22 To ftrut before a wonton ambling Nymph: 23. of this] of his Vaughan (iii, 5). thus of Coll. MS. 24 croke backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard fauoured of visage, and such as is in states called warlye, in other men otherwise, he was malicious, wrathfull, enuious, and, from afore his birth, ever frowarde.' (More, p. 8.)— LLOYD (Int. Essay): The deformity of Richard is a circumstance as essential to the rancour of his passion as the blackness of Othello-it wounds his pride and irritates his spite, and stirs his rankling revenge. He dwells upon the symbol of royalty as personal ornament compensating for natural personal defects. Hence he dwells on the very name of it, and the indications are absolute that after his success his costume is to be completed by constantly wearing the crown-and the trait is akin to the affection for rich attire ascribed to him by history, and not unusual with the deformed. [See Appendix: Richard's Deformity.] 21. Maiesty] For examples where unaccented syllables are softened and almost ignored, see ABBOTT, § 468. 22. ambling] WRIGHT: Mincing, walking affectedly, with a dancing gait. Compare Hamlet, III, i, 151: 'You jig, you amble, and you lisp.' Also 1 Henry IV: III, ii, 60: 'The skipping king he ambled up and down.' 23. this] HUDSON: 'This' is probably here used indefinitely, and with something of a sneer. Compare 2 Henry IV: I, ii, 126: 'This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy.' [Hudson is perhaps right in detecting a sneer in this remark by Richard, but it is somewhat difficult to understand how 'this' could ever be used indefinitely.-ED.] 23. Proportion] WRIGHT: The goodly form appropriate to such luxurious indulgence. Compare 2 Henry VI: I, iii, 57: 'I thought King Henry had resembled thee In courage, courtship, and proportion.' Also: Tit. And., V, ii, 106: 'Well mayst thou know her by thy own proportion.' [SCHMIDT (Lex.) gives two other examples of 'proportion' used in this sense: Mer. of Ven., III, iv, 14; and All's Well, V, iii, 51.-ED.] 24. Feature] WRIGHT: 'Feature' was used by Shakespeare and the writers of his time in a larger sense than at present. It denoted the whole exterior personal appearance, and was not confined, as now, to the face. 'Feature' was applied to the body as favour to the face. [For discussion as to meaning and interpretation of 'feature' in Shakespeare and other writers see As You Like It, III, iii, 5, this ed.-ED.] 24. dissembling] WARBURTON: By dissembling is here meant, nature that puts together things of a dissimilar kind, as a brave soul and a deformed body.JOHNSON: 'Dissembling' is here put very licentiously for fraudfnl, deceitful.— HENLEY, in support of Warburton's interpretation, quotes: 'Whyle things stoode in this case, and that the manner of addying was sometime too short and sometime too long, els dissembled and let slip together'-Golding's translation of Julius Solinus, 1587.-MALONE: I once thought that Johnson's interpretation was the Dissimulation necessarily includes fraud, and this might have been sufficient to induce Shakespeare to use the two words as synonymous, though fraud certainly may exist without dissimulation. The following lines in the old true one. Deform'd, vn-finifh'd, fent before my time Into this breathing World, scarse halfe made vp, 25. vn-finish'd] vnfinisht Qq. vnfinish'd Ff. 26. fearfe] Om. QQQ 25 29 unfashionably Pope,+, Cap. Var. '78, '85, Ran. 27. vnfashionable] 28. by] at QQ8 ... King John, 1591, seem rather in favour of Warburton's interpretation: 'Can nature so dissemble in her frame, To make the one so like as like may be, And in the other print no character, . . . ?'