From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (London: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 477-80.
RICHARD III.
The Tragedy of | King Richard the third. | Containing, | His treacherous Plots against his brother Clarence: | the pittiefull murther of his innocent nephewes: | his tyrannicall vsurpation: with the whole course | of his detested life and most deserued death. | As it hath beene lately Acted by the | Right honourable the Lord Chamber- | laine his seruants. | AT LONDON | Printed by Valentine Sims, for Andrew Wise, | dwelling in Paules Chuch-yard, at the | Signe of the Angell. 1597. -- TITLE PAGE OF FIRST EDITION, 1597.
To him that impt my fame with Clio's quill,
Whose magick raised me from oblivion's den;
That writ my storie on the Muses hill,
And with my actions dignifi'd his pen:
He that from Helicon sends many a rill,
Whose nectared veines, are drunke by thirstie men;
Crown'd be his stile with fame, his head with bayes;
And none detract, but gratulate his praise.
-- BROOKE, CHRISTOPHER, 1614, The Ghost of Richard Third, pt. ii, st. i, ed. Grosart.
Mine host was full of ale and history,
And in the morning when he brought us nigh
Where the two Roses join'd, you would suppose
Chaucer never made the Romaunt of the Rose.
Hear him. See ye yon wood? There Richard lay
With his whole army. Look the other way
And, lo! where Richmond in a bed of gorse
Encamp'd himself o'er night, and all his force:
Upon this hill they met. Why, he could tell
The inch where Richmond stood, where Richard fell
Besides what of his knowledge he could say,
He had authentic notice from the play;
Which I might guess by ‘s mustering up the ghosts,
And policies not incident to hosts;
But chiefly by that one perspicuous thing
Where he mistook a player for a king.
For when he would have said, King Richard died
And call'd, A horse! a horse! he Burbage cried.
-- CORBET, RICHARD, 1617, Iter Boreale.
This is one of the most celebrated of our author's performances, yet I know not whether it has not happened to him as to others, to be praised most, when praise is not most deserved. That this play has scenes noble in themselves, and very well contrived to strike in the exhibition, cannot be denied. But some parts are trifling, others shocking, and some improbable. -- JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1768, General Observations on Shakspeare's Plays.
One of the most prominent and detestable vices indeed, in Richard's character, his hypocrisy, connected, as it always is, in his person, with the most profound skill and dissimulation, has, owing to the various parts which it induces him to assume most materially contributed to the popularity of this play, both on the stage, and in the closet. He is one who can
-- "frame his face to all occasions,"
and accordingly appears, during the course of his career, under the contrasted forms of a subject and a monarch, a politician and a wit, a soldier and a suitor, a sinner and a saint; and in all with such apparent ease and fidelity to nature, that while to the explorer of the human mind he affords by his penetration and address, a subject of peculiar interest and delight, he offers to the practiced performer a study well calculated to call forth his fullest and finest exertions. -- DRAKE, NATHAN , 1817, Shakspeare and His Times, vol. II, p. 374.
"Richard III." may be considered as properly a stage-play: it belongs to the theatre, rather than to the closet. -- HAZLITT, WILLIAM 1817-19, Characters of Shakespear's Plays, p. 160.
If we compare these speeches (of Edmund in Lear, and of Iago in Othello) with Richard's, and in like manner if we compare the way in which Iago's plot is first sown, and springs up and gradually grows and ripens in his brain, with Richard's down-right enunciation of his projected series of crimes from the first, we may discern the contrast between the youth and the mature manhood of the mightiest intellect that ever lived upon earth, a contrast almost equally observable in the difference between the diction and metre of the two plays, and not unlike that between a great river rushing along turbidly in spring bearing the freshly melted snows from Alpine mountains, with flakes of light scattered here and there over its surface, and the same river, when its waters have subsided into their autumnal tranquility, and compose a vast mirror for the whole landscape around them, and for the sun and stars and sky and clouds overhead. -- HARE, A. W. AND J. C., 1827-48, Guesses at Truth.
