Richard III

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, tells us he will prove a villain and then does — seducing, slandering and murdering his way to the crown. The play is a star vehicle for evil and a piece of Tudor myth-making about how the Plantagenets ended.

Why it is set. A study in theatrical villainy and propaganda. Write about soliloquy, the audience as accomplice, and the women who curse him when the men cannot stop him.

Plot

1. 1

   ‘Winter of our discontent’

   Peace has made Richard unemployed as a warrior. He sets Clarence and Edward against each other, then woos Lady Anne over her husband’s corpse — and wins.

2. 2

   Clearing the line

   Edward IV dies. Richard, as Protector, has the princes in the Tower. Hastings is executed. Buckingham helps manufacture a public ‘request’ that Richard take the crown.

3. 3

   King Richard

   The princes are murdered. Richard discards Buckingham, seeks Elizabeth of York, and finds the realm slipping toward Richmond.

4. 4

   Bosworth

   Ghosts of the victims visit Richard and Richmond the night before battle. Richard’s horse is lost. Richmond kills him and offers the Tudor close: union of the roses.

Characters

• Richard

  Duke of Gloucester; later king

  Deformity, charisma, and direct address. He makes us laugh and then shows us the body count. The role is a masterclass in how soliloquy builds complicity.

• Margaret / Elizabeth / Anne / the Duchess

  The chorus of women

  Margaret’s curses script the play’s poetic justice. The women remember what the political plot wants to forget.

• Buckingham / Richmond

  Ally and avenger

  Buckingham is the co-author who is not paid. Richmond is thinly characterised on purpose: he is a function, the Tudor dawn.

Themes

• Villainy and performance

  Richard plays the plain man, the lover, the reluctant king. History becomes a series of scenes he directs until Bosworth, when the dead take the stage.

• Power and legitimacy

  Crowns can be staged. The play shows the machinery (sermons, rumours, councils) and then the cost (children in the Tower).

• Fate, curses, providence

  Margaret’s language of reckoning and the Bosworth ghosts pull a fast political plot back into a moral universe — convenient for a Tudor audience.

• The body

  Richard’s disability is both his bitter joke and the play’s emblem of a crooked realm. Modern productions have to think ethically about this.

Key quotations

Learn speaker, location, and what the line is doing — not the words alone.

• Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York.

  Richard · I.1

  A public sentence that twists into private grievance. The pun on sun/son is the first of many verbal weapons.

• I am determined to prove a villain.

  Richard · I.1

  ‘Determined’ as decided and as shaped by nature. Character as project. He tells us the plot.

• Was ever woman in this humour wooed? / Was ever woman in this humour won?

  Richard · I.2

  After Anne yields, he turns to us in astonishment and glee. Seduction as a feat — and we clapped.

• A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

  Richard · V.4

  The politician of language reduced to a marketplace shout. Kingdom and animal in one bargain: power’s last inflation.

Exam notes

• Audience address is a method. Richard’s asides make us co-conspirators — until we are not.
• Balance the star part with the women’s voices and the princes.
• Tudor propaganda is real; so is the play’s delight in Richard. Hold both.
• Compare the opening soliloquy with the Bosworth night speech: the performer who cannot find himself.

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