SOURCE: Andrews, Christopher. “Richard III on Film: The Subversion of the Viewer.” Literature/Film Quarterly 28, no. 2 (2000): 82-94.

[In the following essay, Andrews evaluates the means by which film representations of Richard III, performed by Laurence Olivier, Ron Cooke, and Ian McKellen, have facilitated a relationship with the viewing audience.]

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.

—Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later King

I

For almost four hundred years the Chorus has made his appeal to audiences of Shakespeare's Henry V to imagine scores of horses and fields of men in battle. With the emergence of film we surely find the means to cast off such a device, perhaps with a desire to present a minimally altered script (after all, we can hardly imagine Henry V without the Chorus). Kenneth Branagh employs veteran Derek Jacobi as Chorus in his 1989 production. Jacobi, dressed in modern attire, calls for “a muse of fire” (1.1.1) and reflects on the limitations “within this wooden O” (13) on a sound-stage littered with props and film-making equipment. Despite this inherent appeal of this “behind the scenes” introduction to the film, it could be done without. As we fully expect when sitting to watch a film, we will see the horses and the men and the battles; the “two mighty monarchies” of France and England will appear in full on the screen (1.1.20). Yet this opening scene, in the Branagh film at least, does more than prime the viewer's imagination. This opening segment establishes a relationship with the viewer which continues through the close of the film. Direct relationships between actor and viewer are rather unconventional in the film genre, but not altogether absent. Indeed, filmed productions of Richard III consistently insist upon such a relationship. It is upon this relationship between actor and viewer that the following focuses.

“In linguistic communication,” explains Roland Barthes, “I and you are absolutely presupposed by one another” (260). Of course this is true, almost banal as Barthes himself admits; however, this presents a rather overlooked issue in the case of Richard III. For all of Richard's Proteus-like¹ acting and assuming there exist two distinct audiences: the duped characters at his side and the viewers watching him upon the screen. Much has been said to elucidate the relationship that Richard shares with his audience, but such commentary applies to productions of the play in general. For example, we of course begin as sympathizers, progress to accomplices and confidantes, and ultimately come to our senses alongside the “circumspect” Buckingham (4.2.32). My interests lie in the manner in which specific actors approach this relationship and particularly the realization of this feat on film. By looking at the filmed performances of Laurence Olivier (1955), Ron Cook (1983), and Ian McKellen (1995) as Richard, we shall see exactly what role we, as viewers play and how each actor forces us into it.

Why film? First a clarification: H. R. Coursen, in Watching Shakespeare on Television, distinguishes between film and television with a discussion of the loss of spectacle as films are reduced to the “nineteen diagonal inches in the domestic and domesticated space of our playroom” (22).² McKellen's romantic performance, in fact, draws its success from keen use of this “domesticated space,” but Coursen's point remains: television pales in comparison to the “big screen” atmosphere with its deafening digitized sound and full audience. For our purposes, however, we will be thinking about the films as they appear in video format for that is how they are most likely to be screened (be it in classroom or living room). So again, why film (video)? First, filmed productions are widely available and can be viewed repeatedly. Theatre productions, on the other hand, contain some degree of improvisation and, as with any other performance-oriented art, exist only once in time in the same way. This is not to dismiss theatrical performances, however. Richard III remains a widely performed play and looking to some specific production reviews will help to establish the traditional conventions against which the film versions react. Second, film and theatre, while related, are quite different modes of production. Susan Sontag offers the following generic distinction:

Theatre is confined to a logical or continuous use of space. Cinema (through editing, that is, through the change of shot—which is the basic unit of film construction) has access to an alogical or discontinuous use of space. In the theatre, actors are either in the stage space or “off.” When “on,” they are always visual or visualizable in contiguity with each other. In the cinema, no such relation is necessarily visible or even visualizable.

(108, original emphases)

To unpack this difference is to first acknowledge the selective exclusion/inclusion of the camera, described by André Bazin as “a mask which allows only a part of the action to be seen” (105). However, Sontag walks a fine line here. With the technical capabilities of the modern stage, namely set design and lighting, along with a strong imagination, the distinction between uses of space can be overcome. A stronger distinction yet exists between the film and theatre experience: film as visual; theatre as physical. Traditionally, say with Hitchcock or any of the slew of recent “action” films, this is a distinction that holds up. Our role in The Birds or Psycho is that of terrified onlooker peering through “the invulnerable voyeuristic eye” of the camera (Sontag 363). The likes of Terminator and Independence Day add excitement and thrills with intense and expensive special effects, but again we remain removed from the world on the screen. With Shakespeare, in particular Richard III, even this distinction becomes blurred: [film Richards] (taking their cue from Olivier's 1944 ground-breaking production of Henry V) look directly through the lens of the camera and invite, even insist, that we do matter, that we do play a role in the drama of the screen.

