Shakespeare’s Tudor Sibyl : Sibylline Discourse in the Portrayal of Queen Margaret in Richard III

1In Richard III Margaret of Anjou, widow of Henry VI and once queen of England, leaves off ther former glories and is transformed. The termagant queen of the Henry VI becomes the speaker of words, rather than the doer of deeds. These words contain a potency that her actions in previous plays are never able to manifest, coming as they do from a place beyond Margaret herself. She speaks a script that has been prepared for her and her prophetic utterances, often mistaken for curses, are extra textual. They come from the historical knowledge of the playwright, and are delivered to an audience who could contextualize these words in a way the characters of the play cannot. In the world of the play Margaret’s prescience is preternatural and comes to be recognized as prophecy. There is, however, no contradiction or even irony in the extra textual knowledge of the audience. Shakespeare does not use the words of Margaret as an opportunity for a knowing wink. Instead, Shakespeare incorporates into his play contemporary understanding of the nature of history as a part of the foreknowledge of a timeless and omnipotent God. This concept of divine foreknowledge was firmly rooted in the writing of Augustine and later theologians who believed that the historical project was not simply the rise or fall of kingdoms and dynasties, but the overarching project of humanity’s ultimate salvation. As Chris Given-Wilson notes in the medieval and early modern period “prophesy was simply ‘history in the future tense.’” Joachim of Fiore, in the twelfth century argued that history and prophecy were in effect the same1, while in the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas believed prophecy revealed divine truth in the hidden structure of historical events2.

2This view of history, and the relation of prophecy to it, was to permeate conceptualizations of time for centuries. Shakespeare recognized that a history play, in a modest way, allowed the audience to experience history as God did. Yet, he also understood that the hidden structures of historical events were not uncomplicated, and that the workings of divinity could be cloaked in contradiction and paradox. The figure of Margaret in Richard III is just such a paradox. Her prophecies allow a glimpse into divine preternatural knowledge of the hidden structures of a particular historical moment despite the fact that Margaret would appear to be a poor choice for this divine election. And yet, within the prophetic heritage of sixteenth century England there existed a model for prophetic women from which Shakespeare could draw. This model was fluid enough to accommodate the contradictions between Margaret’s nature and her role as prophetess within Richard III. For millennia the common name for a woman who functioned as a vehicle for divine knowledge was a sibyl. Shakespeare clearly drew upon manifestations of this classical figure extant within his society in his deployment of the character of Margaret. In doing so he reveals his profound uneasiness with the role of prophecy within human affairs, while accepting that knowledge of future events could be made available in the world.

3The sibyl as a figure of preternatural knowledge was well established by 500 BCE in Ancient Greece, when a quote from Heraclitus describes a sibyl as uttering words “mirthless, unembellished, unperfumed” that “reaches to a thousand years with her voice through the god3.” Here Heraclitus refers to a single sibyl, but within a few hundred years, references to sibyls connected to particular locales proliferated4. The sibyls’ prophetic understanding of the world was vast, and dealt in the momentous events in the history of humanity. Yet each, despite sharing in common the name of sibyl, also possessed a unique individuality. Some wandered the earth, while others inhabited a particular place—a cave or a rock. Some appeared at will in the air while others preferred to be sought out. At times only the sibyl’s words could be heard. Each was connected with a particular time and place while at the same time, through their prophecies, became unmoored from any particular era or locale. It was this ephemeral quality of the sibyls, along with a long established respect of sibylline prophecy concerning the fate of nations, that led to their appropriation within Roman culture. The Romans enshrined the sibyls’ position as mediators between the gods and humanity within their political system, guaranteeing their words retained an unprecedented authority. Thus, throughout the Roman world sibylline oracles flourished both through oral transmission and textual production. The most famous sibylline texts were the libri Sibyllini, a collection of sibylline books held in Rome at least by the second century BCE. These were consulted during times of Roman national crises for several hundred years5.

