Richard III's Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity: Shakespeare and Disability History

R3sBodies

 

 

 

How is Richard III always both so historical and so current?

 

 

 

Read the Introduction

 

 

 

Available from Temple University Press

Richard III will always be central to English disability history as both man and myth—a disabled medieval king made into a monster by his nation’s most important artist.

In Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity, Jeffrey Wilson tracks disability over 500 years, from Richard’s own manuscripts, early Tudor propaganda, and x-rays of sixteenth-century paintings through Shakespeare’s soliloquies, into Samuel Johnson’s editorial notes, the first play produced by an African American Theater company, Freudian psychoanalysis, and the rise of disability theater. For Wilson, the changing meanings of disability created through shifting perspectives in Shakespeare’s plays prefigure a series of modern attempts to understand Richard’s body in different disciplinary contexts—from history and philosophy to sociology and medicine.

While theorizing a role for Shakespeare in the field of disability history, Wilson reveals how Richard III has become an index for some of modernity’s central concerns—the tension between appearance and reality, the conflict between individual will and external forces of nature and culture, the possibility of upward social mobility, and social interaction between self and other, including questions of discrimination, prejudice, hatred, oppression, power, and justice.

“Wilson explores the many meanings of Shakespeare’s masterpiece in performance and as text and of Richard III as an historical figure in a wide-ranging study that offers careful and approachable close readings that will interest actors, directors, playgoers, scholars, and the general reader. While Richard’s body is center stage in this reception history, Wilson’s spotlight is also on the audience. This book makes a strong case for Richard’s centrality to disability studies and is a hugely enjoyable read.”

 

—Essaka Joshua, Associate Professor of English, University of Notre Dame and author of

Physical Disability in British Romantic Literature

 

 

 

“Erudite, original, and thoughtful, Jeffrey Wilson’s Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity is a vital resource for anyone studying disability history, stigmatized bodies, and the historiography of monarchy. Chapters range widely across medieval and early-modern visual representations of Richard and the presentation of Richard’s so-called hunch on stage in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book also includes a fascinating account of contemporary performances and the political stakes in the twenty-first century of casting Richard as a person with a disability, as a person with a disability who culturally and politically identifies as Disabled, or as a person without a disability. The volume concludes with the felicitous coinage ‘historical presentism’ to discuss the study of Shakespearean adaptations and appropriations and reminds us why we still read about Richard, and perhaps why we still read Shakespeare at all.”

 

—Sujata Iyengar, Professor of English at the University of Georgia, and editor of

Disability, Health, and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body

 

 

 

Table of Contents

 

Acknowledgments

 

Introduction

1 Stigmatizing Richard III’s Disability up to Shakespeare: The Figural Paradigm

2 The Models of Stigma in Shakespeare’s First Tetralogy: Spirituality, Psychology, Sociology

3 The Reality of Physiognomy in Richard III

4 The Unnatural Age of Margaret: Antiquating the Spiritual Model of Stigma in Richard III

5 Richard III’s Disability after Shakespeare: Discovering the Causal Paradigm

6 Richard III’s Disability in Modern Performance: The Changing Bodies of Character and Actor

Conclusion: The Anthropology of Audience: Historical Presentism in Shakespeare Studies

 

Notes

Index

 

Bibliography

Alberti, Fay Bound. “Getting it Straight: Spines, Scoliosis, and the Hunchback King.” This Mortal Coil: The Human Body in History and Culture (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016): 20-38.

Anderson, Susan, ed. A Cultural History of Disability. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.

Anderson, Susan. “Introduction: Disability in Early Modern Theatre.” Early Theatre 22.2 (2019).

Appleby, Jo et al. “The Scoliosis of Richard III, Last Plantagenet King of England: Diagnosis and Clinical Significance.” The Lancet 383.9932 (May 2014): 1944.

Aune, M.G. “The Uses of Richard III: From Robert Cecil to Richard Nixon.” Shakespeare Bulletin 24.3 (2006): 23-47.

Baker, Naomi. “‘Opacious’ Bodies: Richard III and The Changeling.” Plain Ugly: The Unattractive Body in Early Modern Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. 80-93.Bates, Alan W. Emblematic Monsters: Unnatural Conceptions and Deformed Births in Early Modern Europe. New York: Rodopi, 2005.

