Breaking the Fourth Wall: Shakespeare’s Richard III and Fleabag
I’m a big Shakespeare nerd, in addition to my love for history, and have spent the last few months stage managing a community theater production of Shakespeare’s Richard III, one of my favorite plays. The timeline and family tree of the Wars of the Roses I posted a while back were specifically created to walk the cast through the historical background of the play. That production is going up THIS WEEKEND in Northern Virginia; if you’re nearby, please do come! The cast is incredibly talented and our director Megan Fraedrich has such a wonderful vision for the show.
Richard III and Hamlet regularly battle it out for the title of my favorite Shakespearean play. Richard may slightly win out due to its historical roots (even though it’s…terribly inaccurate). It’s a beautiful play with a very intelligent, twisted anti-hero at its center, who you can’t help but cheer for, even though he’s awful. It’s a little like Tudor Breaking Bad in many ways.
Over the course of the rehearsal for the play, I’ve noticed some similarities between Richard III and Fleabag, the acclaimed Amazon series from Phoebe Waller-Briggs. I know, I know, it sounds wacky at first, stay with me here and I’ll explain it all.
Phoebe Waller-Brigg, the creator of Fleabag, playing the main character in season 2.
Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III in The Hollow Crown.
Richard III:
Throughout Richard III, Richard has a habit of talking directly to the audience about all his plots, like we’re his friends. Though many Shakespearean plays feature characters with muttered asides or longer soliloquies, which no other character on stage can hear, Richard’s are a bit different.
DISCLAIMER: I am getting into a bit of literary analysis here but haven’t taken an English class since college, and that one was pretty useless, so let’s say I haven’t taken a GOOD English class since…oh, 2006? So be nice, friends, lol.
Though both asides and soliloquies indicate private thoughts and are, as a rule, not heard by the other characters, they have some key differences. An aside is usually a short, direct and simple line pointing out an immediate conflict, issue, secret, or judgment; a soliloquy is longer and more complex, and shows the character wrestling with an internal struggles, motives, or moral dilemmas. Soliloquies date back to ancient Greece, where they were seen in Oedipus Rex and Antigone (although it could be argued that they served a different function in this genre of play, in which choruses commonly served as narrators and commentators on the events shown onstage). And plenty of Shakespeare’s contemporaries used them as well. So Shakespeare wasn’t by any means the only playwright to use them, but his plays are probably the most famous example we have of them that you commonly see in society today.
Richard’s lines, particularly his opening soliloquy, generally are long and detailed, commenting on immediate issues and his current plans, thereby having the length of a soliloquy, but the function more of an aside. Throughout the play, he displays no sign of a conscience, happily seducing women who hate him into marrying him, having family members, enemies, friends, women, and children alike all killed in his quest for power, without ever expressing any sort of regrets.
Only in one speech towards the end of the play really ever demonstrates any remorse or wrestling with morality, and that one is brought on by an attack of ghosts telling him to “despair and die” during his dreams (which, you know, could bring feelings out of even the most hardened sociopath, i would imagine). As you can see in the excerpt below, he’s clearly tormented in this scene, and audibly goes back and forth on his own nature; is he a villain? Does he love himself? If so, why? What has he done to deserve such love? He has committed such horrible acts. No one truly knows or loves him, not even Richard himself.
(I stylized several of my favorite portions because it’s my blog and i can do what i want. :D)
O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? myself? there's none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!
I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree
Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! guilty!
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
-Richard III, Act V, Scene 3-
These asides/soliloquys set the entire tone of the play and make Richard’s motivations very clear. If you took out these speeches to the audience and just had the rest of the play to go on, you would only see the face Richard shows to the world and miss an awful lot of his machinations. These also show Richard’s state of mind; the number of his asides and soliloquies distinctly decrease over the run of the show, as he becomes more and more stressed and agitated by his responsibilities as king and as he begins to face the consequences of his various murders and manipulations.
