William Shakespeare, Richard III
1. The historical context: check information about the War of the Roses; Richard III as a historical play
2. Analyze Richard’s path to power. Does he change throughout the play? How? What obstacles must he overcome in order to become a king?
- in what sense could Richard II be considered a medieval ‘Vice’ - see his monologue in Act I, I, Richard’s self-presentation
- consider Richard as a grand manipulator - analyze Act I, ii; Act I, ii, 26-28 or Act I, iv, 4
- analyze Richard’s closing monologue – Act V, iii, 178-207) - can you notice any significant differences in Richard’s character when you compare it to the opening monologue??
3. Richard III as the presentation of the world of villains – who are the other villains in the play? How do they compare to Richard? What is the function of Queen Margaret (a Cassandra-like figure?)
4. What are the major themes of the play? How are they presented? Analyze the following concepts: ambition; duplicity/deceit (the mask); pure evil; quest for power; the Grand Mechanism
5. Analyze the characters of Buckingham and Lord Hastings – are there any similarities/differences between them? How do they reflect the political and moral situation at the court?
6. Explain the quotations below:
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain.– Act V, Scene III, Lines 180-181.
. . . . . . . . . . The world is grown so bad, That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.–. Act I, Scene III, Lines 70-71.
There is no creature loves me;
And if I die no soul will pity me.
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself? (Act V, Scene III, Lines 201-2004)
The Wars of the Roses (1453–1487) were a series of dynastic civil wars fought in England between supporters of the Houses of Lancaster and York. Although armed clashes had occurred previously between supporters of Lancastrian King Henry VI and Richard, Duke of York, head of the rival House of York, the first open fighting broke out in 1455 and resumed more violently in 1459. Henry was captured and Richard became Protector of England, but was dissuaded from claiming the throne. Inspired by Henry's Queen, Margaret of Anjou, the Lancastrians resumed the conflict, and Richard was killed in battle at the end of 1460. His eldest son was proclaimed King Edward IV after winning a crushing victory at the Battle of Towton early in 1461.
Character List
Richard - Also called the duke of Gloucester, and eventually crowned King Richard III. Deformed in body and twisted in mind, Richard is both the central character and the villain of the play. He is evil, corrupt, sadistic, and manipulative, and he will stop at nothing to become king. His intelligence, political brilliance, and dazzling use of language keep the audience fascinated—and his subjects and rivals under his thumb.
Buckingham - Richard’s right-hand man in his schemes to gain power. The duke of Buckingham is almost as amoral and ambitious as Richard himself.
King Edward IV - The older brother of Richard and Clarence, and the king of England at the start of the play. Edward was deeply involved in the Yorkists’ brutal overthrow of the Lancaster regime, but as king he is devoted to achieving a reconciliation among the various political factions of his reign. He is unaware that Richard attempts to thwart him at every turn.
Clarence - The gentle, trusting brother born between Edward and Richard in the York family. Richard has Clarence murdered in order to get him out of the way. Clarence leaves two children, a son and a daughter.
Queen Elizabeth - The wife of King Edward IV and the mother of the two young princes (the heirs to the throne) and their older sister, young Elizabeth. After Edward’s death, Queen Elizabeth (also called Lady Gray) is at Richard’s mercy. Richard rightly views her as an enemy because she opposes his rise to power, and because she is intelligent and fairly strong-willed. Elizabeth is part of the Woodeville family; her kinsmen—Dorset, Rivers, and Gray—are her allies in the court.
Dorset, Rivers, and Gray - The kinsmen and allies of Elizabeth, and members of the Woodeville and Gray families. Rivers is Elizabeth’s brother, while Gray and Dorset are her sons from her first marriage. Richard eventually executes Rivers and Gray, but Dorset flees and survives.
Anne - The young widow of Prince Edward, who was the son of the former king, Henry VI. Lady Anne hates Richard for the death of her husband, but for reasons of politics—and for sadistic pleasure—Richard persuades Anne to marry him.
Duchess of York - Widowed mother of Richard, Clarence, and King Edward IV. The duchess of York is Elizabeth’s mother-in-law, and she is very protective of Elizabeth and her children, who are the duchess’s grandchildren. She is angry with, and eventually curses, Richard for his heinous actions.
Margaret - Widow of the dead King Henry VI, and mother of the slain Prince Edward. In medieval times, when kings were deposed, their children were often killed to remove any threat from the royal line of descent—but their wives were left alive because they were considered harmless. Margaret was the wife of the king before Edward, the Lancastrian Henry VI, who was subsequently deposed and murdered (along with their children) by the family of King Edward IV and Richard. She is embittered and hates both Richard and the people he is trying to get rid of, all of whom were complicit in the destruction of the Lancasters.
