Had trouble finding a topic for today. Have been an English grad student, and you know how it is with us: when in doubt, Shakespeare.
Thinking of two very different monologues by Richard II and Richard III, two very different English kings. Both are trapped and facing loss of their throne and death, but they respond in starkly varied ways in these excerpts. Richard II is melancholic and contemplative, waxing poetical and philosophical while imprisoned and about to be killed (like Boethius, John Bunyan, and Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrote some of their best known works from prison). By contrast, Richard III, the homicidal Machiavellian, goes insane as he faces defeat and death in battle.
Richard II: I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world;
And, for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it. Yet I’ll hammer it out.
My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father, and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world;
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermix’d
With scruples, and do set the word itself against the word,…
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented. Sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I king’d again, and by and by
Think that I am unking’d by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing: but whate’er I be,
Nor I, nor any man that but man is,
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eas’d
With being nothing. (Act V, scene 5)
For his part, Richard III utters a monologue prior to his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field that suggests he is haunted by all the murders he has caused in his scheming for power and revenge. His mind appears to go through a psychotic split when faced with imminent demise, becoming what one critic described as “a shivered [or fragmented] mirror”:
Richard III:
- Have mercy, Jesu!—Soft! I did but dream.
O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? myself? there’s none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!
I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.
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 high’st degree
Murder, stem murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! guilty!
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
Methought the souls of all that I had murder’d
Came to my tent; and every one did threat
To-morrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard. (Act V, scene 3)
Even a character as ruthless as Richard III cannot escape his own conscience in the end, and it drives him mad. Richard II similarly feels his mind split into competing voices but is more resigned to his fate.