Is Every Hunchback a Murderer?

A profound question. Shakespeare raised it by implication when he made Richard the Third explain to the audience that he became a villain because he was born ugly, deformed and had a hunchback.

What an extraordinary idea! Could he have believed that? Surely not. It was simply one way in which he could make evil plausible. Seana McKenna, playing Richard, is making it very plausible at the current Stratford Festival in Canada. Another dramatist might do the opposite and show a serial killer à la Richard systematically plotting his murders while gradually becoming ugly and deformed and growing a hunchback.

Playwrights and actors have an easy time grappling with evil. They simply show it. They don’t have to define it or analyze its origins, in this case medieval morality plays with which Shakespeare’s audiences were thoroughly familiar. Modern audiences have greater difficulties with the diabolical because it belongs to the world of religion, not the secular world of the theatre. Shakespeare, at the beginning of the modern era, helped enormously because he created Richard as a performer of evil who, in his self-observing soliloquies, explains his motives to the audience.

One wonders what went on in the heads of German audiences when Richard the Third was presented during the Nazi years.

In 1933 or 1934, Thomas Mann saw the play in Zürich, with Richard played by Albert Bassermann, both in exile after the Nazis took over. He wrote in his diary:

“It is impressive to see historical crimes becoming topical again. One would not have thought it possible. In intermission we saw Rieser who took us to the car after the performance. He thought Germany was on the way to a catastrophe. The Swiss banks are counting on a speedy end of the regime.”