DILEMMAS OF DOGMA - PART I / STILL LOOKING FOR RICHARD

When the Red Bull Theater sent invitations to its podversation with Matthew Rauch regarding his preparations and performance of Richard III at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. last year, I cancelled sessions in order to participate.  I didn't see the production last year, but I admit to a dogged interest in the interpretation of the play and the character.  Actors who study with me know that I may, at any moment, even when it's mildly tangential to something we're rehearsing, bring up the importance of theme, social framework and structure, and point out my prime example of what I think is a traditional misconception of The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, its full title when it was first published in 1597.  Richard is traditionally defined as the most heinous villain created among all the characters in the extant Shakespeare canon, and that his actions are exceptional, therefore defining the other characters as his victims; villainy in conflict with righteousness.  But this play is a tragedy, not a melodrama.

The play takes place during the War of the Roses.  Queen Margaret, a woman who commanded armies, schemed, manipulated, lived in exile while setting her own agenda for claiming the throne, known to "execute her enemies asking her 7-year-old son for his opinion on how they should be killed," was only one of the combatants in this war. The extreme strife of that period in England at the end of the Hundred Years' War and during the years of the War of the Roses created an incredible instability in the monarchy - five rulers in a span of 25 years, three of them executed - everyone "clawing at each other for the throne," as Frederic Kimball noted in Al Pacino's Looking for Richard.

As I understand the structure of Shakespeare's tragedies, they're modeled after the Greek tragedies in form, but in content, they reflect the thinking of the English Renaissance; the main difference being that the tragic character is not a victim of fate, but of choice (The Tragedy of Julius Caesar - Cassius: "The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.").  In  tragedy the character doesn't die piteously unaware of their tragic flaw, but through their journey of discovery, they become consciously aware of it in the climax, whether they're Oedipus or Richard. 

Impressive to me about Matthew Rauch's discussion of the role, were the careful considerations he made as he grappled with the complexities of the play and though he was asked to show us the end of Act I, Scene II, after Lady Anne's exit, he chose instead to present part of the climax of the play, which is indeed a puzzle and challenge for the actor given the traditional interpretation of the play.

Matthew Rauch's reading reminded me of Ralph Fiennes' Richard from Henry VI.  Speaking of previous circumstances!  How well this monologue articulates the impending struggle Richard has set for himself.

There's one scene in the play, aside from the climax, that perplexes everyone who adheres to the traditional interpretation; as well it should.  It's the seduction of Lady Anne, of course.  There are many examples of this scene on the Internet.  All of them are performed as follows: The murderous villain seduces the moral, ethical, innocent victim.  I chose a few.  I might have enjoyed Mark Rylance's spoof of this play, but spoof it must've been.  I chose his version because for me, it's an example of what actors might do when they haven't a clue what the play or the scene is about.  A concerto isn't a polka and a tragedy isn't a comedy just because it contains humor.  When the actor makes himself more important than the play, ignoring its structure, whether it's Richard II, Henry V or Richard III, examples from Mr. Rylance on the internet, he's free to interpret those characters as he sees fit, but in my view, he doesn't give a damn about the play.  The sentence, "I wasted time and now doth time waste me," (Richard II) said as an unimportant statement of fact instead of a realization, indeed that entire speech being a grappling with the character's conflicts, masked in a naturalistic, colloquial delivery displays a reading of the play, no matter how different it is from other interpretations.  Here's a portion of his version of the seduction of Lady Anne:

Here are two more versions, among many others available on the Internet.  When directors cut important sections or lines from a scene, it indicates to me that they couldn't make sense of it; but the key to the writer's intent is contained in those sections or lines!  Some productions were performed as if the play takes place in other centuries, but consistently, the interpretation of the conflict in that scene is the same, rendering Lady Anne as an innocent victim.  For Al Pacino, she must be very young, naive enough to believe his "rap."  Olivier broke the sequence of the rising action of the scene in order to make sense of it, and justified Lady Anne's action to be based on her succumbing to his eroticism.  Olivier and Pacino addressed Richard's eroticism as if he was used to seducing women of her rank.  But was he?  Not according to what he says of himself in Henry VI, Part 3, and not according to what he said in his opening monologue.  Releasing his sexual energy on Lady Anne, needs, I think, a very particular behavior, not a Hollywood love scene.  If the scene were performed in the sequence in which it was written, and every note of the score were played, I think we'd discover that Lady Anne is an ambitious opportunist; that the scene evolves into a cat and mouse game between equals.  "Was ever woman in this humour woo'd..." was performed by Olivier and Pacino as if Richard believed her rap!  I think Richard mocks her hypocrisy, delighted that he was able to expose it.  As a result of his success, I think he ironically, facetiously, shares with the audience how it will now affect his demeanor. 

The climax.   The night before the battle; the thoughtfulness that Matthew Rauch gave to the result of the nightmare while sitting in his office (a nightmare, BTW, that Lady Anne described earlier in the play), reminded me of Al Pacino's search for the character in that monologue.  Note the correction Pacino made of the sentence, "I am a villain."  The conscious realization, acknowledgement of it as opposed to the cynical way the actor might choose to say the word in the opening monologue.  Olivier did a visually effective sequence of the appearance of the ghosts, but he omitted the monologue of discovery, which makes me think that he didn't understand the central idea of the play:

I think that the climax confounds actors who assume the traditional interpretation of Richard because they overlook the title and don't consider the possibility that dogma has reduced the play to a melodrama; they don't consider the possibility that this isn't a play about a villain at all, that it might be a play about ambition and the lust for power, and that Richard III might be a viper in a den of vipers, and is a tragic figure because as he becomes conscious of it:

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

And every tongue brings in a several tale,

And every tale condemns me for a villain:

Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;

Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree;

All several sins all us'd in each degree,

Throng to the bar, crying all, 'Guilty, guilty!' 

 

He is now painfully aware, yet he chooses to ignore his conscience, his "humanity," as Frederic Kimball noted - a tragic figure, not because he's a treacherous villain who must be punished or eliminated - or because his horse was slain.  But because:

Go, gentlemen: every man unto his charge!

Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls;

Conscience is but a word that cowards use,

Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe.

Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.

March on!  Join bravely.  Let us to it pell-mell -

If not to Heaven, then hand in hand to hell.