4In classical literature the most famous sibyl was the Sibyl of Cumae whom Virgil featured escorting Aeneas into the underworld in book 6 of the Aeneid. Virgil also presented his fourth eclogue as a sibylline prophecy. This eclogue with its image of a divine child sent to redeem the world was later seized upon by Christian writers who sought Sibylline authority in order to justify their new and vulnerable religion to a sceptical society. This set in motion the sibyls’ elevation from mediator between the gods and the Romans, to the Christian God’s divinely appointed prophets to the Gentiles, charged with bearing the knowledge of the coming of Christ to the pagan world. Lactantius, Augustine, Eusebius and others readily accepted that the sibyls had been chosen by God for this role. They also referred to sibylline prophesies as proof that Biblical texts were authentic, as the information to be found there was also found in sibylline oracles. Scholars now believe that at some point Jewish and early Christian material became incorporated within circulating sibylline prophecies and this explains the presence of sibylline material corresponding with Biblical material. However, this explanation was not widely accepted until well into the eighteenth century.

5The acceptance of sibylline authority by early Christian theologians ensured the dissemination of sibylline material throughout Europe with the rise of Christianity. In the Middle Ages several purported sibylline prophecies with apocalyptic overtones were widely circulated. These prophecies foretold the imminent end of the world and were often applied to contemporary political events. Medieval monarchs and their supporters often conflated these prophecies with Christian eschatology hoping to justify their political actions or even their very right to rule. These factions understood that throughout medieval Europe the sibyl was accepted as a potent vehicle through which divine foreknowledge of sacral/dynastic events was allowed to become manifest in the world. The work of Thomas Gray, writing in the fourteenth century, illustrates the role the sibyl was credited with playing in the eschatological history of humanity in general and medieval Europe in particular. Gray’s chronicle, the Scalacronica (1272-13636), opens with a dream narrative in which a sibyl advises Gray on the construction of his historical narrative. In this dream a sibyl brings Gray to a five rung ladder in an orchard. Using the ladder as an image of history, the sibyl reveals the great historical texts of the past including Bede and Higden7. Each rung represents an age with the last, the fifth rung, being the future. The sibyl cautions Gray that his project should not traverse into the realm of prophecy, but also reveals, through the imagery of the ladder, that prophecy is certainly a part of history, the history of the future. Gray’s text reveals the firm position of prophecy within English conceptualizations of history, and the sibyl as a recognized participant in the dissemination of this history. This accounts for the large number of manuscripts containing sibylline eschatological prophecies still extant. Anke Holdenreid has identified 112 extant manuscripts of the prophecy of the sibyl Tiburtina with twenty-three of these apparently produced in the British Isles8. Also circulating widely were manuscripts of apocalyptic prophecies by the Erythraean sibyl as well as much sibylline material from early Christian texts, especially Lactantius and Augustine. In the medieval period political uncertainty and upheaval ensured the authority and the survival of sibylline prophecies.

6Influential English reformers like John Foxe, John Bale, and John Jewel, in their desire to position their reforms as a return to the more authentic Christianity embraced the writings of the early Christian church, including texts containing sibylline material. Certainly reformers found much sibylline material advertising the evil of Rome and presaging the destruction of that city and its political structure. This is not surprising, given oppression of the early Christian church by the Roman government. The sixteenth century reformers put the anti-Roman sentiment expressed in many sibylline prophecies to their own use in their battle against papal authority. The discovery of sibylline manuscripts in the midsixteenth century, which includes material that arguably dates to the first century BCE9, was seen as an opportunity for reformists to bolster the reputation of early Christian writers, and thus the reformist use of these writers to promote their own political position. This appropriation of sibylline material had perhaps the unintended consequence of endorsing the already centuries old use of sibylline and other prophetic material that had long been present throughout English culture. Phillippe de Commynes, a historian and one of Louis XI of Frances’councillors noted in the fifteenth century, “All of [the English] were steeped in prophesy10,” while in 1549 the English were disparaged for believing the “profane prophesies of Merlin, and other corrupt vaticinations11.” Edward Daunce commented in 1590 that the English were a “people ceremoniously given to matter of prophesie12.”

