That high All-Seer that I dallied with
Hath turn'd my feigned prayer on my head
And given in earnest what I begg'd in jest.
By devices, then, such as these; by the sudden revelation of a remedy when it is just too late to use it; by the sudden memory of clear warnings blindly missed; by the spectacle of a leaning for hope upon that which is known to be ground for despair; by attempts to retreat or turn aside proving short cuts to destruction; above all by the sufferer's perception that he himself has had a chief share in bringing about his doom:—by such irony the monotony of Nemesis is relieved, and fatality becomes flavoured with mockery.
This multiplication of Nemesis a dramatic background for the villainy of Richard.
Dramatic design, like design which appeals more directly to the eye, has its perspective: to miss even by a little the point of view from which it is to be contemplated is enough to throw the whole into distortion. So readers who are not careful to watch the harmony between Character and Plot have often found in the present play nothing but wearisome repetition. Or, as there is only a step between the sublime and the ridiculous, this masterpiece of Shakespearean plot has suggested to them only the idea of Melodrama,—that curious product of dramatic feeling without dramatic inventiveness, with its world in which poetic justice has become prosaic, in which conspiracy is never so superhumanly secret but there comes a still more superhuman detection, and however successful villainy may be for a moment the spectator confidently relies on its being eventually disposed of by a summary 'off with his head.' The point of view thus missed in the present play is that this network of Nemesis is all needed to give dramatic reality to the colossal villainy of the principal figure. When isolated, the character of Richard is unrealisable from its offence against an innate sense of retribution. Accordingly Shakespeare projects it into a world of which, in whatever direction we look, retribution is the sole visible pattern; in which, as we are carried along by the movement of the play, the unvarying reiteration of Nemesis has the effect of giving rhythm to fate.
The motive force of the whole play is another nemesis: the Life and Death of Richard.
What the action of the play has yielded so far to our investigation has been independent of the central personage: we have now to connect Richard himself with the plot. Although the various Nemesis Actions have been carried on by their own motion and by the force of retribution as a principle of moral government, yet there is not one of them which reaches its goal without at some point of its course receiving an impetus from contact with Richard. Richard is thus the source of movement to the whole drama, communicating his own energy through all parts. It is only fitting that the motive force to this system of nemeses should be itself a grand Nemesis Action, the Life and Death, or crime and retribution, of Richard III. The hero's rise has been sufficiently treated in the preceding study; it remains to trace his fall.
The fall of Richard: not a shock but a succession of stages.
This fall of Richard is constructed on Shakespeare's favourite plan; its force is measured, not by suddenness and violence, but by protraction and the perception of distinct stages—the crescendo in music as distinguished from the fortissimo. Such a fall is not a mere passage through the air—one shock and then all is over—but a slipping down the face of the precipice, with desperate clingings and consciously increasing impetus: its effect is the one inexhaustible emotion of suspense. If we examine the point at which the fall begins we are reminded that the nemesis on Richard is different in its type from the others in the play. Not a nemesis of equality but of sureness.These are (like that on Shylock) of the equality type, of which the motto is measure for measure: iii. iii. 15.and, with his usual exactness, Shakespeare gives us a turning-point in the precise centre of the play, where, as the Queen's kindred are being borne to their death, we get the first recognition that the general retribution denounced by Margaret has begun to work. But the turning-point of Richard's fate is reserved till long past the centre of the play; his is the nemesis of sureness, in which the blow is delayed that it may accumulate force. Not that this turning-point is reserved to the very end; The turning-point: irony of its delay.the change of fortune appears just when Richard has committed himself to his final crime in the usurpation—the murder of the children—the crime from which his most unscrupulous accomplice has drawn back. iv. ii, from 46.The effect of this arrangement is to make the numerous crimes which follow appear to come by necessity; he is 'so far in blood that sin will pluck on sin'; he is forced to go on heaping up his villainies with Nemesis full in his view. This turning-point appears in the simple announcement that 'Dorset has fled to Richmond.' There is an instantaneous change in Richard to an attitude of defence, which is maintained to the end. His first instinct is action: but as soon as we have heard the rapid scheme of measures—most of them crimes—by which he prepares to meet his dangers, then he can give himself up to meditation; from 98.and we now begin to catch the significance of what has been announced. The name of Richmond has been just heard for the first time in this play. But as Richard meditates we learn how Henry VI prophesied that Richmond should be a king while he was but a peevish boy. Again, Richard recollects how lately, while viewing a castle in the west, the mayor, who showed him over it, mispronounced its name as 'Richmond'—and he had started, for a bard of Ireland had told him he should not live long after he had seen Richmond. Thus the irony that has given point to all the other retributions in the play is not wanting in the chief retribution of all: Shakespeare compensates for so long keeping the grand Nemesis out of sight by thus representing Richard as gradually realising that the finger of Nemesis has been pointing at him all his life and he has never seen it!