Soliloquy of a Villain

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Throughout most of Richard III, Richard gleefully fills the role of a villain. However, in the final act he speaks to himself after a nightmare and reveals a hidden vulnerability that isn’t shown anywhere else in the play. Examining the ways in which the rhythm and syntax of his speech are altered in this soliloquy allows for a greater understanding of Richard’s character.

First, the soliloquy demonstrates Richard’s mental and emotional deterioration over the course of the play. He begins with, “Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York,/And all the clouds that loured upon our house/In the deep bosom of the ocean buried (I.i 1-4). This part of the monologue is so aloof that Richard doesn’t even use the word “I.” Instead, he uses the royal “we,” which makes the language unnecessarily formal. There is no caesura in these lines, indicating that Richard is speaking serenely and not suffering from any inner turmoil; just as the lines are whole, so is Richard’s state of mind. Yet, the enjambment produces a feeling of ambivalence in the reader that is lacking in Richard. According to the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics, “the noncoincidence of the frames of syntax and meter in [enjambment] has the effect of giving the reader "mixed messages": the closure of the metrical pattern at line-end implies a stop…while the obvious incompletion of the syntactic period says, go on” and “these conflicting signals, in heightening readerly tension, also thereby heighten awareness, so that in fact one is made more aware of the word at line-end than its predecessors: rhyme itself, by enhancing closure, will diminish this effect, while absence of rhyme, in blank and free verse, increases it. — toward t...

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...he soliloquy just as he is breaking down mentally and emotionally. The addition of the extra syllable in several lines mirrors the unnatural addition of his conscience, and the caesura reflects the conflict between the light and murky sides of himself. Because the form so closely follows his emotional and mental state, the audience is able to see his private self that is not shown in any other scene. As a result, Richard becomes a much more complex character than if the audience was only allowed to see his public persona.

Works Cited

Bonetto, Sandra. "Coward Conscience and Bad Conscience in Shakespeare and Nietzsche." Philosophy and Literature` 30.2 (2006): 512-527. Web. 23 Feb 2011.

"Enjambment." New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics. Princeton University Press, 1993. Web.

Shakespeare, William. Richard III. New York: Simon & Shuster, Inc., 1996. Print.

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