This friendly scene-by-scene guide may help you to keep up with events, characters and themes as you read your way through Richard III. It includes historical background to events and people in Shakespeare’s play, and some simple interpretations.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: The Wars of the Roses 1422-1485

Shakespeare tells the story of the dynastic wars between York (White Rose) and Lancaster (Red Rose) in his three-part play, Henry VI, and in Richard III. Together these plays form Shakespeare’s first Tetralogy, or group of four history plays. All four are among Shakespeare’s early works, written and first performed between 1590 and 1593.

The following is an outline of preceding events affecting the on-stage action of Richard III. References are to the Penguin edition, edited by E.A.J. Honigmann and introduced by Michael Taylor (2005). Bolded names below designate historical figures in Henry VI who reappear as characters in Richard III.

1. Beginning of the Wars

Richard, Duke of York, attempted to depose the pious Lancastrian king, Henry VI. This began a conflict in which Henry’s Queen, Margaret, and her ally, the Duke of Warwick, chiefly defended Lancastrian power.

2. The Triumph of the Lancastrians

Queen Margaret and Warwick won an initial victory. The Lancastrians murdered Edmund, Earl of Rutland (Henry VI part 3, Act 1), and Margaret personally humiliated and murdered his father, the Duke of York. These are the reasons for the hatred which exists between the Yorkists and Margaret in Richard III.

3. The Triumph of the Yorkists

The remaining sons of the Duke of York, Edward, George and Richard, defeated the Lancastrians. Edward, the eldest, was crowned king as Edward IV. Richard’s opening speech in Richard III refers to the York triumph.

Edward IV married a commoner, the widow Elizabeth Woodville. She (Queen Elizabeth), together with her brother, Sir Anthony Woodville, and her sons, Lord Grey and Marquis Dorset, comprise the “Queen’s faction” which opposes Richard, Hastings and Buckingham in Richard III.

4. The Victory of the Yorkists

Margaret and Warwick attempted to regain power, and were again defeated. The York brothers murdered Prince Edward, the son of Margaret and Henry VI (Henry VI part 3 Act 5). Richard alone murdered Margaret’s husband, the innocent Henry VI. In Richard III 1. 2, the king’s corpse is accompanied by the Lady Anne, his daughter-in-law (his son Edward’s wife).

5. The Story of Clarence

Clarence’s sense of guilt in Richard III stems from his actions in Henry VI. He swore allegiance to the Lancastrian side, and sealed this agreement by marrying the Duke of Warwick’s younger daughter. However at a crucial moment in the conflict he reverted to his brothers’ side (Henry VI 5.1), and helped them to murder Edward, Prince of Wales.

6. Dissension among the Yorkists

As suggested in Richard’s opening speech, strife within the York faction is the main subject of Richard III.

7. The End of the Wars of the Roses

The new king, Henry VII (Richmond), who succeeds Richard after the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, is descended on his mother’s side from the Lancastrian, John of Gaunt. On his father’s side he is a Tudor, and so introduces a new dynasty when he becomes king. Richmond is the grandfather of Elizabeth I, the reigning monarch when Shakespeare wrote Richard III.

Like the Tudor painters who doctored Richard’s portraits, Shakespeare offers us the winning side’s perspective on the Wars of the Roses. He follows Sir Thomas More and the Tudor Chronicler Raphael Holinshed in painting Richard as “a deep dissembler…despitous and cruel.”

By marrying Elizabeth, the daughter of the York king, Edward IV at the end of Richard III, Henry VII (Richmond), at last unites the houses of York and Lancaster, the white rose and the red.

RICHARD III THUMBNAIL ANALYSIS:
Who Dies When…?

ACT 1: George, Duke of Clarence

ACT 2: King Edward IV

ACT 3: The Queen’s faction: Rivers, Grey and Vaughan, and William Lord Hastings, the Lord Chamberlain

Climax: Richard Duke of Gloucester crowned king

ACT 4: Young Prince Edward and his brother Richard, Duke of York and Anne, Richard’s Queen

ACT 5: The Duke of Buckingham

Climax: Death in Battle of King Richard III

Torrents of blood and aggravated acts of violence keep the audience interested throughout the play. They culminate in Act Five in the Battle of Bosworth Field (actually fought in Leicestershire on 1 August, 1485). Following the battle, the legendary finding of the king’s crown under a hawthorn bush was a decisive moment in English history. At this point the Plantagenet dynasty, which had ruled England from the twelfth century, latterly through its York and Lancaster branches, gave place to the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII (i.e. Henry, Earl of Richmond in Richard III.)

RICHARD III: ACT-by-ACT ANALYSIS

ACT ONE

STRUCTURE

Richard’s opening speech outlines the state of the kingdom and reveals his own ambitions.

