A Question of Structure

Richard the Psychopath

Although there is no clinically accepted definition of a psychopath as of yet,

psychopaths are generally understood to be individuals with an ‘antisocial
personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral
behaviour without empathy or remorse.’[68] Hare states that psychopaths use
‘charisma, manipulation, intimidation, sexual intercourse and violence’ to control
others and satisfy their own needs.[69] He states that they are lacking empathy;
freely violating social norms without experiencing guilt or remorse.[70]
Shakespeare’s ‘Richard of Gloucester’ is portrayed as carrying out the actions of a
psychopath.

Richard is no less than brilliant. He manages to kill eleven people without so much
as touching them. He has these callous and ruthless deeds carried out on those
closest to him because of his ambition to gain access to the crown. Richard wins
over person after person with his charm whilst riding a tide of blood and
pathological lies. His use of language is engaging and clever, and his sense of
humour dark yet provoking. As his brother, Clarence, is being led away to the
tower, Richard says: ‘That you should be new Christ’ned in the tower,’ knowing well
of his intentions to have Clarence drowned and killed there.

Richard has been referred to as Shakespeare’s most evil character.[71] He has been
called the ‘monster of evil,’ the ‘virtual devil incarnate.’[72] Even within the
play, Queen Margaret, who sees through him, characterises Richard as an ‘elvish-
marked abortive, rooting hog.’[73] According to Oestreich-Hart[74] Richard has also
been described as an ‘intrepid warrior,’ a ‘comic or satirical Vice,’ a ‘diabolic
Machiavel,’ a ‘heartless villain of Senecan melodrama,’ and a ‘spurned child.’ But
does all this indicate that he is a psychopath? By looking at his cruel acts it may
seem so, but let me present one very important detail: towards the end of the play,
Richard shows signs of remorse and fear. These are two fundamental characteristics
never found in a true psychopath.

Many characteristics reflective of a psychopath can be found in Richard’s

character. The Psychopathy Check List – Revised (PCL-R)[75] is a tool used to
diagnose psychopathy in individuals. A score of 30 or above is enough to qualify an
individual as psychopathic. However, many non-psychopathic criminals score around
22 on this scale. This is the region in which the character of Richard belongs. He
does show traits of aggressive narcissism, such as superficial charm, pathological
lying, manipulative and callous behaviour, and a failure to accept responsibility
for his actions: ‘I do the wrong...And seem a saint, when most I play the
devil.’[76] He also expresses traits of a socially deviant lifestyle, such as a
need for stimulation, poor behavioural control, irresponsibility, and many short-
term marital relationships: ‘I'll have her; - but I will not keep her long.’[77]
All these traits, however, scored at varying degrees of intensity, do not make
Richard qualify as a psychopath. Richard’s moment of remorse occurs in Act V when
he is visited in a dream by all of those whom he had murdered. He wakes in a panic,
terrified and unsure of himself and utters a moving soliloquy.[78]

So it must be concluded that Richard, although acting in a psychopathic way is not

a true psychopath. The character of Richard created his own character, a
psychopathic one, but this character cannot coincide for long within Richard, as
his true self will not allow it. His true self is capable of guilt, remorse and
fear. These traits eventually surface, causing his downfall.
Remorse

According to Greenblatt:[79]

Shakespeare is following his chronicle source, which states that Richard could not
sleep on the eve of his death, because he felt unwonted pricks of conscience. But
though it has a staccato vigor, the soliloquy, as a way of sketching over inner
conflict, is schematic and mechanical as if within the character onstage there was
simply another tiny stage on which puppets were performing a Punch-and-Judy show.

I disagree with Greenblatt’s interpretation of this scene and propose almost the
opposite. It is up until this point that Richard has been playing a character, but
here, in this scene, his true self is revealed – to us and to himself. The panic
evident by the ‘staccato vigor’ and the use of feminine endings make it, not
‘schematic and mechanical,’ but raw and emotional.

To refer back to Shakespeare’s use of language in the previous chapter it is

important to re-emphasise that Shakespeare only introduces an eleventh
syllable/beat into a line of verse when it is emotionally relevant. In this
particular soliloquy we can count nine feminine endings. This is quite a large
number for any character, especially one who has been portrayed as a stoic
psychopath. The lines in which we find these feminine endings are quite revealing
in terms of the topic of guilt and remorse. ‘O coward conscience, how dost thou
afflict me!’ In this line we see that vowel sounds are prominent, meaning that the
character is being emotionally open. It also has a feminine ending, deeming it to
be wrought with true emotion. This sentence comes directly after Richard realises
that he has been dreaming. His defenses are down. This dream, this unconscious
mechanism, has loosened the grip he holds on his villainous character. He suddenly
realises that he is a murderer. ‘Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am.’ Richard
begins to question whether it is he or the character he has been playing who has
become such a fiend.

Richard’s final feminine line-ending occurs within: ‘Methought the souls of all
that I had murdered.’ Here, he speaks of murder for the first time with emotion. He
realises that he is no longer playing a part and those whom he has murdered are not
players on a stage. Richard is experiencing remorse in this scene. He refers to the
murders as ‘hateful deeds committed by myself!’ He says that his conscience has a
‘thousand several tongues’ with each bringing with it several tales ‘And every tale
condemns me for a villain.’ He knows what he has done is wrong and is feeling
guilty as a result. ‘Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! Guilty!’ He predicts
his punishment is coming in ‘To-morrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.’