7The pervasive interest in prophecy in sixteenth century England, as well as the concerns this interest elicited, is usefully shown in a case brought in Yorkshire against John Dobson who was charged with reading prophecies aloud in the church porch and in an ale house in 153713. In Dobson’s response and the responses of others connected with the case, a narrative of both oral and textual transmission of prophecies, and the intense interest prophecy aroused in a particular community, emerges. In this case the prophecies of Merlin, Thomas of Erceldoun and other unnamed prophecies circulated between community clergy, village leaders, area gentry and serving men. The interest in these documents was connected with the instability of the period. Individuals sought information concerning future political events in order to position themselves in the safest or most advantageous position in relation to these events. It was this same impulse that ensured a steady stream of printed and manuscript copies of sibylline and other prophecies circulated throughout the sixteenth century, and which created a culture of calculated expectation based on the belief that the future was knowable if one could interpret the ambiguities of the generally opaque prophetic texts.

8Evidence of this culture of prophecy pervades the play of Richard III with future knowledge communicated through a variety of agents. Margaret, as a sibylline figure, becomes the medium through which is revealed to the characters and the audience the scaffolding upon which the future will be built; the fall and rise of dynasties, so long the purview of the sibyl. And yet, on the face of it, Margaret would appear to have little in common with the respected prophetic women of classical antiquity, Patristic texts and medieval dynastic and eschatological prophecy. A figure less likely to inspire godly writers like John Fox and John Bale than the furious Margaret of Richard III is hard to imagine. Instead, Shakespeare’s construction of Margaret in Richard III draws upon elements of sibylline tradition which had long been a source of anxiety even amongst those who championed the sibyls and appropriated their words. The ancient sibyls communed with pagan gods, descended into the land of the dead, and had a peculiar and disturbing method of delivering prophecies. Their texts are often confused and enigmatic. As mentioned, the earliest extant reference to a sibyl does not tell of her prophecy, but her manner of prophesying, “with frenzied lips… uttering words mirthless, unembellished, unperfumed.”

9In Book VI of the Aeneid Virgil’s description of Aeneas’ terrifying encounter with the sibyl would have been well known: “In these words the Cumaean Sibyl chants from the shrine her dread enigmas and booms from the cavern, wrapping truth in darkness—so does Apollo shake the reigns as she rages, and ply the goad beneath her breast.” Her lips are described as “raving” and her behaviour “frenzied14.” In 1558 Thomas Phayer translated this passage adding much greater and more disturbing detail than can be found in Virgil’s text:

All sodenly, with faces more than one, before the gates,
And colours more than one,… wild she stood in traunce,
Her hear [sic. hair] upsterting strands, her trebling brest doth panting praunse.
Her hart outraging swelles, nor mortallike she lokes at last. […]
Dame Sybly mombling made, & strugling strong wrode the charge
If haply so she might the gods enforcing shake from brest15.

10And yet, it was not simply the incontinent and frenzied nature of classical sibyls that disturbed many in the sixteenth century. It was more likely the source of such incontinence, which bore a striking resemblance to other frightful female figures believed to exist in the period—witches. William Fulke, writing in 1560 believed the sibyls to be “inflamed with the devil’s spirit” who “told of things to come, gave either dark or doubtful answers to them that required their oracles16.” James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) apparently agreed with Fulke, writing in 1584 an unequivocal condemnation of the sibyls and other pagan oracles. He warns his reader:

And therefore crafty Sathan, who can seame
An Angell of light, to witch vs in our dreame,
He causde his gods and preests of olde to speake […]
So Sybills tolde in verse, what was to come17.

11Here James claims that figures of classical oracular lore were compelled by Satan to write their verse prophecies. In this same work he makes clear that these oracular voices interfered in epic events of nations18. George Gifford, in his A Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraftes (1593) discusses how demons, sent at the behest of Satan, possessed individuals, including the sibyls, for the purpose of deception:

He [Satan] speaketh by conjurors, by sorcerers, and by witches, and his word is taken. He deviseth a number of thinges to be done, and they are put in practise and followed… they [the demons] convey themselves into the bodies of men and women, and utter thinges which seémed very divine, such (as I am perswaded) were the Prophetisses the Sibylles among the heathen19.

12William Perkins, the devout Calvinist minister of Finchingfield in Essex shared this position with Gifford. In a treatise written prior to his death in 1602, but printed posthumously in 1610, Perkins contends:

When the devill is forth of the Witch, and then he either inspireth her, or els casteth her into a traunce, and therein reveileth unto her such things as she would know… the histories of the heathen doe affoard unto us many instances of experience therein. One of the principall is the historie of the ten Sibylles of Greece, who were most famous Witches, and did prophesie of many things to come, whereof some were true concerning Christ and his kingdome, which the devill stole out of the Bible, and some other were false: and all of them they received by revelation from the devill in traunces20.