This convention, while new to film, traces back in form to Greek Theatre in which actors spoke in monologue.³ The technique of directly addressing the audience, known as soliloquy, became commonplace in Seneca's tragedies, most notably Thyestes, Hercules Furens, and Troades, which were available to Shakespeare in a 1581 translation. It is with Richard III that this technique firmly reasserts itself upon the Elizabethan stage:

[S]oliloquy, with its note of dramatic irony giving histrionic point to the crude plottings of the villain, subsequently becomes conventionalized, and gains its ultimate expression in the superb declarations of Gloster at the opening of Shakespeare's Richard III.

(Arnold 8)

A brief look at Seneca reveals the precursor to both the Chorus in Henry V and Richard's opening “confession”:

I syster of the Thunderer, (for now that name alone
Remaynes to me) Jove evermore as though devorst and gone,
And temples of the highest ayre as wydowe shunned have,
And beaten out of skyes above the place to Harlots gave.
I must dwell beneath on ground, for Whoores do hold the sky,
.....Let hateful hurt now come in anger wood,
And fierce impyety imbrew himselfe with his owne bloud,
And errour eke, and fury arm'd agaynst itself to fight.
This meane, this meane, let wrath of myne now use to shewe
my might.

(Hercules Furens 1-5; 97-100)

As this prologue continues, Juno reveals her impending revenge against her brother and husband Jupiter which includes a plot to have his “base Sonne Hercules” kill his own wife and child. This entire prologue closely parallels Richard's soliloquies of the first act in which he complains of his disadvantage and then reveals his “plots” and “inductions.” In Richard's hands the soliloquy becomes a sharpened sword with multiple edges: it introduces and sets the scene much like the Chorus does in the later Henry V (1.1.13); it serves to introduce Richard (1.1.13-27) and his plans (1.1.27-40, 3.5.101-4, 4.2.62-7); it announces the entrance of characters (1.1.41, 1.3.337); it allows him to gloat over his successes (1.3.215-50, 1.3.322-36, 3.1.82-3, 4.4.362). Perhaps most importantly, and unquestionably so for the purposes of this study, the soliloquy provides the vehicle through which Richard relates to the audience/viewers. This is also the aspect of the soliloquy with which individual actors most freely experiment.

On stage we find a plethora of Richards: a pathetic Richard so “‘rudely stamped’ that not only can he not ‘strut before a wanton ambling nymph’ but he cannot strut at all—at least not without the help of crutches” (Shaw 20); the condescending Richard of McKellen's 1992 RSC stage production (the precursor to his film) who stands “stiffly downstage center and [addresses] the audience in a distinctly upper class accent”⁴ (Oberlander 10); an intimidating Richard who seems to both threaten and eyeball the audience “as if totting up the box-office take” (Smallwood 327); a friendly Richard who delivers the opening soliloquy as he prowls amongst the audience before mounting the stage to meet Clarence (Shaltz 43); a rallying Richard who treats the audience throughout as troops being prepared for the upcoming battle (Shurgot 28); a “hyperactive, peevish, spastic” Richard “with a trace of Tourette's Syndrome and attention deficit disorder” (Timpane 19) who offends and repels the audience. Actors playing Richard on film are no more consistent than their theatrical counterparts: Olivier chooses to awe and oppress; Cook plays to our sympathies; McKellen romances us. Despite their differing approaches, each succeeds to the desired and expected denouement in which we ally ourselves with Richard's (and our) victims and freely invite the vengeance exacted upon our former “friend.” We shall now closely examine each actor's technique and approach in winning the favor of his audience.

II. OLIVIER (1955)

“In Olivier's hands.” writes Constance Brown in her groundbreaking “re-evaluation” of the film, “one of Shakespeare's better plays … is transformed into an intricate, subtle, coolly ironic plunge into one of those recesses of human nature that are generally avoided through the same fastidious impulses that make the manufacture of sewer covers a profitable business” (23). Indeed, if frequency of performance is a measure, one would certainly agree with Brown's claim that this is one of the “better plays.” Throughout the performance history of Richard III actors have eagerly risen to the challenge offered by its title role. In fact, scholars believe that Richard III is privileged as the first production of Shakespeare in America,⁵ and it has since been performed with surprising frequency. What, then, is the appeal of Richard? Perhaps the following, spoken to the reader by Kurt Vonnegut's own villain-hero Howard W. Campbell, Jr. from his novel Mother Night offers some insight: “I doubt if there has ever been a society that has been without strong and young people eager to experiment with homicide, provided no very awful penalties are attached to it” (120). Both Brown, in identifying a “recess of human nature,” and Vonnegut help to make our point: human nature draws us to Richard; more specifically, our predatory instincts seize upon this opportunity to take advantage of unsuspecting, and in most cases, deserving victims. Moreover, the play is constructed so as to allow us opportunity to withdraw from the relationship which feeds upon our inherent bloodlust, return to the side of the moral and the just, and leave Richard alone in his despair.

