"And now what rests but that we spend the time
With stately triumphs and mirthful comic shows,
Such as befit the pleasures of the court?"
"Richard III." begins with a continuation of the triumphant strain:—
"Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures."
In "Richard III." are repeated references to events in the "Second Part"; to the murder of Rutland by the "black-faced Clifford"; to the crowning of York with paper, and the mocking offer of a "clout steeped in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland." It must not be forgotten that these striking likenesses, references, unities, are not between "Richard III." and the portion of the "Contention" assigned to Shakspere, but between the unquestioned author of "Richard" and that part of the "Contention" assigned by Malone and his disciples to somebody else, named only by conjecture.
But the most striking identity of character in these three plays, showing conclusively the identity of authorship, appears in Richard himself: Knight justly and forcibly says: "It seems the most extraordinary marvel that the world, for more than half a century, should have consented to believe that the man who absolutely created that most wonderful character, in all its essential lineaments, in the 'Second Part of the Contention,' was not the man who continued it in 'Richard III.'"
To prove the point, it is only necessary to permit Richard to describe himself.
This picture is from the "Contention":—
"I will go clad my body in gay garments,
And lull myself within a lady's lap,
And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks.
Oh monstrous man, to harbour such a thought!
Why, love did scorn me in my mother's womb;
And, for I should not deal in her affairs,
She did corrupt frail nature in the flesh,
And plac'd an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To dry mine arm up like a wither'd shrimp;
To make my legs of an unequal size.
And am I then a man to be beloved?
Easier for me to compass twenty crowns.
Tut, I can smile, and murder when I smile;
I cry content to that which grieves me most;
I can add colours to the chameleon;
And for a need change shapes with Proteus,
And set the aspiring Cataline to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get the crown?
Tush, were it ten times higher, I'll pull it down."
And here is the companion portrait from "Richard III.":—