V. RICHARD III: How SHAKESPEARE WEAVES NEMESIS INTO HISTORY. A Study in Plot. the Charac I HAVE alluded already to the dangerous tendency, which, CHAP. V. as it appears to me, exists amongst ordinary readers of Richard Shakespeare, to ignore plot as of secondary importance, III: from and to look for Shakespeare's greatness mainly in his con- ter side a ceptions of character. But the full character effect of a violation of Nemesis ; dramatic portrait cannot be grasped if it be dissociated from the plot; and this is nowhere more powerfully illustrated than in the play of Richard III. The last study was devoted exclusively to the Character side of the play, and on this confined view the portrait of Richard seemed a huge offence against our sense of moral equilibrium, rendering artistic satisfaction impossible. Such an impression vanishes when, as in the present study, the drama is looked at from from the the side of Plot. The effect of this plot is, however, the transside of Plot, missed by those who limit their attention in reviewing it to formation Richard himself. These may feel that there is nothing in his of history fate to compensate for the spectacle of his crimes: man sis. must die, and a death in fulness of energy amid the glorious stir of battle may seem a fate to be envied. But the Shakespearean Drama with its complexity of plot is not limited to the individual life and fate in its interpretation of history; and when we survey all the distinct trains of interest in the play of Richard III, with their blendings and mutual infience, we shall obtain a sense of dramatic satisfaction into Neme CHAP. V. amply counterbalancing the monstrosity of Richard's villainy. Viewed as a study in character the play leaves in us only an intense craving for Nemesis: when we turn to consider the plot, this presents to us the world of history transformed into an intricate design of which the recurrent pattern is Nemesis. plot: a set of separate Nemesis Actions. Clarence. The under- This notion of tracing a pattern in human affairs is a convenient key to the exposition of plot. Laying aside for the present the main interest of Richard himself, we may observe that the bulk of the drama consists in a number of minor interests-single threads of the pattern-each of which is a separate example of Nemesis. The first of these trains of interest centres around the Duke of Clarence. He has betrayed the Lancastrians, to whom he had solemnly sworn i. iv. 50, 66. fealty, for the sake of the house of York; this perjury is his bitterest recollection in his hour of awakened conscience, and is urged home by the taunts of his murderers; while his only defence is that he did it all for his brother's love. Yet his lot is to fall by a treacherous death, the warrant for which is signed by this brother, the King and head of the Yorkist house, i. iv. 250. while its execution is procured by the bulwark of the house, The King. the intriguing Richard. The centre of the second nemesis is the King, who has thus allowed himself in a moment of suspicion to be made a tool for the murder of his brother, ii. i. 77- seeking to stop it when too late. Shakespeare has contrived that this death of Clarence, announced as it is in so terrible a manner beside the King's sick bed, gives him a shock from which he never rallies, and he is carried out to die with the words on his lips: ii. i. 86. 133. and her kindred. O God, I fear Thy justice will take hold The Queen In this nemesis on the King are associated the Queen and her kindred. They have been assenting parties to the measures against Clarence (however little they may have contemplated the bloody issue to which those measures have been brought by the intrigues of Gloster). This we must CHAP. V. understand from the introduction of Clarence's children, ii. ii. 62– who serve no purpose except to taunt the Queen in her 65. bereavement: Boy. Good aunt, you wept not for our father's death; How can we aid you with our kindred tears? Girl. Our fatherless distress was left unmoan'd; Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept! &c. The death of the King, so unexpectedly linked to that of Clarence, removes from the Queen and her kindred the sole ii. ii. 74, bulwark to the hated Woodville family, and leaves them at the mercy of their enemies. A third nemesis Action has Hastings. Hastings for its subject. Hastings is the head of the court- i. i. 66; iii. ii. 58, &c. faction which is opposed to the Queen and her allies, and he passes all bounds of decency in his exultation at the fate which overwhelms his adversaries : But I shall laugh at this a twelvemonth hence, That they who brought me in my master's hate, I live to look upon their tragedy. He even forgets his dignity as a nobleman, and stops on his