Foundational Subjectivity in Shakespeare's Richard III

 For Hazlitt, Richard III’s drive “to be greater than he is” continues throughout the play, and includes his trying to be seen as higher in worth than the already-lofty social station he was born into; “making use of these advantages to commit unheard-of crimes” might not seem great on its face, but Hazlitt  seems to be assuming that what Richard finds great can also be monstrous.  That idea certainly holds up with his seduction of the woman whose husband he has murdered—he’s crowing, alone, “Was ever woman in this humor won?” may show him in competition with everyone in his memory, for the most reprehensibly persuasive behavior.  He may stay in that mode, of striving for the worst of all time at least toward his enemies (and maintaining a level playing field by seeing everyone else as an enemy), but, contrary to Hazlitt’s characterization, he does end up unable to keep chasing greatness when he ends up alone, with “none else by,” trying to maintain his villain façade, but finding it falls away in the face of his crimes:

Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.                                          Is there a murderer here?  No.  Yes, I am.

In this soliloquy, his archly wicked rhetoric gives away to debate and stumbling repetition:

Alack.  I love myself.  Wherefor?  For any good                         That I myself have done unto myself?                                     O, no!  alas, I rather hate myself                                         For hateful deeds committed by myself.

Harold Bloom dismissed this, basically, as bad writing, and went on to pinpoint a far more obscure moment in Shakespeare’s oeuvre as the one where the subjective human being was born, but if that’s anywhere in Shakespeare’s work, I believe it’s here.  A character dissembling and coming disassembled sees that he has more than one self—he is able to regard and treat himself as an other.