13Perkins’ explanation of sibylline knowledge of divine events was calculated to destroy contemporary sibylline apologetics which contended that the similarity between the extant sibylline texts and biblical texts proved the divine election of the sibyls. Instead Perkins and others believed that the sibyls, at the behest of Satan, perpetrated a kind of fraud upon humanity through the appropriation of biblical texts. Others accepted that while the sibyls themselves were handmaids of the devil, God could still work his will through them. William Sanderson, writing in 1654 contends that:

God spake by the Sibylls, (though wicked) and not the Devil… The Devils tremble, Balaam was wicked, yet he prophecied, not by the Devil, (with whom otherwise he wrought) but by God… God may and doth sometimes reveal, such things to him [Satan] and his, as he doth to blessed spirits and good men, but in a different sort; God takes possession of his Prophets soul, speaking to them intelligibly. The others are driven to what they say, and so understand not what they speak; truths against their wills, and to give evidence to that they would not do21.

14Thus contemporary opinion regarding the nature of the sibyls was ambiguous. Certainly many continued in the widely held belief of the sibyls as God’s chosen prophetesses to the gentiles, and being, as Augustine had put it, “among those who belong to the City of God22.” Yet, there were a significant number who found elements of sibylline tradition disturbing, believing rather, that these figures were essentially demonic. Many were concerned that sibylline and other nonbiblical prophecies were snares set by Satan to entrap the disingenuous. At the same time, contemporary conceptualizations of the nature of divine foreknowledge and traditions of prophecy as the history of future events complicated issues regarding prophecy and prophetic figures. Several of Shakespeare’s plays explore these concerns, revealing an intense antipathy for sibylline and other prophetic figures, while at the same time appearing to adhere to traditional conceptualisations history and the existence of foreknowledge.

15Shakespeare’s disdain for sibylline figures comes early in his career as can be seen in his disdain for Joan la Pucelle (Joan of Arc) in 1 Henry VI. This character is introduced to the Dauphin by his cousin, the Bastard of Orleans:

A holy maid hither with me I bring […]
The spirit of deep prophecy she hath,
Exceeding the nine sibyls of Old Rome.
What’s past and what’s to come she can descry23.

16In this scene Joan claims her visions and her power come from the virgin Mary, but later, in act 5, it is clear that her powers come to her through Satan as she calls on her “helpers”, whom she describes as “familiar spirits that are culled/Out of the powerful regions under the earth” (5.3.5-10). She is, of course, taken off to be executed as a witch but not before she prophesizes to Richard, Duke of York, that he and his house will be driven to death. Richard’s insults follow her as she leaves the stage: “Thou foul accurséd minister of hell” (5.7.93). Joan’s designation as a sibyl is not Shakespeare’s invention. During her lifetime she was associated positively with the ancient sibyls, as a prophetess of her nation. Deborah Fraioli notes, “Jean Girard, president of the parliament of Grenoble and a close associate of the king, cited Deborah, Judith, and the sibyls as precedents for Joan of Arc in his correspondence with Jacques Gelu, the archbishop of Embrun24.” A collection of fifteenth century treatises upon Joan, published in 1606, bears the title the Sibylla Francica. Shakespeare, in presenting Joan as a witch-like sibyl, reveals his own position in the contemporary debate concerning these ancient prophetesses. Another scene, this time in 2 Henry VI also attributes the acquisition of preternatural knowledge to the act of witchcraft. In act 1.3 the Duchess of Gloucester employs a witch and a sorcerer to enact a ritual and raise a demon. This demon prophesizes the doom of several characters— a doom which indeed comes to pass. One particularly misleading part of this prophecy is that Somerset will die near a castle— he does die near a castle, but under the sign of an alehouse called The Castle (5.2.2).