The princes - The two young sons of King Edward IV and his wife, Elizabeth, their names are actually Prince Edward and the young duke of York, but they are often referred to collectively. Agents of Richard murder these boys—Richard’s nephews—in the Tower of London. Young Prince Edward, the rightful heir to the throne, should not be confused with the elder Edward, prince of Wales (the first husband of Lady Anne, and the son of the former king, Henry VI.), who was killed before the play begins.
Young Elizabeth - The former Queen Elizabeth’s daughter. Young Elizabeth enjoys the fate of many Renaissance noblewomen. She becomes a pawn in political power-brokering, and is promised in marriage at the end of the play to Richmond, the Lancastrian rebel leader, in order to unite the warring houses of York and Lancaster.
Ratcliffe, Catesby - Two of Richard’s flunkies among the nobility.
Tyrrell - A murderer whom Richard hires to kill his young cousins, the princes in the Tower of London.
Richmond - A member of a branch of the Lancaster royal family. Richmond gathers a force of rebels to challenge Richard for the throne. He is meant to represent goodness, justice, and fairness—all the things Richard does not. Richmond is portrayed in such a glowing light in part because he founded the Tudor dynasty, which still ruled England in Shakespeare’s day.
Hastings - A lord who maintains his integrity, remaining loyal to the family of King Edward IV. Hastings winds up dead for making the mistake of trusting Richard.
Stanley - The stepfather of Richmond. Lord Stanley, earl of Derby, secretly helps Richmond, although he cannot escape Richard’s watchful gaze.
Lord Mayor of London - A gullible and suggestible fellow whom Richard and Buckingham use as a pawn in their ploy to make Richard king.
Vaughan - A friend of Elizabeth, Dorset, Rivers, and Gray who is executed by Richard along with Rivers and Grey.
Analysis of Major Characters
Richard III
Richard is in every way the dominant character of the play that bears his name, to the extent that he is both the protagonist of the story and its major villain. Richard III is an intense exploration of the psychology of evil, and that exploration is centered on Richard’s mind. Critics sometimes compare Richard to the medieval character, Vice, who was a flat and one-sided embodiment of evil. However, especially in the later scenes of the play, Richard proves to be highly self-reflective and complicated—making his heinous acts all the more chilling.
Perhaps more than in any other play by Shakespeare, the audience of Richard III experiences a complex, ambiguous, and highly changeable relationship with the main character. Richard is clearly a villain—he declares outright in his very first speech that he intends to stop at nothing to achieve his nefarious designs. But despite his open allegiance to evil, he is such a charismatic and fascinating figure that, for much of the play, we are likely to sympathize with him, or at least to be impressed with him. In this way, our relationship with Richard mimics the other characters’ relationships with him, conveying a powerful sense of the force of his personality. Even characters such as Lady Anne, who have an explicit knowledge of his wickedness, allow themselves to be seduced by his brilliant wordplay, his skillful argumentation, and his relentless pursuit of his selfish desires.
Richard’s long, fascinating monologues, in which he outlines his plans and gleefully confesses all his evil thoughts, are central to the audience’s experience of Richard. Shakespeare uses these monologues brilliantly to control the audience’s impression of Richard, enabling this manipulative protagonist to work his charms on the audience. In Act I, scene i, for example, Richard dolefully claims that his malice toward others stems from the fact that he is unloved, and that he is unloved because of his physical deformity. This claim, which casts the other characters of the play as villains for punishing Richard for his appearance, makes it easy to sympathize with Richard during the first scenes of the play.
It quickly becomes apparent, however, that Richard simply uses his deformity as a tool to gain the sympathy of others—including us. Richard’s evil is a much more innate part of his character than simple bitterness about his ugly body. But he uses this speech to win our trust, and he repeats this ploy throughout his struggle to be crowned king. After he is crowned king and Richmond begins his uprising, Richard’s monologues end. Once Richard stops exerting his charisma on the audience, his real nature becomes much more apparent, and by the end of the play he can be seen for the monster that he is.
The Princes
The most famous crime of the historical Richard III, and the deed for which he was most demonized in the century following his death, is his murder of the two young princes in the Tower of London. For centuries after the death of Edward IV, the fate of the princes was a mystery—all that was known was that they had disappeared. It was speculated that Richard had them killed, it was speculated that they had spent their entire lives as prisoners in the tower, and it was speculated that they had escaped and lived abroad. The English author Sir Thomas More wrote that they were killed and buried at the foot of a staircase in the White Tower. Many years later, in 1674, workers in the Tower of London discovered two tiny skeletons hidden in a chest buried beneath a staircase of the tower. The skeletons date from approximately the late fifteenth century, and serve as the best evidence that the young sons of Edward IV were in fact murdered in the tower. There is still no conclusive proof that it was Richard who had them murdered—some scholars even think it could have been Richmond. Still, thanks to popular legend, Shakespeare’s play, and the biography of Richard that More wrote a few years before the play, Richard has gone down in history as the most likely culprit.
