ii. i. 32. CHAP. V. the play; for the effect of the incident is that the different parties pray for their own destruction. In this scene Buckingham has taken the lead and struck the most solemn notes in his pledge of amity; when Buckingham comes to die, his bitterest thought seems to be that the day of his death is All v. i, from Souls' Day. 10. Nemesis Richard. This is the day that, in King Edward's time, 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 multi- Dramatic design, like design which appeals more directly plication of to the eye, has its perspective: to miss even by a little the a dramatic point of view from which it is to be contemplated is enough background to throw the whole into distortion. So readers who are not for the villainy of 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 how 1 ever successful villainy may be for a moment the spectator CHAP. V. 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. nemesis: What the action of the play has yielded so far to our in- The motive vestigation has been independent of the central personage: whole play force of the we have now to connect Richard himself with the plot. is another Although the various Nemesis Actions have been carried on the Life by their own motion and by the force of retribution as a and Death of Richard. 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. Richard: not a shock but a suc cession of stages. This fall of Richard is constructed on Shakespeare's The fall of 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 inexhaust CHAP. V. ible emotion of suspense. If we examine the point at which the fall begins we are reminded that the nemesis on Richard Not a is different in its type from the others in the play. These nemesis of equality but are (like that on Shylock) of the equality type, of which the of sureness. motto is measure for measure: and, with his usual exactness, Shakespeare gives us a turning-point in the precise centre i. 15. of the play, where, as the Queen's kindred are being borne to their death, we get the first recognition that the general etribution 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 The turn- change of fortune appears just when Richard has coming-point mitted himself to his final crime in the usurpation—the irony of its delay. murder of the children-the crime from which his most iv. ii. from unscrupulous accomplice has drawn back. The effect of 46. 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 turningpoint 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 crimesby which he prepares to meet his dangers, then he can give himself up to meditation; 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 from 98. started, for a bard of Ireland had told him he should not CHAP. V. 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! From this point fate never ceases to tantalise and mock TantalisRichard. He engages in his measures of defence, and with ng mocktheir villainy his spirits begin to recover: The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom, young Elizabeth is to be his next victim, and To her I go, a jolly thriving wooer. ery in Richard's fate. iv. iii. 38. Suddenly the Nemesis appears again with the news that comp. 49. Ely, the shrewd bishop he dreads most of all men, is with iv. iii. 45. Richmond, and that Buckingham has raised an army. Again, his defence is completing, and the wooing of Elizabeth-his masterpiece, since it is the second of its kind-has been brought to an issue that deserves his surprised exultation: Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman! iv. iv. 431. He His equahas nimity affected. little iv. iv. 444. Suddenly the Nemesis again interrupts him, and this time is CHAP. V. persed.-But Yorkshire has risen.-But, a gleam of hope, the Breton navy is dispersed a triumph, Buckingham is taken. Then, finally, Richmond has landed! The suspense is telling upon Richard. In this scene he strikes a messenger before he has time to learn that he brings good tidings. viii. 2, 5, When we next see him he wears a false gaiety and scolds his followers into cheerfulness; but with the gaiety go sudden fits of depression: Here will I lie to-night; But where to-morrow? v. iii, from A little later he becomes nervous, and we have the minute 47. attention to details of the man who feels that his all depends upon one cast; he will not sup, but calls for ink and paper to plan the morrow's fight, he examines carefully as to his beaver and his armour, selects White Surrey to ride, and at last calls for wine and confesses a change in himself: Climax of I have not that alacrity of spirit, Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have. Then comes night, and with it the full tide of Nemesis. Richard's By the device of the apparitions the long accumulation of fate: significance of crimes in Richard's rise are made to have each its due re tions. 118. the appari- presentation in his fall. It matters not that they are only v. iii, from apparitions. Nemesis itself is the ghost of sin: its sting lies not in the physical force of the blow, but in the close connection between a sin and its retribution. So Richard's victims rise from the dead only to secure that the weight of each several crime shall lie heavy on his soul in the morrow's doom. This point moreover must not be missed—that the Signifi climax of his fate comes to Richard in his sleep. The cance of Richard's supreme conception of resistance to Deity is reached when sleep. God is opposed by God's greatest gift, the freedom of the will. God, so it is reasoned, is omnipotent, but God has made man omnipotent in setting no bounds to his will; and God's omnipotence to punish may be met by man's omnipotence to endure. Such is the ancient conception of Pro |