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Abstract
Richard III centers on the rise and fall of a man who claims that he will “set the murderous Machiavel to school” and proceeds to seize the crown of England, only to lose his grip on that coveted prize in his own sudden personal and political unraveling. Insofar as we see Richard as a genuine but failed Machiavellian, it remains difficult to determine the extent to which Shakespeare's critique of Richard is a critique of Machiavelli. Yet Shakespeare's account of Richard's hopes, successes, and failures, examined in light of relevant classical texts, points to fatal flaws in Machiavelli's account of reason, conscience, and the end of human actions, demonstrating that the concept of the objective good is an essential component of any meaningful and coherent account of human action. Thus, Richard's ultimate descent into madness is a sign of the fate that even the “best” Machiavellian statesman or society is destined to share.
Notes
2 All references to III Henry VI are from The Norton Shakespeare, 2nd ed., ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008), 326–97.
3 All references to Richard III are from the Norton Critical Edition, ed. Thomas Cartelli (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009).
4 See especially Grant B. Mindle, “Shakespeare's Demonic Prince,” Interpretation 20, No. 3 (1993): 259–74; Morton J. Frisch, “Shakespeare's Richard III and the Soul of the Tyrant,” Interpretation 20, no. 3 (1993): 275–84; and Mary Ann McGrail, “Richard III: That Excellent Grand Tyrant of the Earth,” in Tyranny in Shakespeare (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001), 47–76.
5 Tyranny in Shakespeare, 50.
6 Tyranny in Shakespeare, 48.
7 See Frisch, “The Soul of the Tyrant,” 283.
8 For the idea that Shakespeare is “schooling” Machiavelli in this play, see Chris Barker, “Freedom in Shakespeare's English History Plays,” Interpretation 40, No. 2 (2013): 227, 235.
9 All references to Machiavelli are to The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988).
10 See Frisch, “The Soul of the Tyrant,” 276; McGrail, Tyranny in Shakespeare, 58–60.
11 See Mindle, “Shakespeare's Demonic Prince,” 271.
12 Compare Richard III, III.vii.1–37 with The Prince, chapter 7.
13 Tyranny in Shakespeare, 54–55.
14 Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Republic and On the Laws, trans. David Fott (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), Republic III.27.
15 Tyranny in Shakespeare, 47–49, 54–58, 68–69. Barker, “Freedom,” sees Shakespeare's criticism of Machiavelli as “internal,” doubting that Shakespeare endorses natural law as an alternative (234, 249).
16 For Shakespeare's familiarity with Aquinas, see David M. Beauregard, O.M.V., Virtue's Own Feature: Shakespeare and the Virtue Ethics Tradition (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1995), 51–57.
17 All references to On Kingship are from St. Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship: To the King of Cyprus, trans. Gerald B. Phelan, ed. I. Th. Eschmann, O.P. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1949).
18 References to the Summa are from St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 8 vol. (Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012).
19 Richard's inability “to decide whether he is within nature or able to be outside it” is therefore quintessentially Machiavellian (see McGrail, Tyranny in Shakespeare, 69).
20 As for Richard's resentment of and attribution of agency to nature, we may note that Machiavelli himself begins The Prince by complaining of his undeserved suffering from “a great and continuous malignity of fortune”; that he proceeds to personify Fortune and declare war upon her; and that he represents the pinnacle of human virtù with the image of a man raping a woman (Dedicatory Letter, chapter 25). Leo Strauss has suggested that this “teacher of evil” was possibly carried away by at least one species of ire; see “What is Political Philosophy,” in What Is Political Philosophy and Other Essays (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959), 44: “I would then suggest that the narrowing of the horizon which Machiavelli was the first to effect, was caused, or at least facilitated, by anti-theological ire.”
21 See Mindle, “Shakespeare's Demonic Prince,” 261–63.
22 In a passage unique to the Folio, Richard complains of the murder of his young brother Rutland and the slaying of his father, and reminds Anne that her own father switched sides in the civil war (see Richard III, Arden Edition, ed. Antony Hammond [London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, 1999], I.ii.160–67). These words provide Anne with additional reasons to check her self-righteous anger, but cannot conceal the speciousness of Richard's overall case, which he himself describes as prevailing against “God” and “her conscience” (220).
23 This fear of discovery is ironic in light of the second murderer's prior complaint that conscience is “turned out of all towns for a dangerous thing” (125).
24 See Frisch, “The Soul of the Tyrant,” 281.
25 Compare Frisch, “The Soul of the Tyrant,” 278; McGrail, Tyranny in Shakespeare, 50–53.
26 See Mindle, “Shakespeare's Demonic Prince,” 271.
27 Compare McGrail, Tyranny in Shakespeare, 48.
28 Tyranny in Shakespeare, 55, 63, 67.
29 Compare Frisch, “The Soul of the Tyrant,” 279, 282.
30 See McGrail, Tyranny in Shakespeare, 64.
31 The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), VI–VII, 505a–520d.
32 Republic, VII, 514a–517e.
33 See Socrates’ depiction of the tyrant as living in a waking dream (Republic, IX, 572b–576b).