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"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 served as the publicity officer and research
officer of the American Branch from 1993-1996. 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.
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