There are so many overlaps between Richard III (1593) and Macbeth (1606) that it sometimes seems as though Shakespeare pillaged and reformed the earlier play when he composed the later. Both plays feature cynical upward strivers ("hellhounds," the playwright calls them both) who risk damnation to murder their way to the throne, and then lose their kingdoms in battle and are succeeded by spotless young heirs. Both Richard of Gloucester and Macbeth kill innocent children and both are haunted by the ghosts of those they have murdered.
Yet the two plays are very different. Macbeth is a tidy economical play (Shakespeare's second shortest), while Richard III (his second longest) is sprawling and redundant, sometimes bewildering, stuffed to the gills with incident and declamation. Moreover, Richard III lacks witches, moving forests, young Malcolm, Macduff's mysterious birth, and above all, ambitious Lady Macbeth. While Richard is famously amusing, Macbeth hasn't the slightest sense of humor even though he can be unconsciously ironic.
When similar circumstances arise, as they must, it becomes obvious that the rhetorical strategies of Richard III are rudimentary compared to the richer and more satisfying language of Macbeth.
Here is one passage in the earlier play that has an echo or correspondence in the later. Richard instructs a follower to slander King Edward ("luxury" means "lust")"
urge his (i.e. Edward's) hateful luxury,
And bestial appetite in change of lust;
Which stretch'd unto their servants, daughters, wives,
Even where his raging eye or savage heart,
Without control, listed to make a prey.
In Macbeth, Malcolm slanders himself.
There's no bottom, none,
In my voluptuousness. Your wives, your daughters,
Your matrons and your maids, could not fill up
The cistern of my lust, and my desire
All continent impediments would o'erbear
That did oppose my will.
Unbounded lust is the subject of both speeches - "servants, daughters, wives," expands into the even more inclusive wives, daughters, matrons, and maids. Richard's statement is strong, its power strengthened by the litany of allusions to the uncivil wild: "bestial," "raging," "savage," "prey." Macbeth's is considerably more powerful, primarily because of the extended metaphor in which lust is conceived as some sort of fluid. Many an acre foot of lust could be contained in a "cistern" without a "bottom." Yet in fact a bottomless cistern would impound only a portion of Malcolm's gusher of lust which, it seems, is many times more abundant than a single cisternfull; it's a deluge that "continent impediments" such as embankments or dikes or dams cannot restrain. It's a flood.
A second correspondence occurs when Richard engages in a moment of self-evaluation. "But I am in/ So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin;/ Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye." Macbeth's improvement: "I am in blood/ Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more/ Returning were as tedious as go o'er." Blood in both, to be sure, but there are improvements. In the earlier passage, the key terms are sin and pity, abstractions which are rooted in the antecedent allegorical drama. "Sin" becomes a personage: "sin will pluck on sin." And pity or perhaps Pity, is also vivified through the use of the modifier "tear-falling." But these harkings back to allegory hint at the less abstract and more imaginative figure adumbrated in the phrase "so far in blood." It would be more ordinary and idiomatic to say not "stepped in so far" but "stepped in so deep." Unless, of course, the playwright had an idea lurking in the recesses of his brain which he didn't quite articulate. Ten years later, Richard's puddle became Macbeth's river or lake or even ocean, deep enough that it required the usurper king to "wade" in it. Shakespeare pursues the metaphor to its completion: "should I wade no more/ Returning were as tedious as go o'er" -- a figure which makes it clear that Macbeth is overshoes, knee deep -- or even hip deep -- in a nightmare swamp of his own making, There's no side channel, no bridge, no way out.
So apprentice "sin" and "pity" are superseded by masterly "cistern" and "blood" and "wade."
It's not by accident that Macbeth is so deeply unsettling.
Comments