-CAPELL: In a speech of this Richard's, following the act of stabbing King Henry in the last play [3 Henry VI: V, vi, 68–83] he is made to 'descant' upon his person in terms resembling the present, and uses these among others: 'I have no brother, I am like no brother: And this word love, which grey-beards call divine, Be resident in men like one another, and not in me; I am myself alone.' This may induce belief with some readers that the term in question is us'd in the uncommon sense of forming dissimilarly forming unlike to others: we may see elsewhere resemble put for make like; And wherefore not 'dissemble'-make unlike? [Capell has herein anticipated DOUCE, who says (ii, 32): ““dissemble" . . . signifies the reverse of to resemble, in its active sense, and is not used as dissimulare in Latin.' MARSHALL quotes Douce, adding; "There is no satisfactory evidence that resemble ever had this meaning make like.' In support of Capell's, and Douce's, interpretation of resemble in an active sense, it may be said, as a partial answer to Marshall's objection, that the Century Dictionary, s. v. resemble 2, 'To represent as like something else; liken, compare,' gives the following quotation from Spenser, Faerie Queene, III, x, 21: ‘And th' other al yclad in garments bright, . . . He did resemble to his lady bright.'—ED.]—— SINGER interprets 'dissembling' as disfiguring or distorting, and cites the use of 'dissembling glass' in Mid. N. Dream, II, ii, 98. WRIGHT considers Johnson's interpretation as probably more nearly correct, wherewith the present editor agrees. 'Dissemble' in the sense of fraudulent, deceitful, is used in three other psasages in this play: I, ii, 261, 262: 'And I, no friend to back my suit withal But the plain devil and dissembling looks'; II, i, 13: 'Dissemble not your hatred, swear your love'; II, ii, 34: "Think you my uncle did dissemble Grandam?' wherefore may it not be reasonably supposed that, in this present line, it is used in this same sense also?-ED. ... 27. lamely and vnfashionable] For examples of ellipsis of adverbial inflections see ABBOTT, § 397.-WEBB: The succession of monosyllables in this line suggests a slow, jerky movement, such as one would expect in Richard's gait. 28. halt] WRIGHT: In Genesis xxxii, 31, it is said that Jacob 'halted upon his thigh.' 29. weake piping time] WRIGHT: Compare Much Ado, II, iii, 13-15, 'I have known when there was no music with him but the drum and the fife, and now had he rather hear the tabor and the pipe.'-MARSHALL offers as an explanation alternative to that given by Wright that 'weak piping time' may refer to the feeble, shrill-voiced women or old men. 30 Haue no delight to paffe away the time, 31. See] Ff, Rowe, Pope, Han. Knt, Coll. Sing. Hal. Rlfe. Spie or spy Qq et cet. 32. on] one Q, 33 31. see] R. G. WHITE: The Quarto reading [spy] implies intentional observation, the idea of which is not conveyed by the Folio. The change could hardly have been accidental; but as it is consistent with Richard's character that he should find it a bitter delight to pass away his time in spying out his own deformity, and goading himself on in his remorseless course by comparison of his personal defects with others' perfections, it is possible that spy was changed to 'see' in the acting copy, by some book-holder (i. e., prompter) or actor. 32. descant] NARES: To make division or variation, in music, on any particular subject. Originally accented like the noun from which it was formed; but now mixed with the class of verbs regularly accented on the last syllable, and in that form not obsolete.-WRIGHT quotes from the second part of Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, 1597: 'Last of all, they take it [descant] for singing a part extempore vpon a playne-song, in which sence we commonly vse it: so that when a man talketh of a Descanter, it must be vnderstood of one that can extempore sing a part vpon a playnesong' (p. 70).—MALONE, while acknowledging that the original meaning of 'descant' was to make variations as in music, yet prefers to believe the word is here used ‘in its secondary and colloquial sense, without any reference to music.' Both SCHMIDT (Lex.) and MURRAY (N. E. D.) agree with Malone. Murray quotes the present line (s. v. descant, 2) and also ‘circa 1510 More, Picus, Works, 15, 1: The company of the court . . descanted thereof to his rebuke; 1571, Golding. Calvin on Psalms, ii, 7; They have curiously descanted upon theis woords.'