SOURCE: Endel, Peggy. “Profane Icon: The Throne Scene of Shakespeare's Richard III.” Comparative Drama 20, no. 2 (summer 1986): 115-23.

In the following excerpt, Endel explicates the scatological, satanic, and melancholic associations evoked by the iconic stage image of the newly crowned Richard III meditating on his private schemes from the seat of majesty.

GUIL:

Retentive—he's a very retentive king, a royal retainer. … 

ROS:

What are you playing at? 

GUIL:

Words, words. They're all we have to go on. 

—Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

The English drama critic John Trewin first began to review Shakespeare's plays on the London stage in 1930. In 1978, when he was seventy years old, this dean of theater critics looked back over a lifetime of what he called “going to Shakespeare” and recalled an extraordinary moment at the Old Vic in London in 1944. Remembering Laurence Olivier enthroned as Richard III in Act IV, scene...