RICHARD III
ACT. SCENE.
DUCHESS.
What means this scene of rude impatience?
QUEEN.
To make an act of tragic violence.
II, 2, 39.
CUE. PART.
Had not you come upon your cue, my Lord,
William Lord Hastings had pronounced your part,
I mean your voice.
III, 4, 27.
In the First Folio, cue is written Q.; in the later folios it is spelt kew.
III, 4, 27.
PAGEANT.
The flattering index of a direful pageant.
IV, 4, 85.
Pageants are dumb-shows, and the poet, no doubt, alluded to one of these shows, the index of which promised a happier conclusion. The pageants then displayed on public occasions were generally preceded by a brief account of the order in which the characters were to walk. These indexes were distributed among the spectators that they might understand the meaning of such allegorical stuff as was usually exhibited.
PLAY.
The beholders of this tragic play.
IV, 4, 68.
SCENE.
A Queen in jest only to fill the scene.
IV, 4, 91.
VICE. INIQUITY.
I say without characters, fame lives long,
Thus, like the formal vice iniquity,
I moralize two meanings in one word.
III, 1, 82.
“Formal” appears to be here used as we now use “conventional” to describe that which was regular and in accordance with ordinary rule and custom. The vice of the stage was a familiar figure to the audience, and they were thoroughly accustomed to his proceedings. It would appear from the present passage that one of his devices, in order to create a laugh, was to play upon the double meaning of words.
TRAGEDIAN.
GLOU.
Come cousin,
Canst thou quake, and change thy colour,
Murder thy breath in middle of a word,
And then begin again and stop again
As if thou were distraught and mad with terror?
BUCK.
Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian,
Speak and look back and pry on every side,
Tumble and start at wagging of a straw,
Intending deep suspicion; ghastly looks
Are at my service, like enforced smiles,
And both are ready in their offices,
At any time to grace any stratagems.
III, 5, 5.
This admirable passage forcibly illustrates the methods adopted by the actors in the art of acting in Elizabethan times. In our days this mode of producing stage effects is chiefly associated with the style of acting pursued by followers of the melodramatic school. If we examine carefully the substructure of Shakespeare’s tragic plays, we shall perforce arrive at the conclusion that melodrama enters largely into their composition.
Stript of their dialogue, the acts of these plays bear a striking resemblance to the lurid and blood curdling dramas nightly performed at our provincial theatres, and during the nineteenth century presented at the London theatres, principally those situated on the Surrey side of the Metropolis, and merely gaining the well-known sobriquet of the transpontine drama. These plays were interpreted by the actors in rather a boisterous manner by ranting and martial stalk, in reality tearing a passion to tatters, to very rags, tricks of the actors preserved by tradition from the very days of Shakespeare himself, who often alluded to and deprecated this inartistic and uncritical style of acting.