Slifer 1

David Slifer

Dr. Amanda Kellogg

ENGL 472

18 April 2018

The Ugly Truth Behind Richard III's Masculinity

Throughout history Richard III has been described as a deformed despot who killed

anyone who was in his way all while being hunched over, dragging a leg, or having a crippled

arm. In his play Richard III, Shakespeare draws on this historical depiction of Richard to not

only portray him as a potentially evil and cruel individual, but to give agency to his character.

From the beginning of the play Richard and others draw constant attention to his deformity to the

point where his masculinity is called into question. His body has ruled him out of any sexual

activities and he therefore must overcome his physical failings by asserting an aggressive

masculine presence throughout the play. This leads Richard to perform the role of tyrant seeking

only to solidify his power base through any means necessary. Richard III uses his aggressive

masculinity throughout the play to overcome personal feelings of inadequacy due to his

deformity and the perception that it negatively impacts his life.

There is an important distinction to make between viewing Richard as a deformed man

and a disabled man because both have different consequences on his masculinity. In his opening

soliloquy, Richard states,

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking glass;

I, that am rudely stamped and want love's majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph (14-16).

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These opening lines establish that Richard understands his own deformity as a potential

disability in terms of sexual gratification. While he may not be traditionally disabled from a

modern perspective, he is still "not shaped for sportive tricks" and "rudely stamped." Both of

these statements are harsh criticisms of his own body and portray him as a man who recognizes

his own physical shortcomings as a disability only insofar as it affects him sexually. Since he is

deformed by some unknown standard, his masculinity will ultimately be called into question by

the "wanton ambling nymph" he would otherwise seek out. Tom Shakespeare states that

"Popular notions of disabled masculinity focus obsessively on perceived impotence and lack of

manhood," and this is something that Richard is clearly aware of (57). The concept of disability

versus deformity in the play is purely about perception towards his masculinity, and any

perceived notions that lean towards him being disabled by any standards are going to negatively

affect his masculinity. As the soliloquy goes on, "His rhetoric about his body inevitably lead to

performing the kind of body he deems useful" (Williams). That is, he is going to "prove a

villain" as a result of being labeled as less masculine than his compatriots also returning from

war able to obtain the benefits of a post-war society (30).

Since Richard's deformity is apparent, he makes a conscious decision to overcome his

deformity by using his masculinity to achieve his goal of becoming king. He sees himself as

different from "Grim-visaged war" who "capers nimbly in a lady's chamber," and this causes him

to view himself as what Tom Shakespeare calls an "other" (9, 12). Since Richard views his body

as a broken tool that cannot take part in sexual activities, he forms what Tom Shakespeare states

is, "rejection, which was about creating alternative masculine identities and subcultures" (59).

Richard considers himself an "other" when he claims, "I am determined to prove a villain / And

hate the idle pleasures of these days" (30-31). This is a rejection of the traditionally held
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masculine goals of the rotation from war to sexual gratification in times of peace, and Richard is

determined to reinvent his own masculine identity by using his body to his advantage. His

assertion here that he is "subtle, false, and treacherous" could initially invoke feelings of pity for

his form, but instead it lends to his drive to become king over his brother and the King (37). By

using his deformity to hide the fact that he is all of those terrible things, it "accord[s] him agency

through manipulation of the meanings of his form" (Williams). Whereas anyone with less

rhetorical prowess and intelligence would not be able to overcome his waning masculinity in the

face of his deformity, Richard is given agency and an ability to assert his masculinity by using

that very body against his opponents.

One of the first overt displays of him playing to his strengths and affirming his

masculinity is during his wooing of his slain nemesis's wife Anne. Richard enters the scene

already asserting himself and berating the pole bearers stating, "Unmannered dog, stand thou

when I command!-" (40). These words are the equivalent of a male bird puffing out its chest to

attract a mate, and each word aggressively displays his masculine image in the wake of his

deformity. Any other crippled man would never speak to armed Halberds that way, but Richard

calls them "Unmannered dog" without any hesitation. This is the beginning of his performance

of an aggressively masculine male rejecting previously held connotations of his deformity. Here,

"we see women in mourning and a man with a clear aim to conquer them" (Stepkowska 142). He

must help cement his claim to the throne through a strong marriage, and by talking down to the

men carrying Anne's murdered husband, Richard is showing how easy it is for him to conquer

anyone. Yet Anne is grieving and begins by being disgusted with Richard when she claims,

"Villain, thou know'st nor law of God nor man. / No beast so fierce but knows some touch of

pity" (74-75). The terms "Villain" and "beast" are both references to his deformity, but "fierce" is
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directly related to the masculinity he has been displaying since the beginning of the scene. She

recognizes in him that his deformity is secondary to his power and villainy. Richard needs her

however, as he prefaces the wooing scene,

The readiest way to make the wench amends

Is to become her husband and her father;

The which will I, not all so much for love

As for another secret close intent (159-62).