Despite this universal appeal of the play, which translates into the appeal of a perfect crime, the actor must still develop a technique to convince us of our desires. Only once we have been convinced to go along with Richard do we find we enjoy it. Laurence Olivier chooses to overpower us to the point in which we feel compelled to go along with him. By including an excerpt of Richard's extended soliloquy from 3 Henry VI in his opening address, Olivier begins to paint his Richard as omnipotent. The following lines in particular suggests the almost superhuman nature of Olivier's Richard:

I'll play the orator as well as Nestor,
Deceive more slyly than Ulysses could,
And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.
I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages.
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
Tut, were it further off, I'll pluck it down.

(3.2.188-95)

Not only does Richard compare himself to the best orators and deceivers known to history, he believes without a doubt that he will outperform them. The fact that Richard controls the majority of the action of the play as histrionic dissembler can only strengthen his control over us, for after all we too play a role, however passive, in this drama directed by Richard. Richard sees himself as actor in a play larger than life, a play in which he not only takes the lead, but takes the lead better than anyone else. This role places him in a specific position of power from which he “pulls the strings” of his victims, including Clarence, Anne, and the young Princes. Moreover, in the 3 Henry VI passage he hints at a supernatural disposition in comparing himself to Proteus and the chameleon, and professes confidence in redefining the methods of Machiavelli's Prince. Machiavelli explains that while a man may rise to power by “murder[ing] his fellow citizens, betray[ing] his friends … be[ing] devoid of truth, pity, or religion” (25), he will not thus gain glory; while such a man may become a powerful ruler, “his fearful cruelty and inhumanity, along with his innumerable crimes, prevent us from placing him among the really excellent men” (25). Olivier's Richard fully intends to prove this wrong, as we shall see when he mounts the throne and expects our unconditional praise and submission. We shall also see how it is this desire which turns us from his side and saves us from sharing his punishment and despair.

By fully cutting Margaret from the film Olivier channels all of the supernatural and psychic powers through Richard.⁶ He becomes the sole manipulator in the play and the source of our awe and wonder. Margaret's curses (4.4), which in the original text seem informed by some greater power as they come to fruition in turn, are replaced, then, by Richard's own prophecies:

I'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown,
And whiles I live, t'account this world but hell,
Until my misshaped trunk that bears this head
Be round impalèd with a glorious crown.

(3 Henry VI 3.2.169-71)

This day should Clarence closely be mewed up
About a prophecy which says that ‘G’
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

(1.1.38-40)

In fact, each plan that Richard shares with us, such as his plans to marry Anne (1.1.53ff), becomes a revelation of his own foresight. With the realization of each prediction our fear and admiration of Olivier's Richard grows.

But such editing and script rearranging, along with Olivier's sinister physical appearance,⁷ can be fully realized on stage. We must focus primarily on Olivier's filmic techniques and the way he specifically demands our complacency by controlling and directing us. The central conventions to the omnipotence and omniscience of Olivier's Richard and his manipulation of the viewer include spatial dynamic, set design, and use of shadows. As outlined by Lorne Buchman in the first chapter of Still in Movement, Olivier uses the spatial field accessible in film by alternating the depth of the shot to create a tension between two distinct Richards: the “distant schemer” of the long shot and the “conspiring friend” of the close shot (18). With the close shot we are drawn into Richard's confidence: “‘We'll do it together, you and I’, he seems to suggest, making sleepy eyes at the camera, looking up and down as some men contemplate a prospective lover” (Brown 30). But with the long shot of Richard dressed in black standing menacingly against a wall decorated with his “bruisèd arms” we are reminded that we are not his equals.

His ability (as director and actor) to control our point of view demonstrates his authority over us. Conversely, our role as viewers taking in the images offered us displays our submission to his will. Along with Olivier's camera techniques, his set design plays a significant role in shaping what we see and establishing Richard as omnipresent. The set facilitates Richard's view of scenes in which he does not directly play a role. For example, Richard peers down into the courtroom as King Edward condemns Clarence and then watches later as his brother details his dream to Brackenbury. In both cases Richard controls us by controlling our vision. In the first he opens window shutters to reveal the courtroom below and invites us to peer in with him. The latter scene begins and ends with a shot of the barred window of Clarence's cell and we realize as it comes to an end that “we have unknowingly witnessed [Clarence's confession] through [Richard's] eyes … like the characters he manipulates, we the audience find ourselves controlled and directed by him” (Singer 191, original emphasis). While Anthony Davies suggests that this “reinforces the suggestion of our having been drawn into voyeuristic complicity with Richard” (68), the fact that we are forced to view what we do remains. Unlike our experience in the theatre where we can freely shift our focus from character to character, film actively and consciously chooses and directs our attention. Susan Sontag draws this distinction in defining film as “mediated art” and theatre as “relatively unmediated art”:

We can see what happens on stage with our own eyes. We see on the screen what the camera sees. In the cinema, narration proceeds by ellipsis (the “cut” or change of shot): the camera eye is a unified point of view that continually displaces itself. But the change of shot can provoke questions, the simplest of which is: from whose point of view is the shot seen?