Three internal events in Act 1 demonstrate how Richard’s display of benevolence and right feeling deceives those who should be closest to him:

• Scene 1: Richard comforts his brother, Clarence, on his way to the Tower of London, and promises to plead with King Edward for Clarence’s release.
• Scene 2: Richard’s courtship of Lady Anne
• Scene 3: Court scene—only the King is absent; Richard denies that he feels any enmity towards the Queen’s faction, and claims that that faction has engineered Clarence’s imprisonment.

**The Climax of Act 1 is Scene 4, Clarence’s Murder.** The Act builds suspense leading to this climax, beginning with Richard’s early conversation with Clarence. In Scene 4 suspense builds even further in prose interchanges between the murderers, which develop themes of conscience and divine justice, and in Clarence’s eloquent pleas, which indeed succeed in dissuading Second Murderer from doing the deed. The climax of the Act is the murder’s physical horror—Clarence’s stabbing and drowning in a barrel of Malmsey (sweet Greek wine).

ACT ONE: CHARACTERISATION

Richard Duke of Gloucester

Analyse 1.1.1-32, where Richard introduces himself to the audience.
Trace the structure: find the two logical turning points in the speech.

Trace and explain the images (metaphors) that Richard uses, such as season and weather; “stamped” (line 15); “weak-piping time of peace” (line 24); “descant on” (line 27). How is war personified (lines 9-13)? How does the transformation of war to peace affect Richard? If the peace achieved after so much bloodshed proves so fragile now (and is treated so ironically), how might this affect our attitude to peace, when it is seemingly re-established at the end of the play?

Why does Richard regard himself as unsuited to the time of peace?

What are the sexual innuendos of the passage?

What is the tone of the passage? Consider the following possible descriptors: energetic; playful; ironic; bitter; self-pitying; self-congratulatory. What feelings does the passage evoke in you as listener or reader? How far are you on Richard’s side? How likeable is he?

Lady Anne

Act 1, Scene 2 initially associates Anne with ceremony, in that she is chief mourner in King Henry VI’s funeral procession. She is associated also with the saintliness of that “holy king,” now “key-cold” and “bloodless” (line 5-7). She represents civilised responses to tragedy, and the orderliness of civilisation. By contrast, Richard is full of evil natural energy; he embodies the tremendous power of egoism untroubled by conscience which does so much damage in our world. In Richard this energy combines with a dominating male sexuality. Anne is the first character to see Richard as an incarnate devil: “this fiend” (line 32); “thou dreadful minister of hell” (lines 43-44).

The dialogue builds on this antithesis between Anne and Richard in rhetorical passages (e.g. lines 71-72), which sometimes blossom into stichomythia, or line-for-line dialogue (e.g. lines 178-181).

Anne ceases to represent civilisation when she gives way to cursing (lines 14-26). Like most other curses in this play, Anne’s are destined to be fulfilled. Typical ironies are that Anne curses Richard’s wife and children, and that she curses his bed chamber with “ill rest” (line 110). These curses later fall on herself.

At the end of Scene 1 (lines 152-158), Richard by implication invited the audience to participate in the wooing scene from his perspective. The audience, especially the male part of it, therefore has the pleasure of applauding the techniques of a virtuoso seducer. Act 1, Scene 2 initiates a “war of the sexes” theme which extends through the play. Like Anne, Richard’s other female opponents represent different combinations of civilised inhibition on one side and of passionate hatred and revenge on the other.

George, Duke of Clarence

Analyse 1.4. 9-60—Clarence’s Dream

Explain the ironies of Clarence’s narrative as these ironies concern Richard, Clarence’s manner of death, and what an audience might surmise about his eternal destiny.

How far has his guilty conscience shaped Clarence’s dream?

How far do you agree with Clarence’s description of himself at line 4 as “a Christian-faithful man”? In terms of the play text (see later in the same scene, lines 176-205), how likely is Clarence’s redemption? (NOTE: Standard Christian theology states that repentance must precede Christ’s forgiveness.) How do you interpret Clarence’s vision of the treasure and dead men at the bottom of the sea (lines 23-31)? What elements make this dream narrative, and the whole drama of Clarence’s death, so horrific and powerful ? –consider Brackenbury’s reaction to the narrative, lines 61-62.

Minor Characters

Note the groupings and allegiances of minor figures in Act I, because these develop in interesting ways later in the play.

In 1.1 William Lord Hastings, the Lord Chamberlain, is released from the Tower. Richard tells Clarence that the Queen was responsible for Hastings’ imprisonment.

King Edward, who we learn is likely to die from his illness, is not present in the court scene of 1.3. Therefore the two rival factions at the king’s court reveal their true colours. The factions are:

Queen’s Faction

Consists of: Queen Elizabeth, her brother Lord Rivers and her sons, the Marquis of Dorset, and Lord Grey.

A rift exists between the Queen and the wife of Stanley, Earl of Derby, but in 1.3 he is aligned with the Queen rather than with Richard. A descendant of Stanley may have been Shakespeare’s patron when he was writing Richard III–a fact that may explain Stanley’s positive characterisation in the play.