He does not need her love or coitus, he needs to consolidate his power through traditional

patriarchal standards. His "secret close intent" is only a secret because he is able to distract from

his plan with his deformity and his masculinity. In order to achieve this goal, his first step is "to

overcome Anne's hatred, expressed in her impulsive lamentations and curses" (Stepkowska 144).

She is intentionally cruel, for good reason, and calls out his deformity again calling him a

"hedgehog" and damning him over and over, and yet, "Richard is relentless and continues to woo

her" (Stepkowska 144). His relentlessness is a key point to his masculine identity as he refuses to

sit back and allow Anne to curse and defame him in front of mourners and guards, but he knows

he must do so in a way that is not aggressive to the point of endangering his larger machinations.

Continuing with his persuasive rhetoric and against the litany of curses, Richard

manages to slowly convince Anne that he is both masculine enough to wed and ultimately

contemptuous of her as a female. Since he needs to successfully woo Anne, he knows the only

way to do so is to admit that "...I did kill King Henry- / But 'twas thy beauty that provoked me"

(96-97). This shows him to play both sides of the binary opposition of effeminate and masculine

at the same time. He both admits to an aggressively masculine act of killing her husband, but

states that he only did so because he found her physically attractive. The latter is most certainly a
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lie, and when he gives her an ultimatum: "Take up the sword again, or take up me," he is

granting her a false agency and playing her into his hands. By seemingly putting his life into her

hands, "it gives her the illusion of power over her helpless 'effeminate" suitor, [it] actually

constructs her as feminine and passive, Richard as masculine and active" (Moulton 267). Richard

has successfully taken away any remaining power she has left after her husband has died, and it

is in this moment that Anne is won over to a begrudging degree. He has stripped her of her

agency while promoting his own in the face of her viewing him as a devil and a hedgehog.

Rackin argues that, "the subversive power associated with female characters in the earlier plays

is demystified, and all the power of agency and transgression is appropriated by the male

protagonist" (52). Even though Anne has cursed him, spit on him, and degraded his form,

Richard is able to turn it around on her and remove her from a position of power to his wife. His

triumph against these seemingly impossible odds is highlighted by his masculine boasting when

he brags, "Was ever woman in this humor wooed? / Was ever woman in this humor won?" (47-

48). Not only are his braggadocious questions wantonly masculine, they are possessive and

degrading to Anne. Claiming he not only bested her in wit and wordplay, he actually "won" her

and now owns her.

Despite finally winning Anne, Richard has her unceremoniously killed and effectively

erases her lineage, and then decides to continue proving his masculinity and contempt for women

by wooing Queen Elizabeth's daughter through her. While Queen Elizabeth is also experiencing

the pain of loss, she is more aware of how Richard operates and wields his masculine form.

When he announces his intentions to woo her daughter, she snaps back at him saying, "And must

she die for this? O, let her live," but Richard is quick with his own rebuttal by callously stating,

"Her life is safest only in her birth" (216, 224). This is an even greater test of Richard's
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masculinity for Elizabeth is even more aware by this point how dangerous this man can be to her

and her family. Richard's aggressive display here shows again that, "His social vision includes

the feminine in subordinate roles; he rules women but does not reject or despise them" (Moulton

268). The only way for either Elizabeth or her daughter to escape death is for her daughter to

become his wife and thusly to be possessed by him as an object. Elizabeth fights this with a call

to his deformity stating, "There is no other way, / Unless thou couldst put on some other shape /

And not be Richard, that hath done all this" (299-301). His "shape," or deformity, is being called

into question for the contemporary issue of how it casts him in an evil light, but it also draws

attention to the fact that she is constantly aware throughout the play of his true form as a

murderer and usurper.

