Sometimes it feels as though everyone (or at least every man) in Shakespeare is armed to the teeth – the word ‘sword’ appears 391 times in the plays listed at Open Source Shakespeare.

But in the time-honoured way I have with this series, I wanted to talk about a different kind of weapon. Not one made of steel – although perhaps equally ‘double-edged’, as we will see.

The weapon you don’t have to wield yourself.

It won’t surprise you that the idea of power has come up many, many times over the years in classroom discussions. Defining abstract terms is always interesting, sometimes amusing, and often revealing. In this case, two dominating ideas have surfaced about power:

– not having to do things you don’t want to do; and

– forcing others to do things they don’t want to do.

And for a long time I’ve been fascinated with how this plays out in some of my favourite works. Macbeth was pounding at my garret door earlier, threatening to ‘unseam’ me, and I’ve promised to mention him later. But for now, let’s focus on Richard III.

‘If it wasn’t for those pesky kids’ …¹

For those who don’t know the play – setting aside my confusion about anyone not knowing this brilliant piece of literature – when today’s episode takes place, Richard has not long achieved the crown. Job done? Not quite – no one has more to worry about than a newly crowned king. As Richard puts it:

‘Shall we wear these honours for a day?

Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?’²

He’s talking to his wingman, Buckingham. And who’s threatening all that rejoicing, you might ask?

Of course it’s the two little Princes, his nephews, ahead of him in the succession, and currently ‘holidaying‘ in the Tower. Buckingham finally finds a line he won’t cross, so a furious Richard casts around for someone who will kill those children for him.

Enter James Tyrrel.

And this week’s quotation seals the deal:

‘Hark, come hither, Tyrrel.

Go, by this token: rise, and lend thine ear.’

This isn’t the first time in the play that Richard has got someone to kill on his behalf – he hired a couple of likely lads to murder his brother, Clarence. They drown him in a wine butt, almost before the audience stops rustling their sweet wrappers and settles down!

So. Let’s consider that quotation under the lenses of weaponry and power. I don’t think I want to say that the ‘token’ Richard gives Tyrrel is a weapon, as such – certainly not as much as Iago weaponises a simple handkerchief – but it is an enabler. What I’m really interested in is that intimate, deadly whisper (left to our imagination by Shakespeare), which weaponises a human being.

A few quiet words. A token exchanged. And two children are condemned to be murdered in their sleep.

It wasn’t me, guv.

I think the notion of Richard needing plausible deniability, needing an alibi, is remarkable. He is, after all, a king who seems to command almost unlimited power. And the play is written for an audience who understands ‘absolute monarchy’ far better than we do. Richard’s record in other plays includes regicide and the murder of Henry VI’s heir. In this play, the murders that consolidate his power are carried out at one remove.

He’s reached the point where he can persuade, or order, people to murder for him.

And perhaps this is where we might let Macbeth into the room for a while. Once Duncan (and his attendants) are dead, the man who almost single-handedly decapitated a rebellion begins commissioning the murders of his best friend, Banquo, and Macduff’s wife, children and household.

Is there a difference between killing and commissioning a killing?

Distance is not innocence.

Under modern English law, someone who intentionally commissions or encourages a murder can be criminally liable even if they never wield the weapon themselves.

In the plays, both Richard and Macbeth are kings who seem to command almost unlimited power. And, they will kill without qualm on the battlefield.

They’re far from cowards.

Yet it is acts such as the murder of children, in both plays, that seem to tip them into tyranny. Acts they won’t personally perform. And both discover that the distance they establish between themselves and the act of killing is not enough to silence the dead.

Richard in particular (back to your box, Macbeth, you’ve had your say) endures a supernatural carnival the night before Bosworth. It’s a great spectacle on stage: something which I’m not sure any of the film versions I’ve seen has done justice to. We might understand these respective hauntings as the workings of conscience – the mind refusing to accept the separation between intention and action. Alternatively, an audience might see something more providential in the return of the victims, a form of divine justice in which the dead become witnesses against their murderers.

Either way, the guilty cannot simply declare themselves absent from a crime they have set in motion. It feels comforting, to be honest.

Shakespeare invites us to look beyond the hand that holds the blade, towards the person who arranged for it to be drawn.

The most dangerous weapon, perhaps, is the ability – the power – to make someone else wield it, and to imagine that this somehow leaves your own hands clean.

References and Further Reading

1. one for the Scooby Do fans here. NOT the live-action film, thanks. ↩︎
2. William Shakespeare, King Richard III, ed. James R. Siemon, Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2009) ↩︎

Music: Muse, ‘The Handler’ (2015), Drones.