York Faction

Consists of: Richard, Hastings, and (as is finally clear in lines 288-300) Buckingham.

DEVELOPMENT OF ACT ONE, SCENE THREE

Queen Elizabeth fears her fate if King Edward should die, and if Richard were to become Protector of her young son, Prince Edward, the heir to the throne; this i the beginning of growing suspense in the play about the prince’s survival.

The Queen is innocent of Richard’s accusations that she has acted against Clarence, Hastings and himself. Richard sneers at her age and her common birth, implying that she seduced the young King Edward to marry her. The Queen’s wish for reconciliation is apparent when she calls Richard as “Brother of Gloucester.” She wins our sympathy by her longing to return to “that contented hap” that she enjoyed before she became Queen (lines 82-83).

Queen Margaret enters at line 108. At first she provides a Lancastrian chorus, revelling in the growing enmity between the two Yorkist factions. At line 157 she comes forward to address the court openly. From this point the conflict is between herself and all the Yorkists, primarily Richard. Her curses from line 195 include King Edward and his and Queen Elizabeth’s son, the young Prince Edward; and random members of both factions: Queen Elizabeth (“Die neither mother, wife nor England’s queen” line 208); and Rivers, Dorset, and Hastings. Finally Margaret curses Richard with “the worm of conscience,” traitorous friends, sleeplessness and tormenting dreams, “a hell of ugly devils” line 226).

Margaret warns Queen Elizabeth against Richard: “Why strewest thou sugar on that bottled spider/Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?” (lines 241-42). For Buckingham she prophecies: “[Richard] shall split thy very heart with sorrow” (line 299).

Margaret thus sets the agenda for the divine retribution that will work itself out on evil doers over the remainder of the play. She is the last of the three women, Richard’s opponents, to be introduced in Act 1. Unlike Anne and the Queen, she is an uncomplicated embodiment of hatred and the will for vengeance—an unrepentant outsider to the civilised insincerities of the court.

ACT ONE: THEMES

Politics

Act One demonstrates how ordinary human beings, who are flawed but basically well-intentioned and moved by conscience, are vulnerable to the machinations of someone totally self-interested and lacking conscience. The fates of Lady Anne, Queen Elizabeth, and Clarence support this theme, a political reality that leads repeatedly to tragic consequences in human affairs.

Politics and war in Richard III are intertwined with a war between the sexes. In Scene 2 Anne succumbs to Richard’s sexual vitality; and in Scene 3 the likely consequences for her young sons of Richard’s growing power cause Queen Elizabeth intense concern. Later in Scene 3, Margaret’s consuming hatred is as intense and primitive as Richard’s consuming ambition and self-love. These three women, Richard’s opponents in Act 1, are past, present and future queens of England. For much of the play their power is limited to verbal manoeuvring and curses—to prayers that divine justice will take its course. The queens are confined to outward ceremony and to spiritual and emotional dimensions. Unwillingly, they leave Richard to “bustle” in the world of politics, crime and war.

Finally, Richard III, Act 1 contributes much to the exploration of kingship that is central to Shakespeare’s English history plays:

• For Richard kingship is an unquestioned good; it means power, and is the chief goal of his ambitions.
• Queen Elizabeth reveals the misery of her high office: “Small joy have I in being England’s queen.”
• Clarence places earthly kingship in the Christian context of the “great King of Kings, [who]/ Hath in the table of His law commanded/ That thou shalt do no murder” (1.4.198-200).

Morality and Religion

Richard III proposes, and justifies through its unfolding plot, the thesis that divine justice ultimately prevails over human affairs. In Act 1 this is borne out by Clarence’s death, which is seen in part as deserved retribution for his breaking of his promise to Warwick and the Lancastrian faction. However, Clarence’s human predicament also evokes compassion in the audience.

Acting: Appearance and Reality

Richard is not only acted, but he is also a supreme actor throughout the play. He embodies performance as art and as deception, as a power for good corrupted to a power for evil. Richard III demonstrates the connection between acting and politics that is endemic in most if not all societies.

ACT TWO: “Accursèd and unquiet wrangling days!” (2.4.55)

In Act Two messengers come and go with bad news. Characters move from place to place, testifying to unrest, anxiety and uncertainty throughout the kingdom. Dramatically, this is an Act of increasing suspense.

STRUCTURE

Scene One

King Edward forces a reconciliation between the factions: Queen Elizabeth, Grey, Rivers and Dorset on one side and Hastings and Buckingham on the other. Richard’s entrance with news of Clarence’s death upsets the hopeful scene. The King leaves the stage, to die in guilt and despair.

Scene Two

This is a scene of patterned lamentation led by female characters:

• Queen Elizabeth weeps for her husband King Edward;
• Clarence’s children weep for their father;
• The Duchess of York weeps for her sons, