Saturday, November 26, 2016
Pitiful ans spineless king versus PTSS Richard of the twisted spine
35 –
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE – hENRY VI PART THREE – BBC – 1983
This is the third part,
hence the end; of this Henry VI, a weak king that lasted longer than any other
on the stage. The last events of his reign are not that important. The fight is
to the finish, to the death between the two houses of Lancaster, the King, and
York, the contender. The Duke of York is eliminated rather fast and his four
sons are the heirs of his vain claim.
First Edward, Earl of
March and later King Edward IV, who becomes an in and out and back in king in
this play: he is the flip flop king and as such uninteresting, whimsical,
self-centered, and I mean here centered on his belly-button, and when I say
belly-button you can figure out what explicit word I should use: to take
advantage of a widow on the whim of the moment, he marries her while an
ambassador is negotiating his marriage with the sister of the King of France. More
flip flop than that you die. He will eventually after having spoiled everything
and caused the worst possible explosions of rivalry and struggle.
Second Edmund, Earl of
Rutland, is in many ways unimportant. He is the follower of his elder brother
but he is murdered by Clifford at the Battle of Wakefield at the age of 12, supposedly
though he does not seem to be that young in the play and on the stage. Third George,
Duke of Clarence, who is an opportunistic change-coat who deserts his brother
Edward when he marries his widowed paramour, and thus becomes co-protector of
the Realm under Henry VI reestablished on the throne, but not for long, since this
Clarence betrays again and brings his brother back on the throne.
Fourth and not least Richard,
Duke of Gloster, who is the only one who has some real will, desire, want and
urge to become king by all means. He will with his two brothers stab to death
Henry’s son, Edward to close up the descent of Henry VI, and at the same time
shut him up. He will alone stab to death Henry VI in the Tower where the King
is held prisoner. Shakespeare from the very start shows him as a killing machine
only bent on conquering the throne.
Counting
myself but bad till I be best.” (Act V, Scene vi)
And Shakespeare makes
Richard speak of himself in the basest words and feelings possible:
Be
round impaled with a glorious crown.” (Act III, Scene ii)
It is important though to clearly say that these deformities are
pure invention probably spread after his death in Bosworth in 1485 when he was
denuded to be prepared for burial; and then his real physical state was
discovered. Shakespeare was one of those who produced for posterity that image
of a twisted and distorted hunchback with a warped backside, a shorter
atrophied arm and a shorter or out of shape leg that made him limp. All that
was absolutely false: here are the results of the medical examination of his
skeleton after discovery and before reburying.
“The type of scoliosis seen here is known as idiopathic adolescent onset scoliosis.
The word idiopathic means that the reason for its development is not entirely
clear, although there is probably a genetic component. The term adolescent onset
indicates that the deformity wasn’t present at birth, but developed after the
age of ten.
It is quite possible that the scoliosis would have been
progressive, continuing to get worse as Richard got older. It would have put
pressure on his lungs and may have caused shortness of breath, but clearly did
not stop him from leading an active lifestyle” (http://www.le.ac.uk/richardiii/science/spine.html)
And common modern approaches of this king is as below,
pushing aside all the physical handicaps, except his scoliosis, probably well
hidden during his life as a king and discovered after his death by the victorious
Henry VII, first Tudor king and that’s when the “legend” or the “myth” started.
Shakespeare goes very far in that mythical direction in the mouth of Gloucester
“GLOSTER: The midwife wonder'd and
the women cried
Let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it.” (Act
V, Scene vi)
But here is a modern opinion on this problem:
The body of a mediaeval monarch was always under scrutiny,
and Richard III's was no exception. In death, however, his body became subject
to new forms of examination and interpretation: stripped naked after the Battle
of Bosworth, his corpse was carried to Leicester
and exhibited before being buried. . .
No mention of Richard's distinctive physique survives from
during his lifetime, perhaps out of respect to a reigning monarch, or perhaps
because he hid it so well. . .
The stripping of Richard's corpse at Bosworth in 1485 made
his physical shape noticeable to many hundreds of witnesses, perhaps for the
first time. . .
Richard's body came to be notorious for its misshapen
appearance during the Tudor period, although until the discovery of his body it
was never clear whether this was pure fabrication to render accounts of his
character and actions all the more extreme.
In Richard's case, this purported link between physique and
character was frequently underlined, and as the Tudor regime became
established, his image became more distorted -he gained a withered arm and
unequal limbs, none of which were evident on the skeleton- to fit his blackened
reputation. http://phys.org/news/2015-04-richard-iii-scoliosis-secret-death.html#jCp,
To go back to the play, we must say the picture of this
future king here is more than bleak. It is monstrous according to the word he
himself uses.
Strangely enough the action
is tense and dense but it is only action with blood and battles on both sides
and the producer enjoys giving some pictures of killed, bloodied half nude
corpses after the battles. That’s visual gore and Shakespeare could not afford
that just as he could not afford the numerous battles with twenty to forty extras.
The BBC could of course invest on extras since the setting itself was made of
flotsam recuperated bits and pieces of shredded wood, doors, windows picked from
some demolition site.
Some characters stand
out and first of all Queen Margaret as a soldier, a captain, a woman leading troops
and infantry. I must also say that most of the leading actors are great in
their dying scenes. Warwick and the
various Yorks seem to be great dying personae. Richard himself does not die,
but he kills very well though his main quality is in his long speeches about
his fate of a mongrel in his family, in his house, in his country. And mongrel
and monster seem to start with the same letters for him. He is developing a
discourse that could freeze your blood and curdle it if it were not on a stage.
And there is no black humor in him. He appears as the great central maximum
actor in this play, the one who is pulling the strings and soon these strings
will become cables. I just wonder if he is not still in the making because he
could have been a lot worse in his tone and maybe his body language. But I
guess he kept some of his resources in store for the next play.
So this third part of
this Henry VI is probably the densest and hence most interesting. Yet Henry VI himself
is still smothered in an impersonation that makes him seem a lot more secondary
than he should be. The choice is to make him kind of inconsistent. I am not
sure Shakespeare’s text could not give him more muscle at least in appearance
and tone. Instead of looking pitiful as he does here he might have been able to
look impotent in front of people negating his existence and then, he would have
been poignant in his powerlessness instead of pathetic in his spinelessness. This
is only a question of tone, hence a choice of the director and producer.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 4:49 AM 
