Richard III may be considered as properly a stageplay:  it belongs to the theatre, rather than to the closet.  We shall therefore criticize it chiefly with a reference to the manner in which we have seen it performed.  It is the character in which Garrick came out:  it was the second character in which Mr. Kean appeared, and in which he acquired his fame.  Shakespeare we have always with us:  actors we have only for a few seasons; and therefore some account of them may be acceptable, if not to our cotemporaries, to those who come after us, if ‘that rich and idle personage, Posterity’, should deign to look into our writings.

It is possible to form a higher conception of the character of Richard than that given by Mr. Kean:  but we cannot imagine any character represented with greater distinctness and precision, more perfectly articulated in every part.  Perhaps indeed there is too much of what is technically called execution.  When we first saw this celebrated actor in the part, we thought he sometimes failed from an exuberance of manner, and dissipated the impression of the general character by the variety of his resources.  To be complete, his delineation of it should have more solidity, depth, sustained and impassioned feeling, with somewhat less brilliancy, with fewer glancing lights, pointed transitions, and pantomimic evolutions.

The Richard of Shakespeare is towering and lofty; equally impetuous and commanding; haughty, violent, and subtle; bold and treacherous; confident in his strength as well as in his cunning; raised high by his birth, and higher by his talents and his crimes; a royal usurper, a princely hypocrite, a tyrant and a murderer of the house of Plantagenet.

     But I was born so high: 
     Our aery buildeth in the cedar’s top,
     And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.

The idea conveyed in these lines (which are indeed omitted in the miserable medley acted for Richard III) is never lost sight of by Shakespeare, and should not be out of the actor’s mind for a moment.  The restless and sanguinary Richard is not a man striving to be great, but to be greater than he is; conscious of his strength of will, his power of intellect, his daring courage, his elevated station; and making use of these advantages to commit unheard-of crimes, and to shield himself from remorse and infamy.

If Mr. Kean does not entirely succeed in concentrating all the lines of the character, as drawn by Shakespeare, he gives an animation, vigour, and relief to the part which we have not seen equalled.  He is more refined than Cooke; more bold, varied, and original than Kemble in the same character.  In some parts he is deficient in dignity, and particularly in the scenes of state business, he has by no means an air of artificial authority.  There is at times an aspiring elevation, an enthusiastic rapture in his expectations of attaining the crown, and at others a gloating expression of sullen