Touches me deeply.
While taking his part in entertaining the precocious King he treats us to continual asides—
iii. i. 79, 94.
So wise so young, they say, do never live long—
showing how he can stop to criticise the scenes in which he is an actor. iii. iv. 24.He can delay the conspiracy on which his chance of the crown depends by coming late to the council, iii. iv. 32.and then while waiting the moment for turning upon his victim is cool enough to recollect the Bishop of Ely's strawberries. humour;But more than all these examples is to be noted Richard's humour. This is par excellence the sign of a mind at ease with itself: scorn, contempt, bitter jest belong to the storm of passion, but humour is the sunshine of the soul. Yet Shakespeare has ventured to endow Richard with unquestionable humour. i. i. 151-156.Thus, in one of his earliest meditations, he prays, 'God take King Edward to his mercy,' for then he will marry Warwick's youngest daughter:
What though I kill'd her husband and her father!
The readiest way to make the wench amends
Is to become her husband and her father!
e.g. i. i. 118; ii. ii. 109; iv. iii. 38, 43; i. iii. 142; ii. i. 72; iii. vii. 51-54, &c.
And all through there perpetually occur little turns of language into which the actor can throw a tone of humorous enjoyment; notably, when he complains of being 'too childish-foolish for this world,' and where he nearly ruins the effect of his edifying penitence in the Reconciliation Scene, by being unable to resist one final stroke: