favorite moments in the play was the scene when the princes return to London. I was waiting there with balloons for them, and the Prince of Wales says of the Tower, “Did Julius Caesar build that place, my lord?” Buckingham answers, but in our version “my lord” went to me. Richard gave a face to suggest “I don’t know and I care less.” Buckingham had to step in and reply. In other words, Richard’s political instinct was to do with a deep-seated psychological need to prove himself, but with no real political sophistication behind it. It was just brute desire. Whereas Buckingham was much more subtle. He has the idea of pretending to be religious, he’s the PR man, he can spin. Of course what is so fantastic about it is that in the end brute force wins.
5. Simon Russell Beale (
right
) as a sinisterly jovial Richard with balloons for the princes.
When I was crowned, I was very keen that Richard should want to make it a fabulous occasion. Originally I wore very obvious makeup, because I’d read that George VI had to wear makeup and that these were very staged events. The makeup was cut eventually, but Richard was dressed in a glorious, very long blue cloak and as he went toward the throne he got tangled in the cloak and fell. The sheer biting humiliation of that sent him into a fury. The person hereached for was Buckingham, and quite precisely, because he had to rely on Buckingham to help him up, that meant that he had to go. That was the immediate psychological reaction to having been humiliated in front of everybody—that he would have to get rid of the man who helped him. That was a mini-version of the bigger version, which is that he had to be got rid of anyway as he’d served his purpose and become too dangerous. There is a part of Buckingham’s psychology which is that help is humiliation in the political sphere.
And the development of Richard’s language, especially in soliloquy? Is there a huge change as the play unfolds, beginning from the astonishing confidence of the opening monologue and culminating in the fragmentation of the nightmare before the battle?
Alexander: Absolutely. The language reflects the change from theatrical and impish self-confidence to terrified self-awareness. It also reflects a change in his relationship with the audience, from confiding in a huge crowd of assumed admirers to a deserted man, bereft of an audience, with no one to talk to but himself; trying to find the feedback that once sustained him but finding only his own echo.
Beale: He doesn’t soliloquize after his crowning, except for that last battle scene. He starts with this fantastic bravado, this fantastic relationship with the audience, and as soon as he’s crowned and especially, and this in my mind is the turning point for Richard, after the murder of the children, from then on he simply does not. He has a line after the Elizabeth scene, which is almost muttered to himself. I think it is always fascinating with Shakespeare
when
people stop soliloquizing. Hamlet stops after the boat. He doesn’t need his friends in the audience anymore. He’s gone to a different place. Iago stops simply because things get too busy. He can barely speak to us in the first place because he is spinning a whole load of lies that he doesn’t believe either. Richard stops because the crown is not what he expected it to be and he doesn’t know how to cope with that. And then you have the death of the children. He can kill grown-ups in this play. Most grown-ups seem prepared to kill any other grown-up, they all seem to be on that level of ruthlessness, but you don’t kill children. Even the Murderer says this is beyond the pale. I had this package brought on, which I’d based on [the soap opera]
Coronation Street
actually. When Stan Ogden died, Hilda Ogden got his glasses and his remaining bits and bobs, the last bit of him if you like, in a brown paper packet delivered to her house and she opened it over the credits with no
5. Simon Russell Beale (
right
) as a sinisterly jovial Richard with balloons for the princes.
When I was crowned, I was very keen that Richard should want to make it a fabulous occasion. Originally I wore very obvious makeup, because I’d read that George VI had to wear makeup and that these were very staged events. The makeup was cut eventually, but Richard was dressed in a glorious, very long blue cloak and as he went toward the throne he got tangled in the cloak and fell. The sheer biting humiliation of that sent him into a fury. The person hereached for was Buckingham, and quite precisely, because he had to rely on Buckingham to help him up, that meant that he had to go. That was the immediate psychological reaction to having been humiliated in front of everybody—that he would have to get rid of the man who helped him. That was a mini-version of the bigger version, which is that he had to be got rid of anyway as he’d served his purpose and become too dangerous. There is a part of Buckingham’s psychology which is that help is humiliation in the political sphere.
And the development of Richard’s language, especially in soliloquy? Is there a huge change as the play unfolds, beginning from the astonishing confidence of the opening monologue and culminating in the fragmentation of the nightmare before the battle?
Alexander: Absolutely. The language reflects the change from theatrical and impish self-confidence to terrified self-awareness. It also reflects a change in his relationship with the audience, from confiding in a huge crowd of assumed admirers to a deserted man, bereft of an audience, with no one to talk to but himself; trying to find the feedback that once sustained him but finding only his own echo.
Beale: He doesn’t soliloquize after his crowning, except for that last battle scene. He starts with this fantastic bravado, this fantastic relationship with the audience, and as soon as he’s crowned and especially, and this in my mind is the turning point for Richard, after the murder of the children, from then on he simply does not. He has a line after the Elizabeth scene, which is almost muttered to himself. I think it is always fascinating with Shakespeare
when
people stop soliloquizing. Hamlet stops after the boat. He doesn’t need his friends in the audience anymore. He’s gone to a different place. Iago stops simply because things get too busy. He can barely speak to us in the first place because he is spinning a whole load of lies that he doesn’t believe either. Richard stops because the crown is not what he expected it to be and he doesn’t know how to cope with that. And then you have the death of the children. He can kill grown-ups in this play. Most grown-ups seem prepared to kill any other grown-up, they all seem to be on that level of ruthlessness, but you don’t kill children. Even the Murderer says this is beyond the pale. I had this package brought on, which I’d based on [the soap opera]
Coronation Street
actually. When Stan Ogden died, Hilda Ogden got his glasses and his remaining bits and bobs, the last bit of him if you like, in a brown paper packet delivered to her house and she opened it over the credits with no
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