17The conflation of witch with sibyl is made explicit in Shakespeare’s depiction of three sibyls in Macbeth. In this play he transforms the three sibyls from Matthew Gwinne’s, Tres Sibyllae which Gwinne presented to King James I on a 1605 royal visit to Oxford. Gwinne’s sibyls greet the King with:

First Sibyl: […] we give you greetings, you whom Scotland obeys.
Second Sibyl: Hail, you whom England obeys.
Third Sibyl: Hail, you whom Ireland obeys.
First Sibyl: You whom France grants titles, all else grants lands, hail.
Second Sibyl: You whom previously-divided Britain worships, hail.
Third Sibyl: High British, Irish, and French monarch, hail.

18This is, of course, very similar to the greeting of the three witches that call on Macbeth with a chorus of “Hail.” Further evidence that these witch figures are indeed sibyls, besides of course their propensity for prognostication, comes from one of Shakespeare’s sources for Macbeth: Holinshed’s chronicles. Here these women are described as “women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world.” In the marginal notes they are further identified as “supposing to be the weird sisters or faeries” (sibyl figures were often featured as fays or faeries in medieval romance literature). The woodcut that accompanies the text clearly shows three women in an Elizabethan version of the antique dress which was typical in visual representation of sibyls in the Middle Ages25. In this play, as in Richard III, or indeed 1 Henry VI these sibylline figures are identified as both aligned with the demonic and yet capable of revealing future events. Shakespeare’s creation of the character of Margaret in Richard III is in keeping with his other sibylline figures.

19What is striking about this Margaret, as many have noted, is that rather than being an active agent as she was in the Henry VI plays she is now reduced to her words only, presenting but a shadowy figure upon the stage. She has this in common with the sibyl of Cumae who prophesied for herself in Ovid’s Metamorphoses quoted here from the 1567 translation by Arthur Golding: “Only by my voyce I shall bée knowen./For the fates shall leave mee still my voyce for folke to know mée by.” Margaret’s identity, stripped of family, status, and power, is shown unmoored in this play. Even her body seems non-corporeal as she moves among the characters unseen until she chooses to speak. In fact, historically speaking Margaret died in France before the death of Edward IV and the events enacted in Richard III took place. And while Shakespeare does not identify her as a ghost she, like many a prophetic figure, is reduced to words alone. Indeed, the comments of Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York in act 4 acknowledge that calamity leaves one “full of words” and little else—and yet those words can still perhaps have some potency (4.4.126-136).

20On Margaret’s first appearance in the play she enters unnoticed in the middle of a tense conversation concerning the health of Edward IV. This is a dynastic moment and thus Margaret’s appearance at this point in the play is in keeping with sibylline tradition. Sibylline prophecy from its earliest appearance in ancient Greece had always been concerned with the fate of nations. The prophecies Margaret pronounces in this scene relate not only to her own personal grievances, but to the dynastic future of the country. Initially she utters asides, while the rest of the characters onstage appear unaware of her existence. These asides signal her antipathy toward the assembled company in general, and Richard in particular, as the instrument of her son and husband’s deaths.

21When she does speak, in traditional sibylline fashion, her prognostications are dark and portentous. This passage serves as a good example of the type of riddling and opaque prognostications long associated with sibylline prophecy:

Why then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses!
Though not by war, by surfeit die your king,
As ours by murder, to make him a king,
(To Elizabeth) Edward thy son, which now is Prince of Wales,
For Edward my son, that was Prince of Wales,
Die in his youth by like untimely violence.
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self.
Long mayst thou live—to wail thy children’ s death
And see another, as I see thee now,
Decked in thy rights, as thou art ’stalled in mine.
Long die thy happy days before thy death,
And after many lengthened hours of grief
Die, neither mother, wife, nor England’ s queen.—
Rivers and Dorset, you were standers-by,
And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son
Was stabbed with bloody daggers: God, I pray him,
That none of you may live your natural age,
But by some unlooked accident cut off(1.3.194-211).

22This passage and Margaret’s later “curses” prove prescient. Yet, her words function as more than simply the deployment of foreshadowing within the dramatic structure of the play. Her mumbling preamble of asides gives the impression that Margaret has grown mad with grief, and yet in sibylline tradition, madness—or the loss of one’s senses—is actually requisite for prophecy to manifest itself. Certainly, as noted above, this is one of the characteristics of the sibyl that disturbed many writers in the period. Thus it would be a mistake to simply discount Margaret’s ravings as the impotent curses of a traumatized and deranged woman. Certainly the other characters recognize in both the structure and the content of her utterances some type of power as evinced by their intense reactions to her words. Hastings calls her a “false-boding woman” and demands she end her “frantic curse” (1.3.245-246). Hastings recognizes that she is at least pretending to communicate fore-knowledge. Dorset tries to dismiss her by advising, “Dispute not with her: she is lunatic” (1.3.252). However, rather than these disparaging remarks alleviating the anxiety caused by Margaret’s words, they heighten it. Margaret raves like Virgil’s sibyl of Cumae who in a frenzy “storms wildly in the cavern… with raving mouth” before delivering her prophecies.