way to the Tower to chat with a mere officer of the court, in iii. ii. 97. order to tell him the news of which he is full, that his enemies are to die that day at Pomfret. Yet this very ham. journey of Hastings is his journey to the block; the same cruel fate which had descended upon his opponents, from the same agent and by the same unscrupulous doom, is dealt out to Hastings in his turn. In this treacherous casting off Buckingof Hastings when he is no longer useful, Buckingham has been a prime agent. Buckingham amused himself with the iii. ii, from false security of Hastings, adding to Hastings's innocent 114. expression of his intention to stay dinner at the Tower the aside And supper too, although thou know'st it not; while in the details of the judicial murder he plays second to Richard. By precisely similar treachery he is himself cast CHAP. V. off when he hesitates to go further with Richard's villainous schemes; and in precisely similar manner the treachery is The four nemeses Buck. I am thus bold to put your grace in mind Of what you promised me. K. Rich. Buck. Upon the stroke of ten. Buck. Why let it strike? Well, but what's o'clock? Well, let it strike. K. Rich. Because that, like a Jack, thou keep'st the stroke I am not in the giving vein to-day. Buck. Why, then resolve me whether you will or no. Thou troublest me; I am not in the vein. [Exeunt all but Buckingham. Buck. Is it even so? rewards he my true service With such deep contempt? made I him king for this? O, let me think on Hastings, and be gone To Brecknock, while my fearful head is on! These four Nemesis Actions, it will be observed, are not formed into separate trains of incident going on side by side, they are a system by linked together into a system, the law of which is seen to be nemesis as a link. that those who triumph in one nemesis become the victims of the next; so that the whole suggests a 'chain of destruction,' like that binding together the orders of the brute creation which live by preying upon one another. When Clarence perished it was the King who dealt the doom and the Queen's party who triumphed: the wheel of Nemesis goes round and the King's death follows the death of his victim, the Queen's kindred are naked to the vengeance of their enemies, and Hastings is left to exult. Again the wheel of Nemesis revolves, and Hastings at the moment of his highest exultation is hurled to destruction, while Buckingham stands by to point the moral with a gibe. Once more the wheel goes round, and Buckingham hears similar gibes addressed to himself and points the same moral in his own person. Thus the portion of the drama we have so far considered yields us a pattern within a pattern, a series of Nemesis CHAP. V. Actions woven into a complete underplot by a connecting-link which is also Nemesis. Action' a Following out the same general idea we may proceed to The Ennotice how the dramatic pattern is surrounded by a fringe or veloping border. The picture of life presented in a play will have the nemesis. more reality if it be connected with a life wider than its own. There is no social sphere, however private, but is to some extent affected by a wider life outside it, this by one wider still, until the great world is reached the story of which is History. The immediate interest may be in a single family, but it will be a great war which, perhaps, takes away some member of this family to die in battle, or some great commercial crisis which brings mutation of fortune to the obscure home. The artists of fiction are solicitous thus to suggest connections between lesser and greater; it is the natural tendency of the mind to pass from the known to the unknown, and if the artist can derive the movements in his little world from the great world outside, he appears to have given his fiction a basis of admitted truth to rest on. device of enclosing the incidents of the actual story in a framework of great events-technically, the 'Enveloping Action' This -is one which is common in Shakespeare; it is enough to instance such a case as A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which play a fairy story has a measure of historic reality given to it by its connection with the marriage of personages so famous as Theseus and Hippolyta. In the present case, the main incidents and personages belong to public life; nevertheless the effect in question is still secured, and the contest of factions with which the play is occupied is represented as making up only a few incidents in the great feud of Lancaster and York. This Enveloping Action of the whole play, the War of the Roses, is marked with special clearness: two personages are introduced for the sole purpose of giving it prominence. The Duchess of York is by her years and ii. ii. 8o. |