This tragedy forms an epoch in the history of our poet and in that of dramatic poetry. In his preceding dramas he showed rather the suppleness than the knotted strength of his genius; but in the subtle cunning, the commanding courage, the lofty pride and ambition, the remorselessness of the third Richard, and in the whole sublime depravity of his character, he reminds us of the eulogium passed by Fuseli on Michael Angelo, who says, that Michael could stamp sublimity on the hump of a dwarf. So complete was this picture of human guilt, that Milton, in seeking for a guilty hero, was obliged to descend to the nether regions. -- CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1838, ed. Shakspeare's Plays, Moxon ed., Life.
"Richard III." is, and long has been -- taking the stage and the closet together -- the most universally and uninterruptedly popular of its author's works. Few of Shakespeare's plays passed through more than two or three editions, as they originally appeared, separately, in the customary form of quarto pamphlets. Of "Hamlet," which seems to have been the most popular of the other tragedies, there are but six of these editions, while of "Richard III.," between 1597 and 1634, we have in addition to the copies in the first two folios, no less than eight separate editions, still preserved; and it is possible that there may have been yet another, no longer extant. There are also more references and allusions to it, in the writings of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and in those of the next generation of authors than to any other of his works. For instance, Bishop Corbet, in his poems, Fuller, in his "Church History, " and Milton, in one of his prose controversial tracts all refer to it as familiar to their readers. It has kept perpetual possession of the stage, either in its primitive form, or as altered and adapted to the tastes of the times by Colley Cibber or by John Kemble. In one or other of these forms Richard III. has been the favourite character of all the eminent English tragedians, from Burbage, the original "Crookback, " who was identified in his day, in the public mind, with the part, through the long succession of the monarchs of the English stage -- Betterton, Gibber, Quin, Garrick, Henderson, Kemble, Cooke, Kean -- down to our own days. Yet, in all the higher attributes of the poetic drama, "Richard III." bears no comparison with the poet's greater tragedies, or with the graver scenes of his more brilliant comedies. Intellectually and poetically, it must be assigned to a much lower class than "Romeo and Juliet," or "Othello;" than "Lear" or "Macbeth," than the "Tempest" or "the Merchant of Venice." -- VERPLANCK, GULIAN CROMMELIN, 1844-47, ed. The Illustrated Shakespeare.
If a portion of the bitterness and soured rage that lies in Richard's nature was rooted in this self-contempt of his out-ward appearance, his contempt of men on the other hand is grounded on the liberal gifts which nature has bestowed on his mind, and on the self-reliance which a comparison with the men around him inspired. Of consummate powers of speech, of animated mind and piercing wit, Shakespeare depicts him throughout in accordance with the Chronicle, in his hypocritical wooing of Anne, in his sarcasm, and in his equivocal language, this gift of a biting and malicious wit is called into play. He exhibits similar adroitness in his dealings with men, and here his contempt of all, scarcely to be dissembled even by this master of dissimulation, is clearly manifested. -- GERVINUS, G. G., 1845-62, Shakespeare Commentaries, tr. Bunnett, p. 264.
The drama is not so much a composition of co-operative characters, mutually developing and developed, as the prolonged yet hurried outcome of a single character, to which the other persons serve but as exponents and conductors, as if he were a volume of electricity disclosing himself by means of others, and quenching their active powers in the very process of doing so. -- HUDSON, HENRY NORMAN, 1872-83, Shakespeare: His Life, Art, and Characters, vol.II, p. 156.
The references in this play to the three parts of "Henry VI." are so many as to make it impossible to deny the serial character and unity of the whole tetralogy, whatever questions may be raised as to the authorship of parts of it. The whole exhibits the fate of virtuous weakness in the face of unscrupulous strength, and concludes with the fate of this strength in the face of Providence. Henry VI. perishes by natural causes. The forces which destroy Richard III. are wholly supernatural. Three women are introduced whose curses are inevitable, like those of the Eumenides. Ghosts prophesy the event of a battle. Men's imprecations on themselves are literally fulfilled. Their destiny is made more to depend on their words than their actions; it is removed out of their hands, and placed in those of some unearthly power which hears prayer and judges the earth. As if the lesson of the poet was that there is human remedy where there are ordinary human motives, but that for power joined with Machiavellian policy the only remedy is patience dependent on Providence. -- SIMPSON, RICHARD, 1874, The Politics of Shakspere's Historical Plays, New Shakspere Society Transactions, p. 396.