According to Blum,[80] Shakespeare has written the emotion of guilt into Richard’s
character so that it is both latent and manifest. Freud proposes that Richard’s
apparent lack of guilt is actually due to an unconscious guilt he possesses. His
failure to accept the reality principle allows him to carry out vicious acts
without apparent empathy. This unconscious guilt is rooted in the guilt he feels as
a result of his deformity and is overwritten with a sense of entitlement.
Richard the Neurotic

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:[81]

I always felt that this quote belonged, not in As You Like It, but in Richard
III,as itencapsulates exactly what Richard appears to believe. Theorists and
critics have cast Richard as a villain and a psychopath. Yet we fail, as
spectators, to feel the deep sense of loathing towards his character, which usually
accompanies figures so described. Could this be, as Freud believes, due to the
sympathy drawn up within us at the sight of Richard’s deformities? Or could it, on
the other hand, be due to the fantastical form in which we witness the atrocities?
It is all just an act, a play within a play. Richard, being the only person to be
aware of this play, situates himself as the puppeteer. He makes us, the audience,
co-conspirators by divulging to us, and us alone, his wicked plan.

‘Fantasy provides the pleasure peculiar to desire.’[1]

Fantasy and desire are intertwined for the neurotic. I believe that Richard, in
Shakespeare’s rendering of the historical figure, is neurotic and not psychotic,
perverse or a psychopath, as has been theorised.[82] ‘To act directly and
effectively is, indeed, one of the hardest things for a neurotic to do.’[83] In
this play, although behind all eleven murders, Richard never actually lifts a
finger to carry out the deed. Richard never directly acts, except for in battle –
where rules of murder are one step removed. ‘If the object in which the libido can
find its satisfaction is withheld in reality, this is an external frustration. In
itself it is inoperative, not pathogenic, until an internal frustration is joined
to it.’[84] Richard, in Act I, Scene i, decides to become the bad guy. We have no
idea how serious he is when he makes this claim to the audience as it occurs in the
very first Act. In order to become a ‘villain’ and not a common thug Richard needs
to set particular goals. As it happens, Richard chooses seemingly ludicrous goals,
which appear nearly impossible to meet. In this same soliloquy he tells us that his
main reason for becoming a villain is because all of his comrades are enjoying the
women and women will not even look at him.[85] But yet, his first goal is to woo a
woman, a woman who has every right to hate him. After the success of this encounter
Richard appears somewhat in shock, even appalled.

Was ever woman in this humor wooed?

Was ever woman in this humor won?

Here, Richard’s external frustration is fused with his internal one. His fantasy
has become a potential reality. Freud says that internal frustration ‘must proceed
from the ego, and must dispute the access by the libido to other objects, which it
now seeks to get hold of. Only then does a conflict arise, and the possibility of a
neurotic illness, i.e. of a substitutive satisfaction reached circuitously by way
of the repressed unconscious.’[86]

Desire
‘Desire is always what is inscribed as a repercussion of the articulation of
language at the level of the Other.’[87] We find evidence of Richard’s neurosis in
the very first monologue: ‘I am determined to prove a villain.’ Richard is
admitting here that he is not naturally a villain. He is speaking of his desire. He
desires the role of a villain because he is unable to join in with the joyful
copulations, which consume the time of others. He has made a conscious decision to
create for himself a character to play to provide some entertainment whilst the
country is at peace. Richard sets in motion a chain of desires, which he wishes to
meet, but which never truly satisfy. After all, ‘Satisfaction...kills desire’[88]
in the neurotic. Richard pursues Lady Anne, a woman who has more right than anyone
to hate him at this point in the play, as he has just murdered her husband and
father-in-law in battle. ‘The obsessive desires something that is unattainable, the
realisation of his...desire thus being structurally impossible.’[89] Lady Anne
should have been impossible to woo. Richard mocks her acceptance of his efforts to
woo her.[90] The very moment he succeeds, however, he is done with her: ‘I’ll have
her; but I will not keep her long.’[91]

Richard has moved on to desiring his next object – the crown. Again, this should
seem impossible to attain as he is fourth in line to rightfully become the king. So
he kills his brother, awaits the death of his other sickly brother, deems the two
young princes illegitimate and claims the prize. All are just obstacles. ‘In both
hysteria and obsession, obstacles are placed in the way of any possible realisation
of desire.’[92] Finally Richard is king. But he is still not experiencing the
satisfaction he expected to have attained from such a feat. He goes one step
further and kills off the two princes, in hope of unleashing the regal feeling he
is awaiting. But his desire is no longer here. It is not within the object and,
therefore, cannot be satisfied by gaining access to this object. ‘Human desire,
strictly speaking, has no object.’[93] So where to from here for Richard?

Before we proceed through Richard’s later actions it is important to make a note on

his unconscious desire, or the cause of his desire. ‘Man’s desire is to be desired
by the Other,’ and in Richard’s case, the first Other: the mOther. Richard never
truly experienced his mother’s desire in childhood,[94] and as a result, I theorise
that he is unconsciously attempting to experience it at this stage in his life. The
mOther’s desire remained with the father when Richard was born. The mother took no
interest in his premature, deformed self. Richard has regressed to an Oedipal
situation, wherein he is attempting to take the place of his father, the king, in
order to experience the desire of his mother. Richard’s true desire – to be the
cause of desire for the mOther, to be the desired king – fails. His mother publicly
curses him, proving to him that he is not the cause of her desire. Not fully out of
options yet, Richard turns to another mother, Queen Elizabeth, and attempts to
seduce her into wooing her daughter on his behalf. His eloquent skill with language
has weakened and we fail to witness the same impassioned display with which he
wooed Lady Anne. In the final act we see him reject the crown as he has since
realised that he has achieved his true desire: to become a villain. ‘I am a
villain.’[95] He gives up the facade of being the king. ‘My kingdom for a
horse.’[96] Richard only ever felt an equal, a true being, when in battle and this
is where he runs to now. He unmasks the villainous character he has created and
returns to his true self, where he meets the end of his desire in death.