic tableau in the play.

To the many accurate prophecies and the vivid prophetic style in Richard III are added additional characteristics from the “Argument” of Revelation in the Geneva Bible: forewarnings of the dangers to come, and admonitions to avoid them. We need look no further than Hastings' fine valedictory for such an admonition:

O momentarie grace of mortall men,
Which we more hunt for, then the grace of God!
Who builds his hope in ayre of your good Lookes,
Lives like a drunken Sayler on a Mast,
Readie with every Nod to tumble downe,
Into the fatall Bowels of the Deepe.

(ll. 2069-74)

The endless lamentations of the women, Clarence's and Buckingham's dying words, all of the ghosts speaking to Richard, and Richard's own despairing response to his dream are equally impressive admonitions “to beware” (Geneva “Argument”). The play is as full of them as it is of apocalyptic prophecy.

There is also presented in the apparently preordained victory of Richmond “the providence of God for his elect, and of their glorie and consolation in the day of vengeance” (Geneva “Argument”). Richmond certainly assumes his election, though with appropriate humility, throughout his portrayal in Richard III. His “couragious Friends” are urged to march “cheerely on” precisely because they march “in Gods name” (ll. 3419, 3427). Before the last battle, he prays with the faith and the humility of certain election:

O thou, whose Captaine I account my selfe,
Looke on my Forces with a gracious eye:
Put in their hands thy bruising Irons of wrath,
That they may crush downe with a heavy fall,
Th' usurping Helmets of our Adversaries:
Make us thy ministers of Chasticement,
That we may praise thee in thy victory:
To thee I do commend my watchfull soule,
Ere I let fall the windowes of mine eyes:
Sleeping, and waking, oh defend me still.

(ll. 3551-60)

“That we may praise thee in thy victory” is a double promise of piety and humility that Richmond grandly keeps. The ghosts testify to his election, and to Richard's reprobation: “Be cheerefull Richmond”; “vertuous and holy be thou Conquerer”; “live and flourish”; “Sleepe, Richmond, / Sleep in Peace, and wake in Joy, / Good Angels guard thee from the Boares annoy”; finally: “God, and good Angels fight on Richmonds side” (ll. 3566ff.). The victorious Richmond proves full of grace in accepting the victory, gracious to his “Victorious Friends,” and grateful to God: “God, and your Armes / Be prais'd, Victorious Friends; / The day is ours, the bloudy Dogge is dead” (ll. 3845-47). Later in the same speech we hear the conjunction of God's blessing of the elect and his vengeance on the reprobate that we associate with the Argument of Revelation:

Smile Heaven upon this faire Conjunction,
That long have frown'd upon their Enmity:
.....Now Civill wounds are stopp'd, Peace lives agen;
That she may long live heere, God say, Amen.

(ll. 3866-67, 3886-87)

What could be clearer, then, than Richmond's election “lively set forthe,” and his “glorie and consolation in the day of vengeance” (Geneva “Argument”). Richmond is portrayed as chosen by God to deliver England from the devilish tyrant Richard. Like the Messiah in Revelation, he counts among his allies not only God but “good Angels,” invoked by the ghosts of Buckingham, Clarence, and the two princes. “The Prayers of holy Saints and wronged soules” (l. 3707) are also among his impressive supernatural forces. In Revelation, first four angels, then seven participate in “the destruction of the wicked and comfort of the godlie.” So do “the Saintes of God overcome them all, and sing divine songs unto God by whose power they get the victorie.”⁹

Most impressive is Richmond's direct allusion to Revelation while he prays as God's minister of wrath, “Looke on my Forces with a gracious eye, / Put in their hands thy bruising Irons of wrath.” Of God's Messiah, his champion “Faithful & True” in Revelation 19:11, it is said that “he shal rule them with a rodde of yron: for he it is that treadeth the wine presse of the fiercenes and wrath of almightie God.” This allusion increases our sense of both the apocalyptic and the providential dimensions of Richmond's potency in Richard III. “And a crowne was given unto him, and he went forthe conquering that he might overcome” (Rev. 6:2). The conquering Messiah rides forth in Revelation on a “white horse, and he that sate upon him, was called, Faithful & true, & he judgeth and fighteth righteously” (Rev. 19:11). The conquering heroes of Revelation and Richard III bear interesting similarities, as do the forces they command.¹⁰

