Masculine Monstrosities

Richard III presents a murderous conception of royal succession, structured around the depravity of the character after which the play is named. Richard’s first justification for killing those in his way to being king comes as a confession of love for the newly widowed Anne (I.2.130-4). Anne uses epithets such as “defused infection of (a) man,” “Unmannered dog,” and “hedgehog” for Richard, but when she has a sword to his chest, she “will not be thy executioner” (82; 40; 109; 204). Anne does not commit murder but dehumanizes the man who has killed her husband through association with wild animals and disease. This scene becomes more significant when considered with the one where Clarence is murdered. Clarence urges the assassins not to kill him, and yet the first assassin refuses, calling mercy “cowardly and womanish.” Clarence tries one more time to convince them, stating “Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish” (1.4.273-4). In this quick interaction, femininity is placed opposite not masculinity but being an inhuman beast. Masculinity is absent from Richard III, replaced with murderous, animalistic qualities, espoused with Richard due to his desire to be king.

Emasculating Richard reduces the audience’s capacity to identify with him as a human character to his physical deformity. For instance, in the beginning of the text Richard refers to himself as “not shaped for sportive tricks,/Nor made to court an amorous looking glass…so lamely and unfashionable/That dogs bark at me as I halt by them” (I.1.14-23). All at once, Shakespeare creates an image of Richard as undesirable due to the unattractiveness of his deformity while also making it the one way to understand the character. Through his deformity one could identify Richard, connoting feminine or animalistic qualities with those who are physically deformed in real life. To live in this era and have diseases such as scoliosis would have attracted social stigma that questioned not only one’s gender identity but also one’s humanity as a whole, declared unfit for society for some sinister expression that may stem from a chronic pain experience.

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Richard III. Washington, D.C.: Folger
Shakespeare Library. http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org.