Shakespeare incorporou em Richard III uma vasta quantidade de materiais e fontes que se foram diluindo, ao longo do processo criativo, ao mesmo tempo que uma personagem única e incomparável se solidificou. Esta mesma ideia está sinteticamente traduzida nas palavras de Scott Colley, “Richard III derives not only from the actual historical figure and the English historians who wrote about his reign, but also from a great variety of literary sources, including writings of Seneca, Lyly, Kyd, Spencer, Marlowe, and other sometimes surprising inspirations” (Colley 1986:451). É precisamente uma destas surprising inspirations que o autor documenta ao estabelecer um paralelo entre Richard III e Herodes, que se estende para além da deformidade física e moral de ambos.
In Richard III, Shakespeare demonstrably had in mind Pilate and the death of Christ, the slaughter of innocents, the grief of their mothers, and the reign of a crippled, incestuous tyrant whose twisted physical appearance mirrors his diseased moral sensibility. Outwardly contemptuous of his adversary, but inwardly fearful of certain prophecies about him, Richard embarks upon the slaughter of all «infants» and «babes» who stand in his path to the throne. He slays one rival with a falchion, and sends assassins to murder the others. An amalgam of historical figure, Roman despot, tragic villain, and Biblical archetype, Richard of Gloucester is a character who illustrates many dimensions of his crowded family tree. The particular figure of Herod is only one element of a mosaic that results in a portrait of Richard III… Shakespeare’s early stage villain is recognized as a surprisingly complex figure, and part of this complexity grows out of the dramatist’s recollections of his reading and playgoing. (Colley 1986:457-8)
O facto de os estratos provenientes das fontes usadas por Shakespeare não se encontrarem encobertos constitui uns dos méritos do autor já que é nesse uso da matéria-prima disponível que o dramaturgo se destaca, isto é, na dramatização ficcionada da informação recolhida. A este propósito, Russ McDonald nota,
Shakespeare excelled at identifying the dramatic heart of a story and presenting it in a way that especially suited the conditions of the Elizabethan theater. This unfailing sense of a story’s theatrical core is best illustrated by Richard III... Whereas Hall’s account of the life of Richard of Gloucester is the fairly predictable work of a political apologist, Shakespeare’s theatrical version is a vivid and charismatic psychopath. What Shakespeare succeeds in doing, as none of his predecessors managed, was to make his subject a compelling stage presence and a self- conscious actor. [The opening soliloquy is] the first of Richard’s many histrionic strategies: witty asides, privately hatched theatrical schemes («Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,» I.i.32), staged scenes designed for public consumption, and period reviews of his own performances. The source narratives of More, Hall, and Holinshed all hint at the connection between politics and theater – action and acting, plots and plots – but only Shakespeare brilliantly explores the psychology of political tyrant as theatrical superstar. (McDonald 1996:108)
Relativamente às fontes de Shakespeare no que concerne aos factos históricos, sobressai o uso de The History of King Richard III de Sir Thomas More, da crónica de Edward Hall (nomeadamente o sexto capítulo “The tragical doings of King Richard The Third” que constitui uma impressão do texto de More) e do contributo de Holinshed para A Mirror for Magistrates e a Anglicae Historiae (1534) de Polydore Vergil que se distingue de outros textos seus contemporâneos devido ao “Polydore’s critical spirit… his desire to understand the causes of events is by far the most important for its effect on the drama” (Tylliard 1966:42).
A concepção que os Elizabethans tinham de Richard III provém sobretudo de More (veja-se a nota 17 na página 78) de onde Shakespeare recupera traços da personagem como “the legend that he was born feet first and precociously equipped with teeth” (Spivack 1958: 387-8), e explora outros “He was close and secret, a deep dissimulator, lowly of countenance, arrogant of heart, outwardly compinable [affable] where he inwardly hated, not letting to kiss whom he thought to kill; dispiteous and cruel, not for evil ways always, but ofter for ambition, and either for the surety or increase of his estate” (More citado por Spivack 1958: 388). Sir Thomas More deturpou os factos e inventou excertos de diálogo para as personagens da sua narrativa “histórica.” No entanto, a preocupação do drama de Shakespeare não vai de encontro à veracidade dos factos históricos. Como observa Jeremy Potter “in his Richard III [Shakespeare] wrote what later came to be known as historical fiction and, later still, faction or docu-drama” (Potter 1985: 155). Kiernan, recorrendo a uma cena da peça, problematiza a questão da “historicidade” dos episódios narrados, If written poetry, in seeking to re-present an «original» presence, succeeds only in making its subject inaccessible and absent, what happens to events and characters that are written into
history? Do historical records give us access to what was once a present event, a living person, an original moment in history? How truthful is history’s transmission of knowledge? Is the past ever fully recoverable? These are the questions that young Prince Edward insists on asking in a remarkable scene in Richard III where the dramatist creates an «unhistorical» moment (that is to say, one that was nowhere upon historical record) in order to make a truly historical enquiry into history writing’s claim to truth.(Kiernan 1996: 127-8)
O dramaturgo confronta as personagens da peça com o estatuto problemático da história (cf. III.i.68-78). Para Prince Edward, a verdade histórica não reside nos registos escritos mas antes no que passa from age to age, sob pena de ser filtrado e deturpado consoante os interesses e ideologias vigentes. Rossiter explica a complexidade da obra e justifica-a devido ao facto de esta desenvolver dois planos em paralelo,
What we are offered is a formally patterned sequence presenting two things: on the one hand, a rigid Tudor schema of retributive justice … and, on the other, a huge triumphant stage personality, an early old masterpiece of the art of rhetorical stage-writing, a monstrous being incredible in any sober, historical scheme of things – Richard himself. (Rossiter 1970: 2) A produção do dramaturgo ajusta-se à concepção Tudor do “myth of the eternal return” (Kernan 1975: 263). Assim, Kernan afirma que,
Since both the ethic and the dynamic of the myth of order were based on the acceptance and repetition of what had been before . . . History was discovered by Tudors historians to have the sameness of ritual: a weak or saintly king makes political mistakes and is overthrown by rebellious and arrogant subjects; the kingdom becomes a wasteland and society of chaos in which every man’s hand is against his fellow; after a period of great suffering, reaction against the forces of evil occurs, and a strong and good king restores order. (Kernan 1975: 264) Shakespeare concilia a visão cíclica da história, enquadrada no padrão do Tudor Myth e no esquema de retribuição divina, com o processo dramático de criação do herói,
… in accordance with the Tudor myth, Richard is imagined as the devil raised by the horrors of civil war, the hog who roots in and fouls all the sacred places of life, the shadow which blots out the sun and casts the earth in darkness, the cold wind that blasts all living things. In action, he is destroyer of pageants and rituals. He interrupts the funeral procession of his victim, Henry VI, to woo Lady Anne; turns a council state into a trap for one of the councillors; makes a grotesque joke of a civic petition from the citizens of London; and when in IV. Iv the bereaved women gather to form a chorus, to lament in ritual language their losses and to cry out for relief from the adversary, he arrives at the head of an army and orders the trumpets blown to prevent heaven from hearing their curses. . . . Just as Richard prevents rituals from moving to their fore-ordained end, so he refuses to play the devilish role he is cast for in the pageant of England’s crisis and restoration. Morally he is abominable, but dramatically he is attractive, alert, vital. (Kernan 1975: 266)
No entanto, e apesar da energia epiléptica da personagem que domina a acção, a sua função de bode expiatório e vítima sacrificial condenam o seu percurso final. O que remete
para o carácter trágico de Richard III, e por conseguinte, para a formal indeterminacy da peça entre history e tragedy.