‘I can add colours to the chameleon’: King Richard III’s Metamorphic History

Metamorphosis is present in the character of Richard III both at a synchronic and at a diachronic level. As is stressed by the frequent use of theatrical metaphors in Shakespeare and in his sources, Richard is a very good actor: he is like a chameleon and he succeeds in his 'plots' thanks to his ability to simulate and to dissimulate. In addition to the peculiarly histrionic personality of Richard III as he appears in the chronicles and in Shakespeare, it is in his history as a character that Richard III undergoes a transformation: from Polydore Vergil, to Sir Thomas More, down to Edward Hall, Raphael Holinshed and William Shakespeare, Richard of Gloucester is progressively vilified, to such an extent that protests have often been raised: he has been defended against his detractors by Sir George Buck in his Life and Reign of Richard III (1646) and by Horace Walpole in his Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III (1768), to name just two early works on the subject. In 1956 a 'Richard III Society' was even founded with the aim of rehabilitating the memory of this monarch who was wrongfully calumniated (according to his supporters). This paper will examine how the character appears (and how he changes) inShakespeare’s sources; in Shakespeare’s plays, that is in Henry VI, Part 3and inKing Richard III; and, above all, in The Tragical History of King Richard III,Colley Cibber’s adaptation of Richard III, which replaced Shakespeare’s play on he stage from 1700 to almost the end of the nineteenth century. In addition, somemoments of Richard III’s rich stage history will briefly be considered, since theinterpretations of great actors such as David Garrick and Edmund Kean all lefttheir mark on the role of Richard of Gloucester.