-WRIGHT: Mr Hugh Carleton has pointed out to me that Richard, whose love of music is well known (Sharon Turner's History, ed. 1839, vii, 31), plays upon the terms of his favourite art throughout this speech: 'measures,' 'lute,' 'proportion,' 'piping,' 'descant,' 'determined,' 'inductions,' 'set,' being all used with a special sense in music. [The use of musical phrases is common throughout Shakespeare's plays, and by characters who need not always be considered as having any special love of music. Buckingham in this play (III, vii, 50) uses this word 'descant' as a noun. If Shakespeare had a design thus to show a side of Richard's character, as is ingeniously and plausibly suggested, he has apparently confined it to this first soliloquy.—ED.] 33. since I... Louer] JOHNSON: Shakespeare very diligently inculcates that the wickedness of Richard proceeded from his deformity, from the envy that rose from the comparison of his own person with others, and which incited him to disturb the pleasures that he could not partake.-HUDSON (Life, etc., ii, 145): Richard's sense of personal disgrace begets a most hateful and malignant form of pridethe pride of intellectual force and mastery. Hence he comes to glory in the matter of his shame, and magnify his strength of fertility and wit. . . . On much the same principle he nurses to the highest pitch his consciousness of moral deformities. To succeed by wrong, to rise by crime, to grow great by inverting the moral order of things is, in his view, the highest proof of genius and skill.—WRIGHT: Bacon, To entertaine these faire well spoken dayes, I am determined to proue a Villaine, 34. well spoken] well-spoken F2F1 et seq. 35 in Essay xliv. Of Deformity, says: 'Deformed persons are commonly even with Nature: For as Nature hath done ill by them; So doe they by Nature: Being for the most part, (as the Scripture saith) void of Naturall Affectiou; and so they have their Revenge of Nature.' [The First Edition of Bacon's Essays is dated 1597, the same year as the present play; the Essay on Deformity did not appear, however, until the edition of 1612; it is, therefore, possible that Bacon may have had Shakespeare's Richard in mind.—ED.] 34. well spoken dayes] MALONE: I am strongly inclined to think that Shakespeare wrote 'dames,' and that the word 'days' was caught by the compositor's eye glancing on a subsequent line.-BOSWELL: Malone's objection to the old reading was principally upon a notion that 'fair' and 'well spoken' could not, with propriety, be applied to 'days.' Compare: Twelfth Night, II, iv, 6: 'Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.' Also Timon, IV, iii, 493: 'Strange times, that weep with laughing, not with weeping.' Jonson, Every Man Out of his Humour: 'ignorant well-spoken days.' [-Induction, l. 77.] 35. I am... Villaine] C. LAMB (Works, iii, 282): Richard does not mean that because he is by shape and temper unfitted for a courtier, he is therefore determined to prove, in our sense of the word, a wicked man. 'Villain' is here undoubtedly used for churl, or clown, opposed to a courtier; and the incipient deterioration of the meaning gave the use of it in this place great spirit and beauty. A wicked man does not necessarily hate courtly pleasures; a clown is naturally opposed to them. The mistake of this meaning has, I think, led the players into that hard literal conception with which they deliver this passage, quite foreign, in my understanding, to the bold gay-faced irony of the soliloquy. Richard, upon the stage, looks round, as if he were literally apprehensive of some dog snapping at him; and announces his determination of procuring a looking-glass, and employing a tailor, as if he were prepared to put both in practice before he should get homeI apprehend 'a world of figures here.'-SCOTT (Essays, iii, 34): J. P. Kemble never could look the part of Richard, and it seemed a jest to hear him, whose countenance and person were so eminently fine, descant on his own deformity. He was, perhaps, sensible of this, for he used to argue that Richard III., being of high descent and breeding, ought not to be vulgar in his appearance or coarse in his cruelty. There certainly should prevail a tinge of aristocracy about the dramatic Richard, but it ought not to be of a generous or chivalrous character, or, whatever the figure of the historical Richard may have been, that of a handsome prince.