He typifies man contending against society, the individual defying by the strength of his own intellect and will all the forces naturally banded together against a rebellion such as his, and succumbing at last, like the boar caught in the toils of the huntsman, who strike down the baffled lord of the forest like a rabid cur. -- WARD, ADOLPHUS WILLIAM, 1876-99, A History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. II. p. 262.
The demonic intensity which distinguishes the play proceeds from the character of Richard as from its source and centre. As with the chief personages of Marlowe's plays, so Richard in this play rather occupies the imagination by audacity and force than insinuates himself through some subtle solvent, some magic and mystery of art. His character does not grow upon us; from the first it is complete. We are not curious to discover what Richard is, as we are curious to come into presence of the soul of Hamlet. We are in no doubt about Richard; but it yields us a strong sensation to observe him in various circumstances and situations; we are roused and animated by the presence of almost superhuman energy and power, even though that power and that energy be malign. -- DOWDEN, EDWARD, 1875-80, Shakspere, A Critical Study of His Mind and Art, p. 161.
Villain as he is, he has the villain's coolness too. He never loses temper, except when he strikes the third messenger. As a general he is as skilful as Henry the Fifth, and looks to his sentinels, while like Henry the Fourth, he is up and doing at the first notice of danger, and takes the right practical measures. Yet the conscience he ridicules, he is made to feel --
"there is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me."
But we must note that this is only when his will is but half awake, half paralyzed by its weight of sleep. As soon as the man is himself again, neither conscience nor care for love or pity troubles him. The weakest part of the play is the scene of the citizens' talk, and the poorness of it, and the monotony of the women's curses, have given rise to the theory that in "Richard III." Shakspere was only rewriting an old play, of which he let bits stand. But though I once thought this possible, I have since become certain that it is not so. The wooing of Anne by Richard has stirred me, in reading it aloud, almost as much as any thing else in Shakspere. Note, too, how the first lines of the play lift you out of the mist and confusion of the "Henry VI." plays into the sun of Shakspere's genius. -- FURNIVALL, FREDERICK JAMES, 1877, ed. The Leopold Shakspere.
This only of all Shakespeare's plays belongs absolutely to the school of Marlowe. The influence of the elder master, and that influence alone, is perceptible from end to end. Here at last we can see that Shakespeare has decidedly chosen his side. It is as fiery in passion, as single in purpose, as rhetorical often though never so inflated in expression, as "Tamburlaine" itself. It is doubtless a better piece of work than Marlowe ever did; I dare not say, that Marlowe ever could have done. -- SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, p. 43.
In no other play of Shakespeare's, we may surely say, is the leading character so absolutely predominant as here. He absorbs almost the whole of the interest, and it is a triumph of Shakespeare's art, that he makes us, in spite of everything, follow him with sympathy. This is partly, because several of his victims are so worthless that their fate seems well deserved. Anne's weakness deprives her of our sympathy, and Richard's crime loses something of its horror when we see how lightly it is forgiven by the one who ought to take it most to heart. In spite of all his iniquities, he has wit and courage on his side -- a wit which sometimes rises to Mephistophelean humour, a courage which does not fail him even in the moment of disaster, but sheds a glory over his fall which is lacking to the triumph of his coldly correct opponent. However false and hypocritical he may be towards others, he is no hypocrite to himself. He is chemically free from self-delusion, even applying to himself the most derogatory terms; and this candour in the depths of his nature appeals to us. It must be said for him, too, that threats and curses recoil from him innocuous, that neither hatred nor violence nor superior force can dash his courage. Strength of character is such a rare quality that it arouses sympathy even in a criminal. -- BRANDES, GEORGE, 1898, William Shakespeare, A Critical Study, vol. I, p. 163.
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