23Yet, Shakespeare is not simply content to associate Margaret with the disturbing characteristics of classical sibyls. Here he also makes clear that she is recognized as a thing of evil through Richard’s reference to Margaret’s murder of the child earl of Rutland, and her cruel act of offering a handkerchief steeped in the blood of the child, to his father (1.3.171-178). Margaret is condemned by all for this act, but is unmoved by both their condemnation and the act itself. Certainly, Richard recognizes Margaret’s demonic nature. He calls her a “Foul wrinkled witch” when she first announces her presence (1.3.164), and later a “hateful wither’d hag” (1.3.212). In her presence Richard displays a degree of anxiety which he does not manifest in relation to any other character. He does not even attempt to calm her with his false and honeyed words. Margaret in turn is the only character who recognizes Richard for what he is at this point in the play. When he first comes to her notice, she curses him in an aside, “Out Devil” (1.3.118) and calls him a cacodemon, a thing of evil (1.3.144). She prophesizes his demise amidst a hail of evil appellations:

Stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me…
Thy worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul.
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends.
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be while some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils.
Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog…
The slave of nature and the son of hell (1.3.213-227).

24As the scene progresses, the two become entangled in one line of verse, indicating their shared evil nature. One of Margaret’s parting comments completes her identification of Richard as a creature of evil: “Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him,/And all their ministers attend on him” (1.3.291-292). This is not a rhetorical flourish but a positive identification of Richard as a spawn of hell.

25And yet this exchange between Margaret and Edward’s court is not simply a series of prognostications concerning the impending sorrow and death of several characters. Margaret’s words fulfil the accepted function of prophecy. Roger Bacon in 1267 explained that the relationship between prophecy and the future was dynamic and that a thorough understanding of prophetic texts could empower human beings to participate in the shaping of their own destiny26. In Richard III this quality of prophecy is especially clear in the exchange between Margaret and Buckingham. She warns him of his impending doom:

O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog.
Look when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites,
His venom tooth will rankle to the death.
Have naught to do with him; beware of him (1.3.287-290).

26When Richard interjects asking what Margaret says to him, Buckingham seals his fate by rejecting providential warning. The danger of ignoring prophecy is made clear in act 3.2 when Hastings dismisses Stanley’s admittedly ambiguous, but certainly threatening dream. Of course it is not only Buckingham who does not recognize Margaret’s words as prophetic, the entire assembly refuses to countenance her words, misconstruing prophecy as bitter and impotent curses. This despite the fact that Margaret makes very clear that it is prophecy she offers them in a decidedly non-enigmatic statement:

What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel,
And soothe the devil that I warn thee from?
O, but remember this another day,
When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow,
And say “Poor Margaret” was a prophetess (1.3.297-299).

27Yet here Shakespeare also displays his anxiety concerning the efficacy of prophecy and the dubious value of sibylline and other prophecies widely circulated in his time. While Shakespeare clearly accepts that prophecy may reveal truth, he expresses grave doubt that prophecy can actually benefit those to whom it pertains. Indeed, in this play and others where prophecy appears, Shakespeare plainly sees prophecy as more likely to mislead and cause harm than, as Bacon suggests, allow an opportunity for right behaviour. In this, Shakespeare is in agreement with Thomas Cooper who asserted that while the sibyls manifested a certain degree of fore-knowledge given to them by Satan, he also explains that they deliver this foreknowledge “in a confused and darke manner, whereby they might rather stumble, then informe27.” John Harvey, writing in 1587 also expressed grave concerns regarding the use and efficacy of prophecy, commenting: “Did the… divell, ever want impostors, falsaries, coseners, hypocrites, or false prophets28?”