The only person who ever hears any of his asides is his nephew, Edward V (who is only ever referred to in the play as a prince, but was in fact, actually a king by the time we see him in the play, even if he’s still a minor. This…irritates me). Richard improvises quickly when he realizes Edward can hear him, but at least in our version, evinces surprise at the incident, for no one has ever heard his asides before.
It’s unclear /why/ Edward hears his uncle; we certainly don’t get a chance to find out, since Prince Edward only ever appears in this one scene (well, except as a ghost, but he doesn’t exactly show us his innermost thoughts at that point). Perhaps the young boy is more connected to the Duke of Gloucester than we realize. Could he be as intelligent as Richard is? Or is he perhaps already suspicious of his uncle?
Richard III (Duke of Gloucester). [Aside] So wise so young, they say, do never
live long.
Prince Edward. What say you, uncle?
Richard III (Duke of Gloucester). I say, without characters, fame lives long.
[Aside] Thus, like the formal vice, Iniquity,
I moralize two meanings in one word.
He’s young, but appears to be rather perceptive, as demonstrated in a later quiet exchange with his uncle Richard:
Prince Edward. I fear no uncles dead.
Richard III (Duke of Gloucester). Nor none that live, I hope.
Prince Edward. An if they live, I hope I need not fear.
But come, my lord; and with a heavy heart,
Thinking on them, go I unto the Tower.
* In case you can’t read the caption on the photo, it says: “Photo of Matthew Rauch as Richard, Duke of Gloucester in Richard the Third by Scott Suchman.”
Phoebe Waller-Brigg, the creator of Fleabag.
*I saw this production last year at the Shakespeare Theater Center in DC and it was really well done, although some of the production choices were….very different. It had a very mad scientist/dystopian/steampunk feel to it and featured growing stomp percussion/dance sequences building throughout the second half of the play, indicating a growing tension as Richard takes the crown. I actually really liked its effect, but it was divisive, and I know a lot of my friends hated it.
Fleabag:
I recently watched the acclaimed comedy series Fleabag; the unnamed protagonist of the show is constantly giving asides to the camera (literally known only as Fleabag, although no one actually ever refers to her that way), breaking the fourth wall to comment on whatever’s happening at the moment. These asides are definitively from her own biased point of view and are usually jokes; she does not usually use them to discuss moral dilemmas or issues with the audience. No one in the show ever hears her asides or even notices the pauses….until Season 2.
Fleabag really doesn’t talk about these asides at all until Season 2, Episode 2, when she sees a therapist (after her father gives her a voucher for a free session). In this brief session, the therapist describes her as “a girl with no friends and am empty heart.” Fleabag defensively responds.
FB: “I have friends.
Counsellor: “Oh so you do have someone to talk to?”
FB: “Yeah.” /clicks tongue and grins at camera with a grin/ “Oh they’re always there. they’re always there.” /chuckles/
C: “Why do you find that funny?”
FB: “Look, I don’t need to be analyzed, i have a nice life.”
By admitting that she has friends that are “always there,” but who do not actually respond to her (as the very medium prevents such a response), the dialogue highlights the narrator’s loneliness and raises questions about the audience’s role in the show’s universe. It becomes more apparent that FB specifically slips into these “asides” when she’s feeling intensely, and uses them as a way to slip out of the situation and detach herself from it.
Although this narrator’s interaction with the therapist is short and limited to just one episode, it seems to have far-reaching consequences, as for the rest of the season, Fleabag seems to actually want to understand her actions and interactions with the audience and do the right thing. Although, according to the therapist, maybe Fleabag was always going to get to that place.
FB: “Can you just tell me what to do?”
C: “You know. you already know what you’re going to do. Everybody does.
FB: “What?”
C: “You’ve already decided what you’re going to do.”
FB: “So what’s the point of you?”
C: /visibly annoyed/ “You know what you’re going to do.”