(110, original emphasis)

The techniques of film allow for such creative and shocking situations as our viewing of the commotion caused by the beheading of Macbeth through the eyes of the head as it is swung around on the end of a halberdier in Roman Polanski's film.⁸

Shadows also play an important role in the construction of Olivier's Richard, and much has been already noted in this area. Constance Brown sees the shadow as the punctuation to each goal Richard realizes and as metaphorical subtext. For example, his shadow overtakes the train of Anne's white dress after the successful wooing scene to signify his victory and domination over her just as it engulfs the screen to represent Richard's tyrannous conquering of England (25). But this is not all there is to it. Through this manipulation of his shadow, Olivier finds yet another way to bridge the world of the play with the world of the viewer and, moreover, another means of oppression and intimidation. The shadows which accompany virtually every movement in the first act repeatedly expand to drown the entire screen in darkness; what begins as a trace movement caught in the corner of the camera's (and the viewer's) eye builds to a threatening force which reaches out to pull us under its constrictive hold. We become entrapped by Olivier the director by these carefully placed and precisely driven shadows of Olivier the actor. Not only do these shadows stand for the metaphorical engulfing of the state of England, but they stand for Richard's tyrannous hold over us. Again we fall victim to manipulation in the hands of a peremptory Richard.

Jack Jorgens, in his ground-breaking Shakespeare on Film, admits he is “not really frightened by Olivier's entertaining Richard, who is a handsome devil” (142). Such a misconception speaks for Olivier's overall success in orchestrating the role of Richard. While we are indeed drawn under an oppressive rule by precise machinations, we do not come to realize this until Richard agrees to accept the crown. And this is of course part of Olivier's game. We are meant to feel at ease and comforted by this “handsome devil,” but we are also kept under constant management. The perpetual affirmations of our alliance with Richard keep us ignorant of his increasing hold over us; that is, until he gains the throne and finds it only seats one (something he knows all along, but something our ignorance keeps us from seeing). Olivier descends from his position between the “two props of virtue” (3.7.96) on the rope of a bell causing it to spin wildly out of control. As he lands amidst the clamor of the crowd of citizens and the clanging of the bell he vehemently juts his gloved hand forward for Buckingham to kiss:

He thrusts it forcibly toward the camera, and holds it extended in the air like a huge, black claw. The hand is extended toward the audience as much as toward Buckingham. For the first time, the audience is advised that what it has approved by laughter and condoned in the earlier part of the film is its own destruction.

(Brown 31)

While Brown may underscore the earlier domination of an “amused” audience, she is right in identifying this as the point in which Richard ends any relationship that may have existed between him and his viewers. If our innocent ignorance of this “handsome devil” has otherwise kept us from realizing the true nature of our situation, this scene, with its overt symbolic and physical demand for submission, surely sets us straight.

III. RON COOK (BBC 1983)

With the screening of Olivier's film on American television in 1955, more people were introduced to the play than the sum total of those who had ever seen it before performed on-stage; understandably, Olivier's Richard left an impact. While actors have since struggled to escape Olivier's shadow in their own portrayals of the role, perhaps none do so as well as Ron Cook. Cook, in Jane Howell's BBC production of the play, takes precisely the opposite approach than Olivier in his characterization and presentation of Richard. Rather than appropriate the image of a powerful and commanding Duke plotting to gain the throne by force as introduced in the extended soliloquy from 3 Henry VI, Cook emphasizes Richard's physical deformities:

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass,
I that am rudely stamped and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph,
I that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up—
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them—

(1.1.14-23)

Such are the lines to receive specific attention in Cook's emotional deliverance. The Proteus-like, commanding, and treacherous Richard of Olivier is replaced with a sniveling, disheveled, and pathetic Richard. Though the relationship suggested by an introductory scene in which Cook first makes contact with us and laboriously writes “Richard III” slanting diagonally down upon a blackboard is one of teacher-student; the actual relationship that develops boasts no such degree of respect. While the down-sloping title may serve as symbol for the decline of England in Richard's hands, as well as for Richard's own downfall, it more importantly serves as the pattern for the relationship between Cook's Richard and his audience.

Unlike the intimidating projection of Olivier's opening soliloquy delivered strongly and convincingly, Cook's opening utterance reeks of pity and sorrow. Cook enters through a door on one end of the stage (for indeed the set is a stage) to the sounds of laughter and music coming from the “lady's chamber” where we assume Edward IV “capers.” He immediately and deliberately moves across the stage to shut out the celebratory music that he cannot appreciate. Cook, physically short in stature, plays a severely crippled Richard hunched over and complete with highly visible leg brace. Even without comparing him to Olivier, we notice a lack of concern for self-appearance: his clothing careless; his hair ungroomed and greasy; his demeanor humble and withdrawn. His every action, from shutting the music out, to his limping around the room, emphasizes his exclusion. He systematically plays the plain-spoken injured man of 1.3 who breaks in upon the King's kindred to complain of their “dissentious rumours” against him (42-53), and we, at least at first, systematically fall victim to his performance.

