The Speaking Silence of Citizens in Shakespeare’s Richard III

This chapter examines the commentative words and silences of the citizenry in Richard III, noting that although silence was customarily expected from commoners in the presence of the elite, it could also signify, in both Shakespeare’s version of Richard’s reign and Thomas More’s, the inscrutable resistance of a dissident citizenry. In London, citizen debate and discussion, informed and intelligent, comprised an important forum of Elizabethan public life; and in Shakespeare’s play, citizen non-compliance with the manipulative fabrications of Richard and Buckingham disrupts the performance/reception dynamic to undercut the bonding of the theatre’s citizen audience with the hitherto charismatic Richard. Though their speaking silence betokens the proud heritage of citizen resistance to royal and aristocratic presumption and contempt, Richard and Buckingham obtusely misread this as obtuseness, revealing themselves to be held in a kind of self-hypnosis by the public transcript, memorably subverted by Shakespeare.