So do their antagonists. In Revelation as in Richard III, this is a day of vengeance as well as a day of victory. According to the Geneva “Argument,” on this last day “the hypocrites which sting like scorpions the members of Christ, shalbe destroyed.” Richard, in all his devilish splendor, is an impressive antichrist to Richmond's avenging Messiah. First, Richard, as a good antichrist, is given ironic connections to this Messiah. The murderers reply to Clarence's naive assumption of Richard's good offices: “Why so he doth, when he delivers you / From this earths thraldome to the joyes of heaven” (ll. 1080-81). God deliver us from such deliverers. Richard is also called “devil” more than once in the play. He proudly numbers among his allies the devil himself as well as his own “dissembling lookes” (l. 433). Further, Richard is associated through various animal symbols with his supernatural ally. Richard is overtly compared to what Lancelot Andrewes calls “the subtle serpent” with such epithets as “serpent,” “viper,” and “cockatrice.” His mother's epithet, “Thou Toad, Thou Toade” (l. 2918), parallels Milton's Satan, “Squat like a Toad, close at the eare of Eve.”¹¹ Richard himself invokes “the spleene of fiery Dragons” (l. 3822) as he concludes his battle oration. Marbeck stated this traditional connection to Satan: “we maie fitly understand by the Dragon, Satan himselfe the father of lies.” Less precisely Satanic, but equally loathsome, malignant, or destructive, are the boar, the wolf, and the dog. As Andrewes said in another sermon, such animals are enemies to “our lives good,” if not explicitly Satanic.¹² John Downame even called Satan a wild boar: “So also this wilde Boare would have broken downe the hedge which defended Job by tempting him to blaspheme God.” Downame added this touch: “He is called a murderer and a man-slayer, as though this were his profession and occupation.”¹³ That is Downame's early seventeenth-century description of Satan, not Richard; the connection is stunning. If Richard is not the beast of Revelation, he is certainly one of his dragonish associates.

Unlike Richmond's dream of comfort and victory, Richard's “tormenting Dreame / Affrights [him] with a Hell of ougly Devills” (l. 696). In the deep of his prophetic dream, brother Clarence sees “dead bones,” “Angells,” “Furies,” and a “Legion of foule Fiends.” Such angelology and demonology is yet another characteristic of Revelation and of apocalyptic literature in general. Most Renaissance commentaries on Revelation discuss not only “the promised Messias” and the “most ugly monster, the divell,” but the hosts of angels and devils at their command. Napier talked of “Gods Saints and holie servantes” combating “the Devill and all damned spirites” in the last days. Broughton described “Angel trumpeters [who] sound howe haile and fire is mixt with blood,” and depicts “Michaels Angels” against the “wicked spirites” of the devil. John Donne preached an entire sermon on the angelology and demonology of Revelation. The sermon was preached on All Saints Day, with Revelation 7:2, 3 as its text.¹⁴ Richard, Clarence, Richmond, the ghosts, and many of their companions in Richard III assume that they live in a similar universe of angels and devils.

In the last battle, Richard, like the antichrist described in the Geneva “Argument” of Revelation, “shalbe destroyed.” His power seems overwhelming. “Notwithstanding, [it] is limited … and at length he shal be destroyed by the wrath of God.” Just as surely as Richmond's victory seems preordained, and is so interpreted by God's minister, so Richard in his brief reign is like the beast “permitted … to rage … [and] under colour of faire speache and pleasant doctrine to deceive the worlde” (Geneva “Argument”). Anne, Hastings, Buckingham, Clarence, Edward, the princes, Henry VI, his Edward, Margaret, Elizabeth, his own mother, and unnamed others all suffer his hypocrisy and his sting. “At length he shal be destroyed by the wrath of God.”

As Richmond's election thunders through Act V, so does Richard's reprobation. The two are dancing very different steps on the same balance. Richard's foot is increasingly heavy: “I have not that Alacrity of Spirit / … that I was wont to have.” Richmond's is light, “jocond” in fact, “In the remembrance of so faire a dreame.” “True Hope is swift, and flyes with Swallowes wings.” Richard's back is bent with “dispaire and dye.” Richmond rises to “Successe, and Happy Victory.” And then, of course, come victory and defeat. “God, and your Armes / Be prais'd, Victorious Friends; / The day is ours, the bloudy Dogge is dead.” Richard is unhorsed and uncrowned. Richmond is made king, graced with the “long usurped Royalties” plucked “From the dead Temples of this bloudy Wretch.”¹⁵ In the Apocalypse, the antichrist that “a long time was untyed, is now cast with his ministers into the pit of fyre to be tormented for ever, where as contrariwise the faithful … shal enjoye perpetual glorie” (Geneva “Argument”).