Again we see an actor's manipulation upon his audience; however, while Olivier chooses to physically dominate, Cook preys upon the emotions of an unsuspecting audience. As R. Chris Hassel notes, “Cook's speech is stage-Cockney on occasion, as though the blood royal were no different from the newly minted bloods from Elizabeth's line” (10). Coupled with his lowly physical appearance, Cook's voice becomes one we can relate to, one we can in fact pity; he almost reminds us of a nagging little brother down on his luck. Hassel continues to say that for all Cook “lacks [in] magnetism and stature” (11) his Richard “rises to our esteem” (12) in the first wooing scene. This may indeed prove true on an initial viewing; however, closely tracing the relationship between the audience and Richard reveals how this scene offers our first hint that Cook is indeed playing a role and that he is manipulating us right along with Anne. When Anne spits in his face, we catch a brief glimpse of the true man hiding behind this meek façade. Cook becomes enraged and forgets his role for a moment, yet sure enough he switches right back into character and delivers with injured eyes “Why dost thou spit at me?” (1.2.144) as the pathetic wretch we have become attached to. While his brief flash of rage adequately scares Anne, it does not serve as warning enough to frighten us from his side.

Director Jane Howell plays an important role in establishing the relationship between the audience and Cook's Richard. Michael Manheim believes “her Richard III is not so effective in ‘descanting’ on a tyrant's evil” and that “other directors are more engaged with the inventions of the arch-villain than she” (138). Exactly, but this should not concede to any degree of failure on her part or of the production as a whole. Howell concerns herself with presenting a likable Richard wrought with pathos, a Richard very well suited to Ron Cook as well as the series in general. Susan Willis, who chronicled the taping of the BBC collection, notes that Cook shows signs of visible fatigue in the production. Indeed one might expect the actors to be quite tired by the time they got to filming Richard III, the last play of the tetralogy which was filmed in its entirety in twenty-eight days.⁹ Howell makes Cook's lethargy work for the production by placing extra emphasis upon it. Instead of a worn-out actor failing to measure up to Olivier's Richard, she presents a worn-out Richard both physically and mentally taxed from the civil war which has just ended. While this tactic perhaps becomes more evident when screening Richard III as the conclusion to the first tetralogy, a screening of Richard III on its own does indeed suggest Howell's approach. The final tableau of the film works to suggest a rather unsettling possibility, but one that supports Cook's weary Richard: the Richard of the BBC may in fact be the biggest victim of the play. Before we can fully appreciate such a claim, however, we must first look at Margaret and her role in this production.

As mentioned previously, Olivier chooses to eliminate Margaret, and in doing so sets Richard up as the only supernatural presence and surely the most powerful character in the play. Howell's production, remaining true to the BBC's mission to capture the unadulterated Shakespeare Canon on film, reinstates Margaret to her rightful role as supernatural and omniscient force. Margaret's commanding presence, in which she looks more like one of the weird three from Macbeth with her drab clothing and chin wrap, helps to further set our sympathies on Richard. While Richard still betters her by deflecting her curse, we see that he is uncomfortable with her presence. In the face of a Margaret even more disheveled than Cook's Richard, we happily defer our attention and sympathies back to him. We may wonder, however, what connection should be made between former Queen and future King: both are untidy in appearance; both reek with pathos; both hobble about suffering from physical setbacks (for Margaret limps about only with the help of a cane). While the final tableau of the play may only hint at some answers to this question, it most assuredly reminds us that our initial relationship with Richard is one based on our humanitarian response to Cook's presentation. The camera pans back and forth over a pile of corpses to rest upon Margaret cackling with hair in wild array cradling the lifeless Richard as a baby.¹⁰ Critics remain uncertain as to the precise meaning of this scene and tend to dislike it for its departure from Shakespeare's text.¹¹ Perhaps this final image pushes the concept of Richard as scourge of a supernatural force for whom he serves as instrument and performs vile deeds to ensure the purification of England.¹² Such interpretation aside, however, this image strongly reinforces the Richard offered from the beginning of the play by both Howell and Cook. The final image shocks us and forces us to think that, despite all of the trickery and careful acting, Richard might have been deserving of our compassion and pity after all. If the woman who curses Richard as “slave of nature and the son of hell” (1.3.227) can in fact comfort him in death, then perhaps we were right to extend our trust to this pathetic and wronged soul.

Though Cook appropriates Olivier's technique of direct address to the camera, he is not the only one to do so in the BBC production. In 1.4 Brackenbury peers into our eyes after Clarence recounts the terrors of his nightmare. The fact that another character has access to the audience is not an insignificant one. If another character in Olivier's film had turned to address us directly, much of Olivier's commanding and fixating hold over us would have dissipated. The reverse holds true in the BBC production. Brackenbury's lines spoken to us reveal the pathetic nature of Clarence:

Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,
Makes the night morning and the noontide night.

(1.4.72-3)

Here Brackenbury channels Clarence's sorrow to us. The concern that Brackenbury shows for Clarence when he asks “Why looks your grace so heavily today?” (1.4.1) is reflected in his eyes as he stares directly into ours. We cannot but help feel sorry for knowing that the repentant Clarence is about to meet his death. This happens again as Buckingham speaks to us before fleeing in 4.2. Such scenes invite our sympathies to play a role in the film. In such cases Howell further establishes the convention which allows for the sense of compassion transmitted between Richard and his viewers.