Baumbach, Sibylle. Shakespeare and the Art of Physiognomy. Tirril: Humanities-Ebooks, 2008.

Bearden, Elizabeth B. Monstrous Kinds: Body, Space, and Narrative in Renaissance Representations of Disability. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019.

Brooke, Nicholas. “Reflecting Gems and Dead Bones: Tragedy Versus History in Richard III.” Critical Quarterly 7 (1965): 123-34.

Burnett, Mark Thornton. “‘Monsters’ and ‘Molas’: Body Politics in Richard III.” Constructing 'Monsters' in Shakespearean Drama and Early Modern Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 65-94.

Casey, Jim. “‘Richard’s Himself Again’: The Body of Richard III on Stage and Screen.” Shakespeare and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Performance and Adaptation of the Plays with Medieval Sources Or Settings, ed. Martha W. Driver, et al. (Jefferson: McFarland, 2009): 27-48.

Charnes, Linda. “Belaboring the Obvious: Reading the Monstrous Body in King Richard IIINotorious Identity: Materializing the Subject in Shakespeare. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. 20-69.

Cheng, Elyssa Y. "Constructing Deformity in Richard III and The Changeling." Journal of Theater Studies 17 (2016): 129-48.

Choate, Evan. "Misreading Impotence in Richard III." Modern Philology 117.1 (2019): 24-47.

Churchill, George Bosworth. Richard the Third up to Shakespeare. Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1900.

Clemen, Wolfgang. A Commentary on Shakespeare’s Richard III. Trans. Jean Bonheim. London: Methuen, 1968.

Cohen, Adam Max. “The Metaphorical Use of the Prodigious Birth Tradition.” Wonder in Shakespeare. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 53-68.

Coker, Lauren. “Masquerading Early Modern Disability: Sexuality, Violence, and the Body (Politic) in Richard III.”Screen Bodies 3.1 (2018).

Colley, Scott. Richard’s Himself Again: A Stage History of Richard III. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1992.

Comber, Abigail Elizabeth. “A Medieval King ‘Disabled’ by an Early Modern Construct: A Contextual Examination of Richard III.” Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations, ed. Joshua Eyler (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010): 183-96.

Coursen, H.R. “Filming Shakespeare’s History: Three Films of Richard III.” Shakespeare on Film, ed. Russell Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000): 99-116.

Day, Gillian. Shakespeare at Stratford: King Richard III. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2002.

Davis, Lennard J. “The End of Identity Politics and the Beginning of Dismodernism: On Disability as an Unstable Category.” Bending Over Backwards: Essays on Disability and the Body. New York: New York University Press, 2002. 9-32.

Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. London: Verso, 1995.

Ellis-Etchison, John W. “Monstrous Sovereignty and the Corrupt Body Politic in Richard III and The Duchess of Malfi.” Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques: Monstrosity and Religion in Europe and the United States, ed. Michael E. Heyes (Lanham: Lexington, 2018): 135-66.

Fawcett, Julia H. “The Overexpressive Celebrity and the Deformed King: Recasting the Spectacle as Subject in Colley Cibber’s Richard III.” PMLA 126.4 (2011): 950-65.

Fernandez, Jose Ramon Diaz. “Richard III on Screen: An Annotated Filmo-bibliography.” Shakespeare on Screen: Richard III, ed. Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin (Rouen: Publications de l’Universite de Rouen, 2005): 281-322.

Fiedler, Leslie. The Stranger in Shakespeare. New York: Stein & Day, 1972.

Finding Richard: A Forum. Special section of Upstart: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies (2013).

Freedman, Barbara. “Critical Junctures in Shakespeare Screen History: The Case of Richard III.” Shakespeare on Film, ed. Russell Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 47-71.

Garber, Marjorie. “Descanting on Deformity: Richard III and the Shape of History.” Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality. New York: Routledge, 1987. 28-51.

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Godden, Richard H., and Asa Simon Mittman, ed. Monstrosity, Disability, and the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Grey Friars Research Team, The Bones of a King: Richard III Rediscovered (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015).

