"Me, drunk? Ha! You should see Buckingham!"
A Performance History of Shakespeare's Richard III


by Margaret Gurowitz

Richard III is The Bard's most performed play, much to the chagrin of Richard III Society members. Throughout its long stage history, the play has developed a series of fascinating traditions that started with Shakespeare himself.

Shakespeare's Richard III has the dubious reputation in the theater of having more things go wrong during a performance than any other play, with the possible exception of Macbeth. According to William Hogarth, a former chairman of the Society's American Branch, one nineteenth-century actor, having performed the role of Richard countless times, came on stage late in his career, began with "Now is the winter of our discontent...oh, rubbish!", stripped stark naked and promptly went mad. (Hogarth, p. 5)

Richard Burbage, a contemporary of William Shakespeare, was the first actor to triumph in the role of Richard. There is a story that during one performance of Richard III, Burbage made an assignation with a female theatergoer smitten by his performance; Shakespeare overheard and hurried to the lady's home, taking Burbage's place while the actor finished the play. When Burbage arrived and was asked who he was, he indignantly shouted "Richard the Third!" The servant returned a few minutes later with a message from Shakespeare: "William the Conqueror came before Richard the Third!" Burbage's answer was not recorded.

After Shakespeare's death, an outbreak of the plague and the destruction of London's South Bank theaters, there are few records of Richard III being staged. Theater was seen as immoral by the Puritans, and it was not encouraged. It was not until the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660 that anecdotes about the play began again. At this time, in a reaction to Puritan strictures, there was a flourishing of the theater. Farces, bawdy plays and shortened versions of classic dramas were popular and, for the first time, women appeared on the stage. Restoration traditions about Richard III were due in a large part to Colley Cibber, an actor who adapted and vulgarized Shakespeare's play, creating an influence felt well into the twentieth century. Cibber's version of Richard III even has echoes in Sir Laurence Olivier's film.

Colley Cibber took Richard III, Shakespeare's second longest play, and condensed it to the point where it could be performed in less than two hours, all for the sake of fast-paced, lively entertainment. Cibber, whose own performance in the role of Richard was described as "the distorted heavings of an unjointed caterpillar." (Hogarth, p. 18), added more blood and guts, grafting onto the play a detailed scene showing the murder of the Princes, as well as other lines that Shakespeare never put into his characters' mouths. One of Cibber's favorite additions was a scene in which Richard asks Tyrrel about the murder of the two boys.

Richard: And didst thou see them dead? Tyrrel: Dead, my lord.
At this point, Cibber's Richard says with glee:

Get a coffin; bore it full of holes...Cram them both in, and throw it into the Thames; once there, they'll find their way to the bottom.
During one performance, the actor playing Tyrrel took ill, and his part was taken over by a novice unfamiliar with Cibber's creative additions.

Richard: And didst thou see them dead? Tyrrel: Dead and buried, my lord!
The actor playing Richard stopped in his tracks. Audience members who knew the play began to snicker. Not to be deterred, the actor thought for a second, took a deep breath and bellowed:

"Hark thee Tyrell, dig 'em up again!" Having saved the day, he proudly continued: "Get a coffin, bore it full of holes..."

[This link will take you to the full text of Cibber's adapation. File size is large, ca 157 KB.]

Richard III in America

Many English repertory groups toured America's East Coast cities in the eighteenth century, and Richard III usually was their first production. (Hogarth, p. 20-21). During the American Revolution, British occupation troops organized an acting troupe in New York. Their first play was Richard III.

George Frederick Cooke dressed as Richard III, detail: based on portrait by American artist Thomas Sully, Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
The first of the English acting greats to visit America was George Frederick Cooke, whose stage style involved tremendous vocal contrast, ranging from volatile and storming to gentle. Cooke came to New York in 1810, opening in Richard III and touring Boston, Philadelphia, and Providence; he stayed in the United States until his death from the effects of drink in New York in 1813. It is rumored that Cooke's skull, which was not buried with him, continued his career on the stage by appearing as Yorick in a production of Hamlet starring Edwin Booth (Hogarth, p. 23). Cooke influenced Edmund Kean, the great romantic actor of the nineteenth century. Kean in turn influenced Junius Brutus Booth, father of the revered actor Edwin and the infamous John Wilkes. The Booth family toured extensively, performing Richard III and other plays in mining camps, frontier settlements and wagon-train camps. A boyhood recollection of productions such as these spurred Mark Twain to create the two con artists who foist themselves on Huck and Jim in Huckleberry Finn. Edmund Kean's son Charles followed in his father's footsteps and toured America, as did William Charles Macready, whose rivalry with the American actor Edwin Forrest actually resulted in riots. Their major role was, of course, Richard III.

There is a famous tradition of actors playing Richard refusing to die at the appointed time in the last act, especially when facing a less physically imposing Richmond. Junius Brutus Booth, who had a notoriously short temper, once fought another actor down into the pit, up the aisle, through the lobby and out into the street. Once outside, the victorious Booth--having beaten the actor playing Richmond--finally threw down his sword and retired to a saloon.

Drinking was another unfortunate but time-honored tradition. George Frederick Cooke staggered into the theater one night before he was due to tread the boards as Richard III. The theater manager exclaimed, "Mr. Cooke! You are drunk!" To which Cooke replied: "Drunk? Me drunk? Ha! You should see Buckingham!" The performance was cancelled.

Novelty Richards

The nineteenth century saw a range of novelty performances of Richard III. In 1821 an amateur company of free blacks performed the play at their Manhattan clubhouse, the African Grove. The part of Richard was played by the head waiter at the Park Hotel wearing a costume made from curtains taken from the hotel dining room--and posed a threat to the box-office take of the newly reopened Park Theater, offering Richard III with Junius Brutus Booth. The efforts of the Park Theater to close down the African Company's production are chronicled in Carlyle Brown's powerful play, The African Company Presents Richard III.

The role of Richard also was popular with children. Master William Betty performed the role before he was ten. In Boston in 1853 Kate and Ellen Bateman, sisters aged seven and eight, played Richard and Richmond, each bedecked with her own tiny moustache. And in London, at Astley's Ampitheatre, the most bizarre performance of Richard III took place in the 1860s. In keeping with the fact that the ampitheatre started out as a horse training ring, the production of Richard III was done entirely on horseback. (It must have given new meaning to the play's famous phrase, "my kingdom for a horse!")

A charming novelty developed during this period was the Juvenile Drama, or Toy Theater, which had workable scenery, cut-out actors and playbooks with condensed scripts based on familiar productions. Of course, Richard III was included, with the cut-out Richard figure based on Edmund Kean with tights, pantaloons, sword and flowing ermine-lined robe.

Richard III Today

Though several nineteenth century actors had tried to restore Shakespeare's full text, it was not done successfully until Henry Irving, the first actor to receive a knighthood. Irving, a riveting, magnetic performer, toured England and America with his co-star Ellen Terry in two notable productions of Richard III in the 1870s and 1890s. Irving's influence was immense. One actor who benefitted from his performances was John Barrymore, who played Richard in 1920 with intelligence and flair. Barrymore had an exacting eye for detail. Rather than wear stage armor, he had his Ricardian suit of armor made of heavy gage steel by an armorer, accurate down to the last detail. Since his performance required him to fall headlong down a slope and come to rest with one arm dangling over the orchestra pit, Barrymore's heavy armor necessitated a short run of the play.

Richard III in the Movies and on Stage

Richard III has been filmed a number of times, starting with a silent version in 1911. The Tower of London, a 1939 B-movie, starred Basil Rathbone as Richard and featured Boris Karloff in a role invented for the film. The most famous film is Sir Laurence Olivier's 1956 movie, which had its American debut on NBC television with an audience estimated at 50 million; more people saw Olivier's Richard III than had seen it in its entire 350+-year production history. Olivier's film was based on his 1944 stage production, and he admitted that one of the influences on his vocal mannerisms and makeup was also the inspiration for the Big Bad Wolf in Disney's The Three Little Pigs! As Olivier recounts opening night:

"Nose on, wig on, makeup complete. There, staring back at me from the mirror, was my Richard, exactly as I wanted him. I'd based the makeup on the American theater director Jed Harris, the most loathsome man I'd ever met. My revenge on Jed Harris was complete. He was apparently equally loathed by the man who created the Big Bad Wolf for Walt Disney."

In December of 1995 MGM/United Artists will release a film version of Richard III starring Sir Ian McKellen and based on Richard Eyre's 1991 stage adaptation, in which McKellen played the leading role. Unlike Olivier, McKellen's Richard is played in modern, 1930s dress. McKellen sees his Richard as a 1930s fascist, and his use of a modern setting helps distance the theatrical character of Richard III from the historical king of the same name.

Other modern actors to play Richard III on stage include Sir Alec Guinness, Emlyn Williams, Ian Holm, David Warner, Alan Bates, Jose Ferrer, George C. Scott, Al Pacino, Michael Moriarty, Brian Bedford and Denzel Washington. Richard III is one of the most sought-after Shakespearean roles and is performed more frequently than Hamlet or Macbeth. It is ironic that although the play's popularity and unforgettable characterization of villainy have done more than all of history to blacken Richard III's reputation, Shakespeare's Richard III has preserved the historic Richard III from obscurity. It also spurred research that led to a more balanced and accurate view of Richard's life and times, and was a catalyst behind the formation of the Richard III Society.

Sources:

Hogarth, William. "King Richard III On Stage & Off," Dickon Press, Sea Cliff, New York, 1980.

Olivier, Laurence. On Acting. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.

Playbill, The African Company Presents Richard III,; Arena Theater, Washington DC, no date but probably early 1990s.

Margaret Gurowitz is the publicity officer and research officer of the American Branch. She holds a master's degree in medieval English history from Rutgers University and works in the public relations office of a Fortune 500 Company. She would welcome comments at gurowitz@ifu.net

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