-J. C. HARE (p. 408): There are several things in Richard's position which justify a great difference in the representation of his inward being. Above all, his deformity seemed to separate him from sympathy and communion with his kind, and to be a plea for thinking that, as he was a monster in body, he might also be a monster in heart and conduct. I cannot but think that Shakespeare would have made a somewhat different use even of this motive, if he had rewritten the play in the maturity of his intellect. Would not Richard then, like Edmund and Iago, have palliated and excused his crimes, and played tricks with his conscience? Would he not have denied and avowed his wickedness, almost with the same breath? 36 And hate the idle pleasures of these dayes. 36. hate] bate Johns. conj. 37. Inductions] inductious QQ2 At all events, since the justification that may be alleged for Richard's bolder avowals of his wichedness results from the peculiar idiosyncrasy of his position and his physical frame, he is a most unsafe model for other poets to follow, though a very tempting one. The main difficulties of dramatic poetry are smoothed down when a writer can make his characters tell us how good and how bad he designs them to be.-HUDSON, after quoting a portion of Hare's remarks, says (Life, etc., ii, 154): 'But does not Richard's most distinctive feature, as compared with Iago and Edmund, stand mainly in this, that intellectual pride is in a more exclusive manner the constituent of his character?' Hare furthermore finds fault with the selfanalysis in the soliloquies of Richard in this play, and in 3 Henry VI., on the ground that 'it is as contrary to nature for a man to anatomize his heart and soul thus, as it would be to make him dissect his own body.' Which Hudson thus excuses: 'Richard as drawn by Shakespeare in action no less than in speech has a dare-devil intellectuality, in the strength of which, for aught I can see, he might inspect and scrutinize himself as minutely and as boldly as he would another person, or as another person would him. And why might he not, from the same cause, grow and harden into a habit of facing his blackest purposes as unflinchingly as he does his unsightly person, and even of taking pleasure in over-painting their wickedness to himself, in order at once to stimulate and to gratify his lust of the brain?'-PETRI (p. 213): In these words, 'I am determined to prove a Villain,' is contained the germ which the progress of the drama must develop. -BRANDES (i, 152): When J. L. Heiberg refused to produce Richard III. at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, he expressed a doubt whether 'we could ever accustom ourselves to seeing Melpomene's dagger converted into a butcher's knife.' He doubted, justly enough, the psychological possibility of the phrase 'I am determined to prove a villain'; but with a very slight change in the form of expression the idea is by no means indefensible. . . . To Richard the lust of power is an inward agony. He compares himself to a man 'lost in a thorny wood,' and sees no way of deliverance except to 'hew his way out with a bloody axe.' Thus is he tormented by his desire for the crown; and to achieve it he will 'drown more sailors than the mermaid shall; . . . Deceive more slyly than Ulysses could;. . . add colours to the chameleon; And send the murd'rous Machiavel to school.' If this is to be a villain, then a villain he is. ... 36. idle pleasures] 'Idle' is here used, I think, not in the sense of indolent, unemployed, or as in Hamlet, 'I must be idle,' III, ii, 95, where 'idle' means wild, flighty in speech, but in the sense of frivolous, trifling. SCHMIDT (Lex.) gives numerous examples of 'idle' in this latter sense.-ED. 37. Plots haue I laide] STEEVENS: Marston has put this line, with little variation, into the mouth of Fame': 'Plots ha' you laid? inductions dangerous?' [The Fawne, II, i.]—RICHARDSON (p. 15): It may be said perhaps that the colouring here is by far too strong, and that we cannot conceive characters to exist so full of deliberate guilt as thus to contemplate a criminal conduct without subterfuge, and without imposing on themselves. It may be thought that even the Neros and the Domitians, who disgraced human nature, did not consider them |