Cook as Richard gladly takes the part of the bullied over the bully. He wears a sword but convinces us that he is too meek to wield it. Cook plays this pathetic Richard so congenially that we are loathe to turn on him. While we do eventually distance ourselves from him in the latter half of the play, Cook continues to give us glimpses of his pathetic Richard. He rouses our sympathies in 4.2 when Buckingham does not immediately agree to slaughter the Princes. He looks hurt and truly betrayed when Buckingham asks for “some little breath, some pause” (25); Olivier shrugs it off as mere inconvenience. When Olivier mounts the throne and openly projects his dominance, we see him for what he truly is. When Cook mounts his throne, he appears as a young child lost in a sizable chair. Our pity turns to concern: will he be able to fill the throne? Even when Cook takes the lives of the young Princes we can almost identify with his fear for preserving his rule. On the battlefield on eve of his death he is visibly frightened, a fear which invites us back into our relationship with him. Even the gratuitous slaughter of Richard appeals to our emotions. He fights death off valiantly, and when he does eventually yield it is with multiple spears jutting from his body like lifeless tentacles. Is it a coincidence that the initial blow comes from behind? That when he finally dies it is upon his knees in a position of prayer? The combination of these factors and the comments made above about the image of the final tableau seem to suggest that, despite his treachery and villainy, Cook's Richard may deserve our sympathies after all. Richard's evil acts can be rationalized:

Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb,
And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,
She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe
To shrink mine arm up like a withered shrub,
To make an envious mountain on my back—
Where sits deformity to mock my body—
To shape my legs of an unequal size,
To disproportion me in every part,
Like to a chaos, or an unlicked bear whelp
That carries no impressions like the dam.

(3 Henry VI 3.2.152-62)

While he is decidedly not the Richard Olivier constructs from the extended soliloquy in 3 Henry VI, he is in fact some variation of this “rudely stamped” (1.1.16) man.

IV. MCKELLEN (1995)

Ian McKellen, under the direction of Richard Loncraine, presents yet a third characterization of Richard in the 1995 film adaptation of Richard Eyre's 1992 stage production. Many have suggested a connection between Olivier's Richard and Hitler,¹³ and indeed the theme of domination and oppression facilitates such a parallel. While the political message of Olivier's film remains implicit, McKellen's film, set in the 1930s, insists upon a Richard who undeniably mirrors the Fascist leader. With such an agenda, then, we might expect an overtly suppressive Richard; however, we find much to our surprise a romantic and soft Richard. Rather than conquer us by force and intimidation. McKellen's Richard persuades us with charm.

The film opens in the headquarters of King Henry: Prince Edward sits down to his dinner with a picture of his beloved Anne; a ticker-tape printout warns that “Richard Gloucester is at hand”; the King prays in his bedroom. Violence soon shatters this quiet scene, however, and the ground begins to shake. We are given a quick shot of Anne's picture as it symbolically topples over and then a tank rips through the fireplace. Soldiers in gas masks enter with machine guns and assassination follows. Edward is shot in the outer room and the camera cuts to Henry kneeling in prayer. A solitary man enters the room and we hear the report of his pistol as he shoots the King. He pulls off his mask and we catch our first glimpse of McKellen; his grin turns to full smile as if the murder was performed for our sake. Thus begins the courtship.

The next scene is set in an extravagant ballroom. The King and Queen dance the first dance of the evening which begins the celebration of peace. All of the characters are present, even Richmond, who dances with his future bride to the satisfaction of the King and Queen. Richard roams through the crowd and mingles with various guests; he shares a quick laugh with Buckingham. He not only stands out for his full military dress uniform, complete with a battery of medals and ribbons, but for the fact that when the camera zooms out we find him standing alone amidst the dancing couples. Though he speaks the first few lines (1-8) of the opening soliloquy into a microphone on a platform in front of the crowd, our relationship with him does not become fully established until he slinks off to the restroom: a rather unromantic place, but a private one. McKellen waits to make any further contact with us until we are quietly removed from the public affairs of the lavish ballroom. His Richard prefers solitude to Olivier's omnipresence. He continues the soliloquy as he enters the lavatory and begins to urinate. He apparently spots our reflection in the mirror in front of him, but does not directly address us until the last few lines of his speech. Rather than show annoyance at our eavesdropping, McKellen immediately warms in our presence and beckons us seductively with a wag of his finger to follow as he goes to meet his brother Clarence.