Hallett, Charles A., and Elaine S. Hallett, The Artistic Links Between William Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More: Radically Different Richards. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Hammond, P.W. “The Reputation of Richard III.” Richard III: A Medieval Kingship, ed. John Gillingham (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993): 133-49.

Hanham, Alison. Richard III and his Early Historians, 1483-1535. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.

Hassel, Jr., Chris R. Songs of Death: Performance, Interpretation, and the Text of Richard III. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.

Hobgood, Allison P. “Teeth Before Eyes: Impairment and Invisibility in Shakespeare's Richard III.” Disability, Health, and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body, ed. Sujata Iyengar (New York: Routledge, 2015): 23-40.

Hobgood, Allison P., and David Houston Wood. “Early Modern Literature and Disability Studies.” The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Disability, ed. Clare Barker and Stuart Murray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018): 32-46.

Hobgood, Allison P., and David Houston Wood, eds. Disabled Shakespeares. Special section of Disability Studies Quarterly 29.4 (2009).

Hobgood, Allison P., and David Houston Wood, eds. Recovering Disability in Early Modern England. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2013.

Hofele, Andreas “Making History Memorable: More, Shakespeare and Richard III.” Literature, Literary History and Cultural Memory, ed. Herbert Grabes, REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature21 (Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2005): 187-204.

Holderness, Graham. “From Summit to Tragedy; Sulayman Al-Bassam’s Richard III and Political Theatre.” Critical Survey 19.3 (2007): 124-43.

Horspool, David. Richard III: A Ruler and his Reputation. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.

Hsy, Jonathan. “Disability.” The Cambridge Companion to the Body in Literature, ed. David Hillman and Ulrika Maude (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015): 24-40.

Huber, Rebekah. “Richardus Tertius Dentatus: Textual History and the King’s Teeth.” Philological Quarterly94.4 (2015).

Iyengar, Sujata. “Shakespeare’s ‘Discourse of Disability’.” Disability, Health, and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body , ed. Sujata Iyengar (New York: Routledge, 2015): 1-19.

Johns, Geoffrey A. “A ‘Grievous Burthern’: Richard III and the Legacy of Monstrous Birth.” Disability, Health, and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body, ed. Sujata Iyengar. (London: Routledge, 2015): 41-57.

Kendall, Paul Murray. “Richard’s Reputation.” Richard the Third. New York: Norton, 1996. 496-514.

Knight, Sarah, and Mary Ann Lund, “Richard Crookback.” Times Literary Supplement (Feb. 6, 2013).

Kossak, Saskia. ‘Frame My Face to All Occasions’: Shakespeare's Richard III on Screen. Vienna: Braumüller, 2005.

Kostihova, Marcela. “Digging for perfection: Discourse of Deformity in Richard III’s Excavation.” Palgrave Communications 2.16046 (2016).

Kristova, Marcela. “Richard Recast: Renaissance Disability in a Postcommunist Culture.” Recovering Disability in Early Modern England, ed. Allison P. Hobgood and David Houston Wood (Columbus: The Ohio State UP, 2013): 135– 49.

Linton, Simi. Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. New York: New York University Press, 1998.

Litvin, Margaret. “Explosive Signifiers: Sulayman Al-Bassam’s Post 9/11 Odyssey.” Shakespeare Yearbook 20 (2011): 103-135.

Love, Genevieve. "Richard's 'giddy footing': Degree of Difference and Cyclical Movement in Shakespeare's Richard III." Early Modern Theatre and the Figure of Disability. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.

Lund, Mary Ann. “Richard’s Back: Death, Scoliosis and Myth Making.” Medical Humanities 41.2 (2015): 89-94;

Marienstras, Richard. “Of a Monstrous Body.” French Essays on Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: ‘What Would France with Us’, ed. Jean-Marie Maguin and Michèle Willems (Newark: Delaware University Press, 1995): 53-74.

McRuer, Robert. “Richard III: Fuck the Disabled: The Prequel.” Shakesqueer: A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. Madhavi Menon (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011): 286-93.

Mitchell, David T., and Sharon L. Snyder, “Performing Deformity: The Making and Unmaking of Richard III.” Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

Murph, Roxane C. Richard III: The Making of a Legend. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1977.

Nardizzi, Vin. “Disability Figures in Shakespeare.” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment: Gender, Sexuality, and Race, ed. Valerie Traub (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016): 455-67.

