‘I do mistake my person all this while’ : blindness and illusion in Richard III

Abstract

In 1995, David Troughton’s Richard appeared in a jester’s outfit. Richard certainly shares attributes with the Fool, just as both have common roots in a third figure, the Vice. Although this is no straightforward case of shared identity, establishing a link may provide a point of departure for a reading of the play based on the necessarily related notions of inscription and circumscription, interrelationships of ‘texts’, and the ‘blind spot of the text as the organiser of the space of the vision contained in the text, and the vision’s concomitant blindness.’ The displacement and replacement of Richard’s corpus by another corpus, one of self-perpetuating myths and an intricate intertext, further reinforces this enthralling impression of an extending web around an elusive figure. It is generally acknowledged that one of the factors that connect Richard, the Vice, and the ‘Fool’ is their apparent awareness of a meta-theatrical dimension to the ‘text’. The additional awareness suggested by this meta-dimension may appear to exceed the frame. Richard himself draws attention to his kinship with the Vice figure: ‘like the formal Vice Iniquity’ (R. III, III. 1. 82). However, the word ‘like’ poses some difficulty, disconnecting while it offers similarity. This essay will attempt a deconstruction of the meta-dimension, exploring both its extent and its limitations. It is my thesis that, within Richard’s meta-awareness, lies the seed of its undoing: a blind spot. For Richard does not merely stand at the borders but also casts himself as protagonist in his own script. Already this indicates a split, opening up a ‘space of writing’. [Excerpt]