“In Shakespeare's play,” explains Phyllis Rackin, “Richard's monopoly of both male and female sexual energy is vividly portrayed in his seduction of Anne” (109). As we watch McKellen remove his ring, the key implement in this seduction, with his mouth we experience this sexual energy in full force. Tight camera work pervades this wooing scene and makes up for the extensively cut material.¹⁴ As McKellen kneels before Anne (Kristen Scott Thomas) to invite her revenge with his own blade (a blade perfectly suited to this “soft” Richard: it more resembles a steak knife than the hefty swords of Olivier and Cook), alternating close-ups of Richard and Anne direct our attention to their facial expressions and eye movements and replace the stichomythic dialogue of the original text. The result is a more relaxed and passionate wooing, not one marked by raised voices and resentment. McKellen's sleepy, bespectacled eyes and relaxed face sap all of Anne's anger. Such a face just could not be that of a killer, the camera insists. Working solely with his good arm, he transfers the ring to Anne's finger; she almost faints from the power of this gesture and can barely voice her rebuttal “To take is not to give” (1.2.190). Like his first soliloquy, this scene takes place in a most unromantic setting: a morgue filled to capacity with bodies. Once again McKellen transforms a most unexpected place into a lover's chamber.

If it appears that McKellen gives himself to Anne, his following actions convince us otherwise. He speaks to as if to say “Not to worry, I'll be rid of her soon enough” with his “Was ever in this humour wooed? / Was ever woman in this humour won?” soliloquy (1.2.215ff). He invites us again with a smile and a wink as music comes up to dance with him back to the ballroom. He wants us to see that he is in fact capable of dancing and celebrating given the right partner. As he skips and hops up the stairs we begin to realize that we are his chosen partners.

Certain other factors also contribute to our seduction by McKellen. The first half of the film is accompanied by colorful music arranged by Trevor Jones. “Come be with me and be my love,” invites the singer over close-ups of our seducer.¹⁵ The music proves almost subliminal with its message of love; we find our feet tapping along to the beat even as Richard mounts the stairs from the morgue in victory. We truly dance with McKellen in this scene. The music becomes the cue of McKellen's romantic endeavors. Whenever it begins to play we begin to expect an accompanying shot of his smiling face. The cigarettes which constantly dangle from McKellen's lips invite our attention; his squinting eyes draw us in behind tight glasses, and the swirling smoke which always seems to cloud his face mesmerizes us. The smoke which leaks from his mouth carries his words to us directly from the screen, and at the same time keeps his true nature hidden from us. We are dazzled by his eloquence and the dexterity of his good arm. This is a Richard who truly likes us and whom we want to like back.

While McKellen's relationship with his viewers begins as mere flirtation, it soon gains a sexual edge. When he sees proof of his victims' deaths he becomes visibly excited. McKellen receives some degree of stimulation when he holds Clarence's spectacles and later when he flips through photographs of Hastings's lifeless body. As he enjoys the proof of his brother's death, he spies Anne standing on a stair across the room in a sheer nightgown. As he smiles and gets up to walk to her we assume they will mount the stairs together. Yet, as if to display his faith to us, he reaches for a light-switch next to his wife, shuts it, and then leaves her to mount the stairs alone in darkness, embarrassment, and rejection. Moreover, when he examines the photos of Hastings, he puts on a recording of the same song from the end of the wooing scene and lies upon a couch dropping the photos on his body. Again he invites us to dance as he taps his foot, hums, and nods along to the music. Let there be no mistake, he assures us, we are the sole target of his affections.

If this relationship builds to suggest a love affair, it culminates in rape. For all of his romantic overtones and suggestive winks, McKellen's Richard finally demands our submission to his rule. We may have in fact been wooed, but we are not his equal. Just before his coronation he holds a rally from which he emerges as Fascist ruler and we as victims of our own ignorance. Row upon row of soldiers hail him as their leader and we are smacked in the face with reality.¹⁶ What we assume as innocent and seductive romance turns to utter horror as the camera pans up to reveal McKellen dressed in black smiling his biggest smile yet. We see, in those red banners and uniforms which remind us of Hitler, that Richard's love affair has been with power from the very beginning. We discover that we have been used by this monster now standing before us. Rather than demand our submission to his rule, he systematically ignores us except for a brief glance after he demands the deaths of the young Princes, yet even then he only seems to say “What did you expect?” From this point on, McKellen refuses to make eye contact with us, only reinforcing our feelings of isolation and betrayal.

Amazingly, it is the Richard who invites us as close companions into his lavatory and to celebrate his successes in dance—the Richard to whom we are most attracted—who becomes the most despised. Even to the end of the film when he is caught unarmed by a crazed Richmond and shot in cold-blood we cheer for his justice. While Olivier and Cook may disgust us, neither one becomes as much an object of our hatred as does McKellen. We feel violated, betrayed, and ignorant in his subversive manipulation of our emotions and feelings, and the final image of the play, unlike that of the BBC production, does nothing to resurrect him: he topples off a high scaffolding into the flames of hell below. Interestingly enough, however, this is not the end of the film. Perhaps with a nod to Polanski's Macbeth in which Donalbain seeks out the witches after Macbeth's death, the music comes up one last time and Richmond looks into our eyes and grins seductively. Will we find solace in the hands of this new King?

