Richard's Body

As Hodgdon points out, one of the keys to the play is Richard's body; however, McKellan "masks [his deformity] by a perfectly tailored fit." Hodgdon gives this a generous reading, but I think it detracts from one of the key elements of Richard's character: his unadulerated evil. As The Riverside Shakespeare says in its prefatory material to the play, "As a Machievel who takes evil for his good, and whose twisted body signifies his moral nihilism, Richard...is not a good man who, when tempted, falls, and who, when fallen, hopes to find redemption" (750). Rather, Richard is just a bad, bad man.



However, I appreciate the problems with emphasizing the archaic connection between Richard's deformed body and his deformed character. This dangerous link follows the same logic that led to destructive racism on account that the Other, since it did not look like those in power, need not be considered human.

So, this production - like any nontraditional production - took the appropriate opportunity to play down the connection between his body and his character, but they didn't go far enough. Why leave his body as a phantom complication that simply makes Richard, as Cody pointed out about in his consideration of mis en scene, appear frivolous?

I think the logic behind this choice operated on a few levels. First, they may have wanted to break the untenable connection between body and soul, as I mentioned previously. However, they may have felt that Richard's deformity was so integral to his traditional portrayal that to make him entirely fit would be to make him a character other than Richard. Therefore, they took a middle, muddled ground and "button[ed] up the body of a character tailored from and by the deformities of social, dramatic, and stage history" (Hodgdon 218).

The greater problem lies in the fact that was probably one more reason to cover and only semi-correct Richard's body, a choice which undermines an important element of the play. By making Richard more frivolous and awkward, the directors have made him more sympathetic. The film's opening scene makes clear that Richard is is tolerated, ignored, or humored by his family. He doesn't/can't dance. He has human troubles in the lavatory. But he smiles, he looks directly at you, he's appealing. Therefore, the audience comes to appreciate his troubles. This is wrong. Inspiring sympathy for Richard undermines the initial purpose of the play, and the initial reason why Richard was physically deformed: he is clearly, entirely evil. More stated that Richard was "malicious, wrathful, envious, and, from afore his birth, ever froward" (qtd. in Riverside 749). In McKellan's version, these issues are incorrectly emphasized in the reverse order. The scene opens by showing why he's envious and how that leads to the other two qualities.

Clearly, this isn't my ideal Richard III. I prefer the straightforward, awful simplicity of Richard's villainy, especially as it contrasts the sloppy, indecisive MacBeth and meandering Hamlet. Richard is, quite simply, a murdering psychopath.