(it occurs to me that a few episodes later, in the midst of a near breakdown, she expresses her desire to have someone tell her what she’s going to do - every moment of every day - to the priest. She doesn’t want to have control over her own life anymore. It’s interesting to see that desire outlined earlier in this exchange with the therapist)
In season 2, she also befriends the priest (also unnamed) who is performing the marriage ceremony of her father and his girlfriend. This character, played by the brilliant Andrew Scott, is super interesting and curses, drinks beer, writes restaurant reviews, and has an intense fear of foxes. The two bond very quickly and have a very tight connection, along with romantic and sexual chemistry that the priest tries to deny for several episodes. Their connection is highlighted in Season 2, episode 3, when the priest becomes THE FIRST character in the series to ever notice her mental or emotional absence from a conversation, specifically, in a conversation about his celibacy in which he explicitly states that he’s not going to have sex with her. The intensity of the conversation seems to get to Fleabag, who glances away at the camera several times, visibly uncomfortable.
Priest: “I’d really like to be your friend though.”
FB: “I’d like to be your friend, too. /aside, looking at camera/ We’ll last a week.”
P: “What was that?”
FB: “What?”
P: “Where’d you, where’d you just go?”
FB: “What?”
P: “You just went somewhere.”
/looks questioningly at camera/
P: “There. There. Where’d you just go?”
FB: “Nowhere.”
/looks at camera with a look of panic and confusion/
Since the only really close friend Fleabag has ever been shown to really connect with died before season 1 began, it’s truly touching to see that someone notices her enough to see when she’s gone somewhere else. She seems flabbergasted by it. This connection later proves a bit embarrassing to Fleabag, as he hears her cooing about “his beautiful neck” while they’re out on a shopping trip together. It seems that he /sees/ her, even when she’s at her worst.
FB: “His beautiful neck”
P: “What?”
FB: /looks at camera in panic/ “What?”
P: “You just said ‘his beautiful neck.’”
FB: “No, i no, i-i- said th-that they were already gone.”
P: “Okay. Weird.”
Later in the day, the priest gives more attention to the guinea pig at Fleabag’s cafe more than anyone else in the show has really since Boo died, petting her and cuddling her sweetly, calling her “a gorgeous little thing” and continuing to pet her while carrying on a different conversation with FB. This connection to a pet that no one else has ever really paid attention to seems to, again, symbolize Fleabag’s close connection with the priest.
It’s later in that conversation, when the priest asks FB whether she runs the cafe by herself and she tries to tell him about her dead friend Boo that she, first, does the aside to the audience again, and second, he notices again. (If you’ve watched the first season of Fleabag, you’ll realize that the mention of Boo specifically brings up a lot of complicated, conflicting feelings in FB).
P: "Do you run this place on your own?”
FB: “No, I opened it with a friend.”
P: "Oh cool, so you run it together?”
FB: “No, she….she uh,” /sees flashback of Boo in the corner, stares at the camera in a panic/
P: "What?”
FB: “What?”
P: “She what?”
FB: ”She” /laughs uncomfortably/ ”He’s a bit annoying actually.” /behind her back, to camera/
P: ”What is that?”
FB: ”What?”
P: ”That thing that you’re doing, it’s like you disappear.”
FB: ”Nothing.”
P: ”What are you not telling me?”
FB: ”Nothing.”
P: ”Tell me what’s going on underneath there.”
FB: ”Nothing”’
P: ”Tell me, come on, tell me.”
FB: ”nothing, nothing.” /directly to camera/
P: /screams quietly/ “Ahhk what are you doing?” /looks directly to camera/
FB: ”No, stop being so churchy.”
P: ”I’m not being churchy, I”m just trying to get to know you.”
FB: ”Well I don’t want that.”
He seems concerned when he notices her disassociation from the present, and expresses the desire to help her. This ends up pissing her off and she kicks him out of the cafe. The next scene we see, she’s hurriedly trying to walk around the corner and lose the camera/audience, as she flashes back to her mother’s funeral.
Later, when the two characters finally, ah, connect, Fleabag straight up pushes the camera away, and in turn, the audience, possibly indicating that she is at home with her own emotions and doesn’t need to joke about them in this moment.