While Elizabeth is struggling to overcome insurmountable odds against an increasingly

aggressive and masculine Richard, "he is concentrated solely on feeding the ambitions connected

with seizing power" (Stepkowska 146). To achieve this, he employs increasingly aggressive

masculine speech by saying, "Look what is done cannot be now amended, / Men shall deal

unadvisedly sometimes" (305-06). He has remorse for his actions and his speech is again stern

and powerfully masculine by referring to killing her sons as simply something that men do, albeit

"unadvisedly." Despite his shape being called into question, or perhaps because of it, he refuses

to apologize even for taking the throne from Elizabeth's sons, and instead, "To make amends I'll

give it your daughter" (312). Under any circumstances such a claim would be considered overtly

distasteful, but at this point in the play Richard has all but dismissed any notions of subtly and is

willing to openly admit to everything he has done. Since he has claimed the throne, his power is

absolute and he wields it without remorse for the people he hurts. Whether or not Elizabeth has

truly accepted this at the end of the scene remains to be seen. Throughout the scene she seems to
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be holding her own against his hostile claims and boasts. Lines such as, "Shall I go win my

daughter to thy will?" is only a few lines after "Shall I be tempted of the devil thus?", and imply

that even until the very end she refuses to give in to his demands as she seemingly relents only to

buy time to see Richmond successfully overthrow Richard (459, 441). As Stepkowska states,

"Unlike Anne, she does not fall into incoherent lamentations and she is consciously

misunderstanding Richard" (147). Whether or not this is the case is left purposefully ambiguous

because the point of the play is not whether or not a female is able to claim their agency, it is to

promote Richard's masculinity as an aggressive tactic used to solidify his power.

In his final moments for the play, Richard is up against a noticeably more effeminate

male in the form of Richmond, and the juxtaposition of their call to arms highlights the

differences in their tactics. Richard's body is never at the center of any of his speech because he

has already achieved his intended status and therefore "his body becomes less prominent" for the

rest of the play (Williams). Therefore, Richard can begin his final speech with a preface of pure

bravado only seen in a man who no longer requires anything to hold back his now fully released

masculine aggression. His diction is strong and direct when he states, "Our strong arms be our

conscience, swords our law. / March on. Join bravely. Let us to it pell mell, / If not to heaven,

then hand in hand to hell" (329-31). Beginning this passage with the phallic imagery of "strong

arms" and "swords" indicates how ingrained his need for victory, and therefore, reaffirmation of

his manly boasting. They are two robust images that lead into the following line where

Shakespeare uses enjambment in two places to punch the lines and make them feel harsh and

brash. "March on" and "Join bravely" are given their own periods following each statement

because Richard is asking his troops to go into a "pell mell" no one is sure they will win. By

asserting his strength into those phrases he is trying to make himself seem masculine at a crucial
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point in time. Whereas Richmond will be shown to "offer a vision of a stable world held together

in the present and the future by familial bonds of masculine duty and feminine filial loyalty,"

Richard is asking for devotion based on masculinity rooted in aggressiveness (Moulton 268).

Following these two lines of assertion, he again plays up the fact that he and his men are boastful

to the point of extremes by pointing out the option of going to hell as a viable option for them all.

The phrase "hand in hand" is particularly important because it serves to strengthen the homo-

social bond that is a key point in 17th century ideal of strong men being in strong homo-social

relationships with other men. Nothing is manlier to this army than dying for each other and the

possibility of doing it together is the height of masculinity.

After setting a convincing stage for his troops, Richard continues to ride that same wave

of hyper masculinity into his final speech to his army. His tirade until the end of his speech has

the sole focus to degrade Richmond and his men that in turn props up his own men by infusing

them with some of his potency. Richard needs to disparage Richmond and his troops due to his

own inadequacies stemming back to his deformities. He is constantly at odds with his own

masculinity because it is "an ideological and physchological process [that] is connected to

predjudice against disable people in general" (Shakespeare 58). There is an impulsive need then

to then both build himself and his troops up to the masculinity he has been employing throughout

the play. When he states, "You having lands and blessed with beauteous wives, / They would

restrain the one, distain the other" he is playing directly into his men's two biggest concerns:

losing their land, a right reserved for men, and having their wives be overlooked (339-40). No

two bigger affronts could be said to a man, and Richard uses this rhetorical device to engorge his

men with hate and bile. The play on "restrain" and "distain" is a clever rouse to make the words

resonate with their rhyme in the his men's minds and ensures they will rather die than have their
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land seized and their wives seen as not worthy to even rape. Using the word "beauteous" instead