28The dubious value of prophecies, and the tendency of prophecy delivered through Satan’s agents to mislead is certainly true of the prophecies featured in Macbeth, 2 Henry VI and just as true here in Richard III. In Macbeth the first prophecies delivered by sibylline characters occur in act 1.3, with the second appearance of the prophetic figures with their dark warnings delivered in act 4. Likewise, Margaret utters her first prophecies in act 1.3 in Richard III and returns again in act 4. This works dramatically of course, as a certain degree of action must take place validating the prophecies and preparing the audience to engage more thoughtfully with the next set of prophecies which will certainly foreshadow the ending of the play. In the intervening acts in both Macbeth and Richard III the audience is reminded of the sibylline figure’s prophetic ability at regular intervals, as her words become manifest in the action of the play. It also becomes clear that these prophecies are in no way efficacious in eliciting right action. In act 3.3 Grey, as he is carried towards his death reminds the audience that Margaret foresaw this, crying “Now Margaret’s curse is fall’n upon our heads/For standing by when Richard stabb’d her son” (14-15). In act 3.4 Hastings, as he nears death recalls, “O Margaret, Margaret, now thy heavy curse/Is lighted on poor Hastings’ wretched head!” (92-93). Thus while Margaret is obviously capable of foretelling the future, never does this foreknowledge offered the many characters result in an awareness that allows them to escape their allotted fate. Even her very pointed and descriptive rants against Richard are dismissed. Her prophecies are termed curses and her clear identification of Richard considered simply the ravings of a mad woman.

29Indeed, in this play prophecies are mainly ignored or are interpreted in such a ways as to impel the characters forward to their tragic end. Richard, certainly one of the devil’s impostors Harvey rails about, deftly circulates a “false” prophecy in order to bring about the death of his brother George, the Duke of Clarence. In the opening scene of the play Clarence complains that the king:

He hearkens after prophecies and dreams,
And from the cross-row plucks the letter “G”
And says a wizard told him that by “G”
His issue disinherited should be.
And for my name of George begins with “G”,
It follows in his thought that I am he (1.1.54-59).

30In the ensuing conversation with Clarence, Richard infers the false inventions were designed by the Queen and Jane Shore, when in fact in his very first soliloquy he admits “Plots I have laid, inductions dangerous,/By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams” (1.1.32-33). Certainly Richard is one of the devil’s false prophets, and yet his prophecy is indeed accurate, even though in this instance he prophesies against himself—he is the “G” who shall disinherit Edward’s issue29. Edward IV and his court cannot interpret the prophecy correctly, but rather “stumble” because of the ambiguous form. Later in act 3.2 Stanley relates a dream he has where a “boar had razèd off his helm” (7). The use of animals to represent important political figures within prophecy was long established in the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth and others throughout the Middle Ages. The boar in particular was often used to represent the monarch. Yet despite the fact that the dream lends itself to a particularly clear interpretation, one that Stanley rightly understands, Hastings wilfully misinterprets the message and thus places himself in the hands of his murderers. Prophecy then, in Richard III, while shown to reveal future events with accuracy, is of questionable value and at times the catalyst for disaster, while the agents of prophecy are categorically associated with evil.

31Margaret certainly functions as an agent of prophecy. However unlike the prophecies of Richard, hers do not cause others to “stumble.” Her prophecies, while certainly delivered with a great deal of personal ire, are dynastic in nature and function. She stands as witness to one of the great struggles of the English crown and “sees” with clarity the history—including the future history of this particular dynastic moment. Margaret shares this quality with the ancient sibyls, whose texts throughout Greek, Roman and medieval European history were closely connected with the fate of nations, as indeed they would continue to be interpreted well into the seventeenth century. This alone identifies Margaret as a sibylline character. For, as Thomas Elyot, scholar and diplomat in the court of Henry VIII, writing in 1542 asserts “Sibylla, was a general name to all women whiche had the spirite of prophecy30.” Other aspects of her character align her even more closely with the famous sibyls of antiquity, especially the Sibyl of Cumae. In act 4.4 Margaret appears lurking in the shadows, or as she describes it, “Here in these confines slily have I lurk’d.” Like the sibyl of Cumae in her “darksome den” Margaret hides herself in the shadows. She also shares a frantic demeanour and immaterial presence so often a characteristic of the classical sibyls, as well as riddling, opaque utterances. She is a figure that hovers over the events but does not participate directly in them. The intensity of her ravings increases as the culmination of the dynastic moment, the end of both the dynasties of York and Lancaster, nears. However her most salient quality that identifies her as a sibyl is that her prophecies are proved true. As early as the third century CE, the early Christian theologian Lactantius asserted that a sibyl could be identified by the truth of her prophecies. In the last acts of the play, the veracity of Margaret’s prophecies is recognized by those who foolishly dismissed them in the first act. This she reminds Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York (and of course the audience), by rehearsing the catalogue of those who have met the destiny she predicted for them:

