ESSAY: A CRISIS OF CONSCIENCE IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAY RICHARD THE THIRD

 

 

George, Duke of Clarence "Clarence"

(Richard III. I.iv. 1-98)

THE PASSAGE IS A DIALOGUE. Clarence is in a conversation with his Keeper (jailer) and recounts a dream he has just had to him. Shakespeare  contrasts this Act I scene with a parallel scene in Act V where Richard is seen to grapple with his conscience after also having a dream. We are asked to compare Richard’s introspection with Clarence’s.

Stylistically, the language Shakespeare uses provides a focus for characterization and theme presentation. For example, as a dialogue, the comments by Brackenbury and the Keeper are decidedly sympathetic. The audience is directed to be sympathetic toward Clarence.  The Keeper asks Clarence if he was in “sore agony”. He asks specifics about his dream. This contrasts with Ratcliffe who, when King Richard awakes from his Act V dream, asks no questions at all. Instead, he directs Richard to ignore his dream and get on with the business of fighting the morning’s battle. Clearly, in Clarence’s scene, questions are used to indicate relationship and express concern, as well as ask for clarification (about his dream), and it is probable that the audience would respond in a manner similar to Brackenbury and the Keeper.

The imagery used also reflects Clarence’s internal processes, and I should restate that Clarence’s dream is a reflection, a dramatic presentation more accurately, of the workings of conscience, specifically a Christian conscience. There are images of drowning: Clarence’s dream has him knocked overboard a ship (captained by Richard, of course) where he is trapped underwater. The physical length of the opening line from this passage leaves the audience breathless: it runs a full six lines before a final stop. Such line structure provides the audience with the sense of breathlessness and entrapment that Clarence experiences in his dream. In his dream, he says he felt his soul was trapped in the “panting bulk” of his body; and that his “ghost” cannot rise to heaven, to the “empty, vast and wand’ring air”. Instead, it remains underwater. Why? It is because Clarence faces a crisis of conscience; and the imagery Shakespeare uses to depict his sense of entrapment underscores this crisis. Words such as “envious” flood, “stopped-in”, and “smothered”; as well, night is “perpetual”, never ending and unchanging.

    Tower of London

Shakespeare also uses alliteration, adding physical sounds to depict Clarence’s distress: “burst to belch” (I.iii.40) and “methought, the melancholy” (I.ii.45). In discussing Clarence’s crisis of conscience, it is important to note, as well, Shakespeare’s use of meter. Agitation on the part of Clarence is created by a disruption of meter in such lines as: “Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence? (I.iii.51) and “Clarence is come: false, fleeting, perjured Clarence” (I.iii.55). In this second example, there is an extra feminine ending to the line: “Clárĕnce”. Such irregularly metered lines help focus the audience’s attention on the name of Clarence. Additionally, other three-syllable words such as “perjury”, “terrible” and “impression”, and phrases such as “unto torment”, “season after" that distort the normal iambic pentameter structure, call attention to Clarence’s inner turmoil: his inner upheaval is reflected in the ‘upheaval’ of  line meter.

    Lawrence Olivier as "King Richard III"

In terms of a Christian conscience, Shakespeare most interestingly supplies a mixture of Classical images (“sour ferryman which poets write of” (I.iv.46) with Christian imagery such as “flood” (I.iv.45), “angel” (I.iii.54), and “hell” (I.i.62) as examples. (He uses “flood” in the context of the ferryman, further conflating Classical and Christian imagery.) The moment appears to be establishing the dream as a presentation of Christian hell vs. a pagan Hades. In Hades, all souls, when they die, journey there. There is no purgatory or heaven; no redemption in a Christian context. Such imagery is confusing: is the “angel” Clarence purports to see, seen from in hell or from Hades? Significantly, by the end of the passage, Clarence is sure it is hell: “Could not believe but that I was in hell.” (I.iv.62). Shakespeare uses these mixed images of the classical and Christian afterlife to reflect Clarence’s journey from the denial of sin to an acceptance that he has sinned: He has murdered: he will go to hell for his crime. In other words, we see the development of a conscience—a Christian conscience—in Clarence. Richard, upon waking from his dream, desires only to escape. Clarence, who will shortly be murdered at the hands of Richard's agents, on the other hand will return to sleep, to dream and further examine his conscience.

The use of imagery of entrapment, metrical dislocation, alliteration, line length and Classical-Christian motifs provide the audience with a depiction of the growth of a Christian conscience; or in Richard’s case, the opposite. Richard’s refusal to accept the fact of conscience, even in the actions of supernatural powers, shows, in the play’s entirety, the crisis that results for a nation whose king lacks a conscience. 

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Meter: "In all sustained spoken English we feel a rhythm, that is a recognizable through variable pattern in the beat of the stresses in the stream of sound." (Glossary)

Iambic Pentemeter: a light stress followed by a stressed syllable with five (penta) "feet" which are pairs of stressed and unstressed syllables per line. SOP for Shakespeare and many english-speaking Renaissance writers.

 

  

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. "Love's Labours" Lost in The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G.B. Evans. NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.

Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 5^th ed. Fort Worth, Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1988. 

 

 

 

Prof Comments: Very good; perceptive, careful, and interesting to read. I'm very happy with your work in the course, and I'd encourage you to take the paper option for this term's work, although the choice is of course up to you. I'll be distributing suggestions for topics in a week or so. GRADE=A