V. CONCLUSIONS

A young Orson Welles made the claim that “every single way of playing and staging Shakespeare—as long as the way is effective—is right” (27). Jay Halio shows a little more concern: “How can we know whether we are seeing Shakespeare performed or something that passes under the name of Shakespeare but is really something else, not Shakespeare at all?” (3). Olivier, Cook, and McKellen each play effective Richards, as put forth above, but is any one interpretation more authentic than another? Do any of the three play the role according to Shakespeare's original script? With little more than personal accounts of members from Elizabethan audiences we will never be able to tell who plays the “purest” Richard. One account seems to suggest a romantic Richard:

13 March 1601/2 … Upon a tyme when Burbidge played Rich. 3. there was a citizen grue so farr in liking with him, that before shee went from the play shee appointed him to come that night unto hir by the name of Ri: the 3.

(Chambers 212)

Such evidence may perhaps speak for McKellen's seductive Richard, yet such anecdotal references remain quite ambiguous. The patron may have just as easily been charmed by a powerful Richard much like Olivier's, or she may have been struck with pity for a Richard like Cook's. The appeal of this text to actors is the simple fact that Richard may indeed be played in any of these ways. The appeal to the audience is that we may be taken in by Richard in any number of ways; each time we watch the play, whether on-stage or screen, we do not know exactly what to suspect. Even as we watch cautiously for a forceful Richard, we may be caught off-guard by performances such as those by Cook and McKellen.

In the cinematic space Richard III becomes a performance in the purest sense: it becomes the chronicle of a private relationship between Richard and his viewer. On film the soliloquy, when spoken in direct address to the camera, becomes most intimate and most successful. While stage casts play to the general space of a collective audience, film casts play to the solitary eye of the camera, an eye which both reveals and conceals. It is no wonder that a play in which a villain-hero not only acts, but directs, manipulates, and deceives works so well on film, a medium itself given to manipulation and deception.

Notes

1. (Co)incidentally the name emblazoned on Richard's airplane in which the Duchess of York (Maggie Smith) escapes to France in McKellen's film.

2. See also Coursen's “The Bard and the Tube.” Shakespeare on Television. Ed. J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen.

3. It is held that Thespis began this tradition on the Greek stage in 535 B.C.E. (Arnold 2).

4. A decidedly different technique than that employed in the film version (as we will see below).

5. Scott Colley (Richard's Himself Again: A Stage History of Richard III), among others, suggests that a 1750 New York production of Richard III was in fact the premier of Shakespeare in America, though he also directs us to Charles Shattuck (Shakespeare on the American Stage. Vol. 1) “for other possible ‘firsts’” (1).

6. The elimination of Margaret is one of a number of changes to the original text made by Colley Cibber (1700) which Olivier chooses to keep; another is the substitution of Prince Edward's body for that of Henry VI.

7. Olivier's costuming and physical appearance (black tights, black cloak, straight black hair, and darkened, sunken eyes) became the paradigm for future actors playing the role. Roger Manvell describes Olivier's Richard as having “crow-like feet, shod in black shoes with long, pointed toes” (48).

8. Macbeth. Dir. Roman Polanski. Playboy Productions/Caliban Films, 1971.

9. The taping dates were 13-19 October 1981 (1 Henry VI); 17-23 December 1981 (2 Henry VI); 10-17 February 1982 (3 Henry VI); 31 March-6 April 1982 (Richard III) (Willis 329-30).

10. Hassel extracts certain “unmistakable” (28) Christ imagery in this final tableau, but the effect is the same: Margaret holds a powerless Richard.

11. See Hassel (28), who also directs us to Warren (340) for support of his criticism, and Manheim (138).

12. For extended discussion of Richard as scourge, see Hunter, Quinn, Rossiter, and Stampfer.

13. See Brown (132-3) and Kenneth Tynan's 1966 interview with Olivier (The New York Times, Sunday, August 21, 1966, Sec. 2. p. 6).

14. Of the three productions, McKellen's cuts the most material. A conservative estimate suggests that only a third of the 3600 lines are retained. The 250 lines of 1.2 are cut to 89.

15. This number is an adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's “The Passionate Shepard to His Love”: “Come live with me and be my love. / And we will all the pleasures prove.”

16. The concept of a Fascist rally appears quite often in film; see, for example, Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982) in which this same image is used to define the inverted peak of a character's descent into madness.

Works Cited

Filmography/Primary Sources

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Macbeth. Dir. Roman Polanski. Playboy Productions/Caliban Films, 1971.

Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Trans. Robert M. Adams. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1992.

Pink Floyd: The Wall. Dir. Alan Parker. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1982.

Richard III. Dir, Laurence Olivier. London Film Productions, 1955.

Richard III. Dir. Jane Howell. BBC/Time-Life Television, 1983.

Richard III. Dir. Richard Loncraine. MGM/United Artists, 1995.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Seneca: His Tenne Tragedies. 2 vols. Ed. Thomas Newton. 1581, Rpt. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1927.

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Willis, Susan. The BBC Shakespeare Plays: Making the Televised Canon. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1991.