Thou hast an Edward, till a Richard killed him;
Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard killed him.
[to the Duchess of York] Thou hadst a Clarence too, and Richard killed him.
From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept
A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death…
Thy Edward, he is dead, that killed my Edward;
Thy other Edward dead, to quite my Edward…
The ‘adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Gray—
Untimely smothered in their dusky graves (1.4.42-70).

32From this manic listing of the dead of both houses, Margaret proceeds to her last prophecy:

Richard yet lives, hell’s black intelligencer
Only reserved their factor to buy souls
And send them thither; but at hand, at hand,
Ensues his piteous and unpitied end
Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray,
To have him suddenly conveyed from hence (1.4.72-76).

33Margaret’s final words make clear that she has no further role within the action of the drama. Having pronounced on the end of dynastic strife, given form in Richard’s misshapen body, she “unburdens” herself, and speaks no more.

34The last reference to Margaret comes in Buckingham’s speech in the final act of the play. In a confessional speech Buckingham acknowledges his part in the wicked and murderous career of Richard III:

This, this All Souls’ day to my fearful soul
In the determined respite of my wrongs.
That high all-seer which I dallied with
Hath turned my feignèd prayer on my head…
Thus does he force the swords of wicked men
To turn their own points in their master’s bosoms.
Thus Margaret’s curse falls heavy on my neck
“When he”, quoth she, ‘shall split thy heart with sorrow,
Remember Margaret was a prophetess (5.1.18-29).

35The shape of this speech has the interesting effect of positioning Margaret as the herald of God, announcing divine intentions to those whom he wishes to admonish or warn. This is not to say that Margaret is not wicked and is not a handmaid of Satan. The earlier history plays, and chronicle accounts of the period, often posited Margaret as an agent of chaos. However, as many believed, God could use damned creatures to reveal divine intention. Buckingham’s testimony appears to assert that Margaret’s testimony does just this.

36Margaret in Richard III shares several characteristics with other sibylline figures in Shakespeare’s plays. The construction of the character reveals an awareness of contemporary debate surrounding sibylline and other prophetic figures. She exposes Shakespeare’s anxiety concerning prophecy in general and females prophesying in particular. It is clear that he attributes the prophetic act with demonic figures, and yet there is a paradox in his treatment of these figures. While patently wicked, they do reveal knowledge of future events which many scholars and theologians of the period asserted were known only to God. Thus despite the wicked actions, behaviours and even nature of these prophesiers, they are compelled to speak a truth of which they may not even be aware. This belief was not unique to Shakespeare of course, but was a position held by others as shown in the quotation by William Sanderson above. What Shakespeare does is to translate this contradiction into drama and particularly dynastic drama. Margaret, in Richard III, like the famed sibyls of old, thus represents a conceptualization of the relationship between the struggles of a dynastic moment in history and a divinity who both participates in this moment, and yet simultaneously exists beyond the confines of time. Lactantius, in his defence of the sibylline prophecy once quoted the sibyl Erythraea as complaining: “They will call the Sibyl mad and a liar. But you will remember me when it all happens, and no one will call me mad any longer: me, prophetess of the great God31.” While there is no evidence that Shakespeare was familiar with this passage, either in Lactantius’ Divine Institutes, nor in the sibylline oracles, translated into Latin by Castellio which contains this passage at the end of book three. Yet, the passage sums up the sibylline function of the character of Margaret in Richard III. She suffers disparagement and humiliation, but at the end of the action the Elizabethan audience, like Buckingham, would leave the theatre agreeing that Margaret “was a prophetess” through whom the divine structure of historic events was revealed32.