‘KING's GAMES’

The beginning of Act III, scene v, has in the folio version and in editions based on it (like Hammond's Arden edition, which I use here) a stage direction which draws our attention to the selfconscious theatricality of the action:

In this scene Richard and Buckingham use theatre in order to establish Richard's claim to the throne, by putting on an act to persuade, impress and – probably more importantly – intimidate the Lord Mayor of London and a group of citizens. Although the ‘rotten armour’ is not immediately obvious in its relevance, we get a strong sense that Richard and Buckingham are dressing up and adopting, almost playfully, the resources of theatre. It 's a charade, wobbling on from moment to moment with more chance of going wrong than most productions (and editions based largely on the Folio) allow. The ‘rotten armour’ is a detail from More which the Quartos leave out, probably because it is never alluded to in the dialogue, and so seems puzzling at a first reading. It is there to suggest that they are about to be attacked, and have only been able to throw together this improvised and inadequate mode of defence. It belongs with stage directions like Elizabeth's entrance ‘with hair about her ears’ (II.ii.33) as pointing to a visual, iconic style of staging and an extrovert and physical acting style. But the show is only on the road once the mayor and the citizens enter.

In the context of this fraudulent manipulation of events, politics is theatre, and the drama is more than simply a medium of representing history; theatre is the means by which history happens.