[V.]
Richard III: How Shakespeare weaves Nemesis into History.
A Study in Plot.
Richard III: from the Character side a violation of Nemesis;
I have alluded already to the dangerous tendency, which, as it appears to me, exists amongst ordinary readers of Shakespeare, to ignore plot as of secondary importance, and to look for Shakespeare's greatness mainly in his conceptions of character. But the full character effect of a 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 the side of Plot. from the side of Plot, the transformation of history into Nemesis.The effect of this plot is, however, missed by those who limit their attention in reviewing it to Richard himself. These may feel that there is nothing in his fate to compensate for the spectacle of his crimes: man 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 influence, we shall obtain a sense of dramatic satisfaction 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.
The underplot: a set of separate Nemesis Actions.
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. Clarence.The first of these trains of interest centres around the Duke of Clarence. He has betrayed the Lancastrians, to whom he had solemnly sworn fealty, for the sake of the house of York; i. iv. 50, 66.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. ii. i. 86.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 intriguing Richard. The King.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, seeking to stop it when too late. ii. i. 77-133.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:
O God, I fear Thy justice will take hold
On me, and you, and mine, and yours for this.
The Queen and her kindred.