Because the story of the princes in the tower was so well known, it was crucial to Richard III that Shakespeare make the princes memorable and engaging figures despite their youth and their relatively small roles in the story. As a result, Shakespeare creates princes who are highly intelligent—they are among the only characters in the play to see through Richard’s scheme entirely. They are courageous, standing up fearlessly to the powerful Richard. They are charismatic, outdoing Richard in games of wordplay. However, they are utterly, pitifully helpless because they are so young. Though Elizabeth remarks that her younger son is a “parlous boy,” meaning sharp or mischievous, the princes are never a threat to Richard, and they are unable to defend themselves against him (II.iv.35). Yet Shakespeare creates the sense that, had the princes lived, they would have grown up to become more than a match for their wicked uncle.
Margaret
Though she plays a very minor role in the play’s plot, mostly prowling around the castle cursing to herself, Margaret is nevertheless one of the most important and memorable characters in Richard III. The impotent, overpowering rage that she directs at Richard and his family stands for the helpless, righteous anger of all Richard’s victims. The curses she levels at the royals in Act I, which are among the most startling and memorable in all of Shakespeare, foreshadow and essentially determine future events of the play. Her lesson to Elizabeth and the duchess about how to curse paints a striking picture of the psychology of victimization and the use of language as a means of alleviating anguish.
As the wife of the dead and vanquished King Henry VI, Margaret also represents the plight of women under the patriarchal power structure of Renaissance England. Without a husband to grant her status and security, she is reduced to depending on the charity of her family’s murderers to survive—a dire situation that she later wishes on Elizabeth. Margaret is a one-dimensional character, representing rage and pain, but she is vital to the play for the sheer focus of torment she brings to the world surrounding Richard’s irresistible evil.
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Allure of Evil
When Richard claims that his deformity is the cause of his wicked ways, he seems to be manipulating us for sympathy, just as he manipulates the other characters throughout the play. As a result, Richard III does not explore the cause of evil in the human mind so much as it explores its operation, depicting the workings of Richard’s mind and the methods he uses to manipulate, control, and injure others for his own gain. Central to this aspect of the play is the idea that Richard’s victims are complicit in their own destruction. Just as Lady Anne allows herself to be seduced by Richard, even knowing that he will kill her, other characters allow themselves to be taken in by his charisma and overlook his dishonesty and violent behavior. This tendency is echoed in Richard’s relationship with the audience for much of the play. Even though the audience is likely to be repulsed by Richard’s actions, his gleeful, brilliant, revealing monologues cause most viewers to like him and even hope that he will succeed despite his obvious malice.
The Connection Between Ruler and State
The so-called window scenes in Richard III—the conversation of the common people in Act II, scene iii; Buckingham’s speech to the masses and Richard’s acceptance of the crown in Act III; and the scene of the Scrivener in Act III, scene iv—provide a glimpse of how the drama in the royal palace affects the lives of the common people outside its walls. As a history play, Richard III is at least somewhat concerned with the consequences of the behavior of those in power, and with ideas of good rulership and governance. It is significant that the common people come to fear and distrust Richard long before most of the nobles in the palace, and that the opposition of the common people to Richard is one of the main forces that enables Richmond to overthrow him. In these ways, Richard III explores a theme Shakespeare later revisited in Hamlet and Macbeth—the idea that the moral righteousness of a political ruler has a direct bearing on the health of the state. A state with a good ruler will tend to flourish (as Denmark does under King Hamlet), while a state with a bad ruler will tend to suffer (as Scotland does under Macbeth).
The Power of Language
An interesting secondary theme of Richard III is the power of language, or the importance of language in achieving political power. Language may not always be a necessary instrument of power, but for Richard, it is a crucial weapon. His extraordinary skill with words enables him to manipulate, confuse, and control those around him. Richard’s skill with language and argument is what enables him to woo Lady Anne, have Clarence thrown in prison, keep the Woodvilles off his track, blame the king for Clarence’s death, and achieve Hastings’s execution, all at very little risk to himself. Interestingly, language also seems to be the only defense against Richard, as is shown when the princes match his skill at wordplay and thus indicate their ability to see through his schemes. In such cases, Richard simply uses violence as an expedient and has his enemies, including the princes, put to death.
The Birth of the Tudor Dynasty
Richard III dramatizes a key turning point in English history: the end of the Wars of the Roses and the rise to power of the Tudor dynasty in the figure of Henry VII. The Tudors continued to rule England in Shakespeare’s day—Queen Elizabeth I, who sat on the throne when Richard III was written, was a Tudor. As a playwright in sixteenth-century England, Shakespeare had to court the favor of those in power, who literally could make or break his career. As a result, Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard III as a vile, hateful villain is in part designed to set up a glorious ascension for Henry VII at the end of the play. Henry overthrew Richard, after all, and the worse Richard seems, the better Henry will seem for defeating him; moreover, the better Henry seems, the more likely the Tudors are to approve of Shakespeare’s play. Had Shakespeare portrayed Richard as a hero, then Henry might have seemed villainous for usurping his throne, and Shakespeare might have fallen from favor with Queen Elizabeth. Of course, these political considerations are by no means the main focus of the play—Shakespeare’s exploration of the psychology of evil stands on its own and transcends mere propaganda. Still, it is important to realize that the history Shakespeare recounts in his story was still very much alive when he wrote it, and that the considerations of his own time strongly affected his portrayal of the past.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
The Supernatural
For a play supposedly based on actual history, Richard III involves an extraordinary number of supernatural elements. Some of these elements are Margaret’s prophetic curses, Clarence and Stanley’s prophetic dreams, the allegations of witchcraft Richard levels at Elizabeth and mistress Shore, the continual association of Richard with devils and demons (for example, he is often called a hellhound), Richard’s comparison of himself to the shape-shifting Proteus, the Princes’ discussion of the ghosts of their dead uncles, and—most significant—the parade of eleven ghosts that visits Richard and Richmond the night before the battle. These supernatural elements serve to create an atmosphere of intense dread and gloom that matches the malice and evil of Richard’s inner self, and also serve to heighten the sense that Richard’s reign is innately evil, transforming England into a kind of Gothic netherworld.
Dreams
The motif of prophetic dreams is part of the play’s larger preoccupation with the supernatural, but the idea of dreams emerges as its own separate motif after Stanley’s dream about Hastings’s death. Clarence and Stanley both have dreams that not only predict the future, but that are also heavy with important symbolism. For example, Clarence’s dream involves Richard causing his drowning at sea. Immediately after it, he is drowned in a cask of wine by murderers hired by Richard. In addition, Stanley’s dream involves Hastings being gored by a boar—Richard’s heraldic symbol. Immediately after it, Richard orders Hastings’s execution.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Boar
The boar is Richard’s heraldic symbol, and is used several times throughout the play to represent him, most notably in Stanley’s dream about Hastings’s death. The idea of the boar is also played on in describing Richard’s deformity, and Richard is cursed by the duchess as an “abortive, rooting hog” (I.iii.225). The boar was one of the most dangerous animals that people hunted in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and Shakespeare’s audience would have associated it with untamed aggression and uncontrollable violence.
2. How does Richard’s personality change over the course of the play?
At the beginning of the play, Richard seems very much in control of the situation around him. Bitter and alienated from others, he nonetheless enters into a close relationship with the audience, pausing frequently to let us know what is going on in his mind. Richard therefore has a closer relationship with us than he does with anyone else in the play, at least in the early acts. However, as Richard’s plot unfolds and he rises in rank, his speeches change. He ceases to offer monologues to us and is instead surrounded by noblemen all the time. He also stops using his subtle powers of manipulation and veers toward achieving his goals by force, ordering executions overtly and no longer pretending to be a friend to all. Moreover, almost at the moment of his coronation, he alienates Buckingham—his only friend, whom he later has executed. Richard does not seem to be able to return love; he solicits it only in order to twist it to his own purposes, as when he seduces Anne, and when he attempts to make friends with Elizabeth. Furthermore, he exploits the selfless love of his family members to take advantage of them. By the time Richard is finished, all his friends, lovers, and family either are dead at his hands or hate him. This state of affairs leads to Richard’s sudden revelation and nightmare in Act V, scene v, that “[t]here is no creature loves me” (V.v.154).
3. What roles do women play in Richard III?
Women play a number of different roles in this play, but these roles are for the most part defined by their relationships to men, and the capacity of the female characters to act is mostly frustrated by men. Young Elizabeth and Anne are wives or potential wives whom Richard tries to use as pawns to shore up his power. Queen Elizabeth and the duchess of Windsor are mothers who unsuccessfully try to use their influence to protect themselves and their children. Once Richard kills his brothers and Queen Elizabeth’s kinsmen, Queen Elizabeth and the duchess become like Margaret—irrelevant and seemingly powerless. Interestingly, however, women seem to acquire power in this play only when they lose their male relatives—and, thus, their social influence and power in the court—and forge their own power out of grief and pain. This pain lies behind Margaret’s terrifying cursing, and Elizabeth and the duchess try to learn the skill of cursing from her after the deaths of the Princes.
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