Neill, Michael. “Shakespeare’s Halle of Mirrors: Play, Politics, and Psychology in Richard III.” Shakespeare Studies 8 (1975): 99-129.

Packard, Bethany. “Richard III’s Baby Teeth.” Renaissance Drama 1-2 (2013): 107-129

Park, Katharine, and Lorraine J. Daston, “Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England,” Past & Present 92 (Aug., 1981): 20-54.

Pitts, Mike. Digging for Richard III: The Search for the Lost King. London: Thames & Hudson, 2015.

Potter, Jeremy. Good King Richard?: An Account of Richard III and His Reputation, 1483-1983. London: Constable, 1983.

Quayson, Ato. Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Raber, Karen. "The Tusked Hog: Richard III's Boarish Identity." Animals and Early Modern Identity, ed. Pia F. Cuneo. Burlington: Ashgate, 2014. 191-208.

Ross, Charles. “The Historical Reputation of Richard III: Fact and Fiction.” Richard III. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. xix-liii.

Rossiter., A.P. “Angel with Horns: The Unity of Richard III.” Angel with Horns, ed. Graham Storey (London: Longmans, Green, 1961): 1-22.

Row-Heyveld, Lindsey. "Rules of Charity: Richard III and the Counterfeit-Disability Tradition." Dissembling Disability in Early Modern English Drama. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 135-70.

Sandahl, Carrie, and Philip Auslander, eds. Bodies in Commotion: Disability & Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

Schwyzer, Philip. Shakespeare and the Remains of Richard III. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Siebers, Tobin. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008.

Seibers, Tobin. “Shakespeare Differently Disabled.” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiement: Gender, Sexuality, and Race, ed. Valerie Traub (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016): 435-54.

Siemon, James. “Halting Modernity: Richard III’s Preposterous Body and History.” Shakespeare in Europe: History and Memory, ed. Marta Gibinska (Krakow: Jagiellonian UP, 2008): 113-25.

Siemon, James R. “Sign, Cause, or General Habit? Toward a ‘Historicist Ontology’ of Character on the Early Modern Stage.” European Legacy 2.2 (1997): 217-22.

Siemon, James R. “Upon Stages” Richard III, ed. James R. Siemon. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2009. 79-123.

Spivack, Bernard. “The Hybrid Image in Shakespeare.” Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil: The History of a Metaphor in Relation to his Major Villains. New York: Columbia University Press, 1958. 386-407.

Slotkin, Joel Elliot. “Honeyed Toads: Sinister Aesthetics in Shakespeare’s Richard III.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 7.1 (2007): 5-32.

Steward, Desmond. Richard III: England’s Black Legend. London: Penguin, 1982.

Stiker, Henri-Jacques. A History of Disability. Trans. William Sayers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.

Torrey, Michael. “‘The plain devil and dissembling looks’: Ambivalent Physiognomy and Shakespeare's Richard III.” English Literary Renaissance 30 (2000): 123-53.

Williams, Katherine Schaap. “Enabling Richard: The Rhetoric of Disability in Richard III.” Disability Studies Quarterly29.4 (2009).

Williams, Katherine Schaap. “Performing Disability and Theorizing Deformity.” English Studies 94.7 (2013): 757-72.

Williams, Wes. Monsters and Their Meanings in Early Modern Culture: Mighty Magic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Wood, Alice Ida Perry. The Stage History of Shakespeare’s King Richard the Third. New York: AMS, 1909.

Wood, David Houston. “Shakespeare and Disability Studies.” Literature Compass 8.5 (2011).

Wood, David Houston. “Shakespeare and Variant Embodiment.” Shakespeare in Our Time: A Shakespeare Association of America Collection, ed. Dympna Callaghan and Suzanne Gossett. (London: Bloomsbury, 2016): 189-93.

Wood, David Houston. “‘Some tardy cripple’: Timing Disability in Richard III.” Richard III: A Critical Reader, ed. Annaliese Connolly (London: Bloomsbury, 2013): 129-54.

Wood, David Houston. “Staging Disability in Renaissance Drama.” A New Companion to Renaissance Drama, ed. Arthur F. Kinney and Thomas Warren Hopper (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2017): 487-500.