Stage props, like Richard III's dagger, have their own story to tell, as Yale professor Joseph Roach explains in this Shakespeare anniversary lecture.
Theatrical tradition, backed by Shakespeare’s implied stage directions, affirms that Richard carries a small dagger constantly on his person, as seen here at the bloody denouement of Act 5. The dagger has come in handy for Richard in many ways. It is his sinister weapon of choice, metonymically standing in for his character, like Brecht’s Mack the Knife.
At the very least, no shadow of doubt remains, pace Ricardians, that Richard’s spine curved from the waist in a severe hump. Stage tradition, not flattering portraits touted by apologists, some real historians among them, carried this fact from the 15th century forward to the present as part of a living repertoire.
The metonymical property dagger, however, needs no exhumation, even though it humbly waited, dulled for safety’s sake, and scored with many blows over time, in the Yale property room weapons chest, to do its vital symbolic work. Richard not only toys with it and wields it in deadly earnest—he is the dagger.