At the very end of the season, she says goodbye to the audience and her habit of saying asides entirely, joyfully walking down the street and waving goodbye to the camera. She’s grown as a person. She doesn’t need to dissociate herself from the present anymore. She’s accepting her intense feelings.
Breaking the fourth wall is just an interesting way of building the story now as it was in Shakespeare’s time, and it feels just as revolutionary.
(Sidenote: Fleabag is based on Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s original one-woman play, which apparently was quite a bit darker, at least in terms of how it handled the guinea pig! Eek.)
OTHER SHAKESPEARE EXAMPLES OF BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL:
At least some of Shakespeare’s characters seem to be aware that they ARE characters in a play, and comment on it in a lampshading style fashion.
Julius Caesar: "How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over in states unborn and accents yet unknown!" (Act 3 Sc 1)
Twelfth Night: "If this were play'd upon a stage now, I would condemn it as improbable fiction" (Act 3 Sc 4)
As You Like It: "All the world's a stageand we are but players." (Act 2 Sc 7)
The Merchant of Venice: "I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; / A stage where every man must play a part, / And mine a sad one." (Act 1 Sc 1)
Henry VI, Part 3:
Macbeth: "Life is but a walking shadow[= actor], a poor player [= actor] who struts and frets his hour upon the stage" (Act 5 Sc 5)
You often see this lampshading specifically at the end of a play, as a character speaks directly to an audience. These tend to comment on the play itself as a play, in a terribly meta fashion.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1, Epilogue
Puck
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended:
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearnèd luck
Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long.
Else the Puck a liar call.
So good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.As You Like It, Act 5, Scene 4, Epilogue:
Rosalind
It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue;
but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord
the prologue. If it be true that good wine needs
no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no
epilogue; yet to good wine they do use good bushes,
and good plays prove the better by the help of good
epilogues. What a case am I in then, that am
neither a good epilogue nor cannot insinuate with
you in the behalf of a good play! I am not
furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will not
become me: my way is to conjure you; and I'll begin
with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love
you bear to men, to like as much of this play as
please you: and I charge you, O men, for the love
you bear to women--as I perceive by your simpering,
none of you hates them--that between you and the
women the play may please. If I were a woman I [this slyly refers to the fact that female characters were played by young men in shakespeare’s time]
would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased
me, complexions that liked me and breaths that I
defied not: and, I am sure, as many as have good
beards or good faces or sweet breaths will, for my
kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.
QUICK HISTORICAL NOTE ON THE ACCURACY OF THE PLAY:
I also find Richard III a legitimately fascinating historical character and have based my character Claudius in my Hamlet prequel “Most Horrible” on him (King Hamlet is based on Richard’s older brother Edward IV). He was definitely not the villain that Shakespeare portrayed him as. I could seriously give a whole TED talk on how badly Richard III has been treated by history, but I’ll just give a few quick examples.
The play has Richard taking credit for killing Edward, Prince of Wales (Henry VI’s son) and Henry VI himself. However, the only historical sources that claim that Prince Edward was killed by Richard 1) were highly biased Tudor propaganda tools designed to impugn Richard III, the king that Henry Tudor killed and unseated, and 2) also said that Prince Edward was killed by all three York brothers (Edward, George, Richard) together, not just Richard alone (interestingly enough, Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 3 has the story of all three brothers killing Edward as well, but Richard III itself has Richard as the only killer).
In the Shakespearean play, Richard ends up wooing Lady Anne Neville during the mourning rites for her father-in-law, Henry VI. He later kills her in the play. In real life, Richard married Anne after tracking her down from the London cookshop his greedy brother George of Clarence had hidden her in. It’s a terribly romantic story and I so wish they had portrayed that instead of just showing him as an outright villain. They were married for 13 years and had a child together; they also adopted George’s son Edward, Earl of Warwick, after his death. Anne was very ill when she died and there’s no sign that she was poisoned or hurt in any way by her husband.