of beautiful is Richard not necessarily seeing his men's wives as beautiful, and is instead

attempting to undermine their masculinity in favor of his. Here he shows signs of the "Hatred,

scorn, and fear of the feminine" by rejecting the visages of the wives as not good enough for him

now that he has the throne, despite his previously not being interested in these more aesthetically

driven depictions (Moulton 266). Perhaps the most telling line that Richard uses to assert his

dominant male persona comes at line 351 when he states, "If we be conquered, let men conquer

us." A simple line with wide reaching implications. Again, he uses enjambment here to allow for

a dramatic pause between "conquered" and "let men" to emphasize how important the latter half

is. Having already referred to Richmond earlier as a "milksop", Richard again plays into this

notion that Richmond and his army are weak and effeminate as he "resorts to jingoistic appeals

to masculine honor and misogynistic charges" (Rackin 61). Being conquered is a tragedy in of

itself, but to be conquered by an army of presumed females, the ultimate insult to any man, is

inexcusable.

The contrast between the two speeches is highlighted as much by Richard's masculine

musings as by Richmond's call for love and devotion to his troops and his people. Moulton

argues here that this is a "re-establishment of balanced patriarchal order" that was mostly

rejected by Richard who instead opts for aggressively masculine acts from an "unruly monster"

(268). After Richard's aggression, Richmond opts for glowing religious imagery stating that

"God, and our good cause, fight upon our side. / The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls, /

Like high-reared bulwarks, stand before our faces" (254-56). He believes that he and his troops

have God on their side because Richard has transgressed and the "wronged souls" stand against

him. It is flowery diction that focuses on unity and the power of their good deeds over Richards
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belittling and demeaning speech. Rackin notes that, "Richmond constructs himself in direct

antithesis to the solitary individualism of the tragic he supplants" (62). Richard is alone and

against the world, but Richmond is one with his men with lines such as, "draw your willing

swords," and, "The least of you shall share his part thereof" (279, 283). His assumption that his

men are willingly going to die for him proves that his love for them is stronger than Richard's

contempt for everyone. Richmond is focused on this unity by calling his men "loving

countrymen" and wishing them the ability to "sleep in peace" (251, 271) . These two men are

direct opposites of each other when they speak to their troops, and the fact that Richmond's

speech is so noticeably different indicates that "Monstrous Richard can- indeed must- be killed"

for he has finally gone too far (Moulton 268). His masculinity has led to the deaths of his family

and friends, and the God-fearing knight of justice Richmond will inevitably lead England back to

its traditional, safer patriarchal ruling.

Richard is an extremely polarizing character due to his unforgivable actions and deceit.

While the argument can be made that he does so as a result of his deformity, the actions he takes

are still driven by a need to overcome his more attractive and physically capable compatriots. His

masculinity is never directly questioned, but the constant abuse about his deformity has made it

apparent in his mind that he must overcome the insults by asserting his dominance and

consolidating unassailable power. This is apparent in nearly every interaction where he feels the

need to invoke his masculinity by using his rhetoric to overbear his adversaries and lull them into

his plan to ascend to the throne. Even though his counterpart in Richmond is seemingly

forgettable with his pandering speech to his troops about God, love, and companionship, it is a

much more hospitable choice to a man determined to undermine his physical deformities that

have plagued him since birth.

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Works Cited

Moulton, Ian Frederick. “‘A Monster Great Deformed’: The Unruly Masculinity of Richard III.”

Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 3, Autumn 1996, pp. 251-68.

Rackin, Phyllis. “Engendering the Tragic Audience: The Case of Richard III.” Studies in the

Literary Imagination, vol. 26, no. 1, March 1993, pp. 47-65.

Shakespeare, Tom. “The Sexual Politics of Disabled Masculinity.” Sexuality and Disability, vol.

17, no.1, 1999, pp. 53-64.

Shakespeare, William. Richard III. Foldger Digital Texts,

http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/?chapter=5&play=R3&loc=p9&_ga=2.139975158.497

844970.1524707164-52520965.1524707164. Accessed 17 April 2018.

Stepkowska, Agnieszka. “Wooing-Scenes in Richard III: A Parody of Courtliness?” Styles of

Communication, no. 1, 2009, pp. 141-48.

Williams, Katherine Schaap. “Enabling Richard: The Rhetoric of Disability in Richard III.”

Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4, 2009, http://dsq-

sds.org/article/view/997/1181. Accessed 26 March 2018.