In the world of the play, the judgment is almost as definitive:

Abate the edge of Traitors, Gracious Lord,
That would reduce these bloudy dayes againe,
And make poore England weepe in Streames of Blood;
Let them not live to taste this Lands increase,
That would with Treason, wound this faire Lands peace.

(ll. 3881-85)

So much for Godless traitors. For the elect:

O now, let Richmond and Elizabeth,
The true Succeeders of each Royall House,
By Gods faire ordinance, conjoyne together:
And let thy Heires (God if thy will be so)
Enrich the time to come, with Smooth-fac'd Peace,
With smiling Plenty, and faire Prosperous dayes.

(ll. 3875-80)

Revelation concludes its last days with similar separation of the elect and the reprobate, and similar distribution of rewards and punishments.

He that is unjust, let him be unjust stil: & he which is filthie, let him be filthie stil: & he yt is righteous, let him be righteous stil: & he yt is holie, let him be holie still. And beholde, I come shortly, & my rewarde is with me, to give everie man according as his worke shalbe.

(Rev. 22:11-12)

Holy forever, righteous forever; filthy forever, unjust forever. Such is the truth that lies behind Richard's despair and Richmond's joy, at least within the artifice of Richard III.

Such persistent parallels between the arguments of Richard III and Revelation are not meant to suggest influence so much as generic similarity. Richard and Richmond are neither antichrist nor Christ. Shakespeare's play is mostly about judgment here, Revelation about judgment hereafter. In the play the conflict is political and the characters human; in the Apocalypse the action and the actors are cosmological. But in Shakespeare's contrived but lively dramatization of fulfilled prophecies, moral admonitions, “the Providence of God for his elect,” the threatening but limited time of Richard the dragon, and the final awesome torment and grace of punishment and reward, we have a striking portrayal in this world of the core events of the Apocalypse. Add to those similar “arguments” the apocalyptic visions of Clarence, Richard, and Edward, and Buckingham's direct connection of his death and judgment with All Souls' and doomsday, and the analogy becomes even more striking. In its characters' preoccupation with last words and last things, there is much of apocalypse and eschatology in this history play.

Richard spoke more profoundly than he knew when he upbraided the messengers in Act IV: “Out on ye Owles, nothing but Songs of Death?” (l. 3311). He is surrounded by intimations of apocalypse and eschatology. The characters around him are preoccupied with last words and last things. Elizabeth's overwhelming victory, Richmond's threatening attractiveness, a nagging system of lesser defeats, and the inscrutable hand of providence join these apocalyptic motifs in hymning Richard's ultimate doom. Richard's ironic oaths by St. Paul and St. John join their swelling chorus. His despair and death will provide the final descant.

Notes

1. John Dover Wilson, ed., Richard III (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1954), p. xx; Carnall, “Shakespeare's Richard III and St. Paul,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 14 (1963), 188; I find Carnall's suggestion implausible, in my book Faith and Folly in Shakespeare's Romantic Comedies (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1980), pp. 9-13, I discuss the high esteem of St. Paul among most Renaissance Christians. Harcourt, “‘Odde Old Ends, Stolne …’: King Richard and St. Paul,” Shakespeare Studies, 7 (1974), 88-89; Fox, “Richard III's Pauline Oaths: Shakespeare's Response to Thomas More,” Moreana, 7 (1978), 20-21.

2. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Richard the Third, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (London: Isaac Jaggard & Ed. Blount, 1623). Throughout, quotations from Richard III will refer to this edition. The complex relationship of the quarto and the folio texts invites such citation. Kristian Smidt's parallel text edition of The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (New York: Humanities Press, 1969) is an accurate and useful edition of both texts. I follow Smidt's Through Line numbering.

3. Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, John Pringle, tr. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1948), I, 38-39; Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, William Pringle, tr. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1957), pp. 15-19; Luther, Works, Hilton C. Oswald, ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Press, 1973), XXVI, 13; XXVIII, 60. The Geneva Bible, Lloyd E. Berry, ed. (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1969); subsequent Biblical quotations will refer to this edition and be cited in the text. See F. Schroeder, “Paul, Apostle, St.,” New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), XI, 8.

4. See, for example, William Fulke, A Defence … against … Gregory Martin, C. H. Hartshorne, ed. (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1843), I, 34; Thomas Brightman, The revelation of S. John …, 3rd ed. (Leyden: John Class, 1616), p. 4; and John Marbeck, A Book of Notes and Commonplaces (London: Thomas East, 1581), p. 555.

5. Subsequent references to this “Argument” to Revelation in the Geneva Bible will be cited in the text as Geneva “Argument.”

6. “In commemoratione omnium fidelium defunctorum.” This quotation and the following citations are from Missale Romanum, Jussu editum (Venetiis, 1717), p. lviii; see also The Cathedral Daily Missal, Rudolph G. Bandas, ed. (St. Paul: E. M. Lohmann, 1961), p. 1878; and A. Cornides, “All Souls' Day,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, I, 319. The biblical quotations come from the Geneva Bible.

7. George Gifford, Sermons upon … Revelation (London: Thomas Man & Toby Cooke, 1596), sig. A6r; Hugh Broughton, A revelation of the holy Apocalyps (Amsterdam [?], 1610), p. 13; John Napier, A plaine discoverie of … Revelation (Edinburgh: R. Walde-grave, 1594), p. 144; Augustin Marlorat, A Catholike exposition upon … Revelation, Arthur Golding, tr. (London: H. Binneman, 1574), p. 2. See also G. E. Ladd, “Apocalyptic as Eschatology,” in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979), I, 153-56; and M. Rist, “Apocolypticism,” in Interpreters' Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962), I, 157-61.

8. See also Rev. 14:9-11.

9. Geneva Bible, marginal note, Rev. 15.

10. Christ as Messiah, deliverer of the faithful from the hands of the enemy, is a prominent feature of Revelation and its commentaries. Among many Renaissance comments: John Donne in a sermon on Rev. 7 called “this Angel [of Revelation] … our Saviour Christ himselfe.” The Sermons, George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, eds. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1953-62), X, 47. See also Gifford, sig. A7v; Napier, pp. 162-64, 230; and Richard Bernard, A key … for … revelation (London: Felix Kyngston, 1617), pp. 188 ff.

11. Lancelot Andrewes, Ninety-Six Sermons (1843; rept. New York: AMS, 1967), V, 452; John Milton, Paradise Lost, in The Works, Frank Allen Patterson, ed. (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1931), vol. II, l. 800.

12. Marbeck, p. 315; Andrewes, II, 9; Gifford in a sermon analyzed swine and dogs as particularly degenerate animals. The swine neglect the truth; the dogs tear the truthful. Richard seems compatible. Milton compared Satan to a wolf in Paradise Lost, IV, 183. William Woods, A History of the Devil (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1974), pp. 121-22; and J. B. Russell, The Devil (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 113, 116, mention these and other animals traditionally associated with evil in the Christian tradition.

13. John Downame, The Christian Warfare Against the Devil, World, and Flesh, 4th ed. (London: William Stansby, 1634), pp. 88-89. Several other details may be worth a note, though I have not been able to find Renaissance sources. Maximilian Rudwin, The Devil in Legend and Literature (Chicago: Open Court, 1931), p. 48, says: “The Devil is often represented with a hump. This deformity was caused, according to … Victor Hugo, … by the fact that, in escaping out of the sack in which the Devil carried them on his back to hell, the human souls left behind ‘their foul sins and heinous crimes, a hideous heap, which, by the force of attraction natural to the Fiend, incrusted itself between his shoulders like a monstrous wen, and remained for ever fixed.’” In a similar vein, G. Wilson Knight, The Sovereign Flower (London: Methuen, 1958), p. 211, attributes to Richard and St. Paul a mutual lameness. Rudwin concurs (p. 49).

14. Gifford, sig. A7v; Napier, pp. 242-43; Broughton, pp. 13, 152-58; Donne, vol. 10, sermon 1; see also vol. 8, sermon 1; and Rist, I, 157-61.

15. Lines 3513-14, 3697-98, 3428, 3565-3623, passim, 3845-51.