Honeyed Toads: Sinister Aesthetics in Shakespeare's Richard III
2007; University of Pennsylvania Press; Volume: 7; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2979/jem.2007.7.1.5
ISSN1553-3786
Autores Tópico(s)Psychology of Social Influence
Resumo1. INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM OF RICHARDThe fascination with evil is central to construction of Shakespeare's Richard III. According to Antony Hammond, editor of Arden Richard III, no other example of what he calls criminal hero. . . . has had theatrical longevity, nor audience appeal of Richard; never have elements described above been combined into so persuasive and attractive a consequence as Richard (104). Although audiences from Shakespeare's time to present have taken pleasure in Richard's compelling malevolence, implications of Richard's appeal continue to trouble critics. A. P. Rossiter, while acknowledging that Richard's asides make it impossible for him to deceive audience, suggests that audiences cooperate in deceiving themselves when they do not take Richard seriously, with potentially dangerous moral consequences. Hugh Richmond, in his introduction to 1999 collection Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Richard III, sees compulsive interest of modern audiences in the megalomaniac delights of Richard's sadism as symptomatic of a pervasive mental pathology, epidemic obsession with violent assertion of male self (7-8). Such responses reflect tendency of critics, from early modern period to present, to attribute appeal of representations of evil either to deceptiveness of representation or to a flaw in audience's moral or psychological character. Although these claims make sense within critics' respective ideological frameworks, they demonize or pathologize affective responses that, for centuries, audiences have had to play.1To better account for these responses, I will approach play, and problems it raises, by recognizing that it is first and foremost an construction, and therefore designed to give pleasure. Aesthetic conventions are socially constructed and historically specific sets of rules. They provide framework in which psychological states are expressed, and they shape forms in which desire manifests itself. Before we conclude that a given work or audience response evinces moral depravity or psychological disorder, we need to consider operative conventions and beliefs that shaped choices of writers like Shakespeare and responses of their audiences. The advantage of this approach is that it grounds analysis in an appreciation of full range of moral and appeals available to Shakespeare and his audiences. It also allows us to see more clearly complex play of conflicting moral and ideas that gives Richard III its poetic energy. I will argue here that play encourages audiences to appreciate Richard because of his evil, not in spite of it, and that this response to a literary representation is not inherently pathological or corrupt. Rather, it is shaped by a sinister aesthetic that governs play's representations of evil and ugliness, and that calls into question moral and psychological boundaries separating us from evil and self-destructiveness.Richard III treats appeal of evil in two ways: as a problem of knowledge and a problem of desire. Richard's character symbolizes in paradoxical form Renaissance debates about epistemological value of appearances for determining moral truths. In his deformity, which other characters take as a sign of his hellish nature, Richard epitomizes union of outer appearances and inner truths. At same time, Richard's theatrical pretense of benevolence emblematizes deceitful disjunction between external shows and internal nature. The characters who discuss Richard assume that recognizing Richard's evil would evoke disgust and horror and a corresponding desire to resist his machinations-an assumption that many Renaissance theorists would have shared. However, play undermines this assumption by portraying characters who knowingly choose evil and ugly over good and beautiful. …
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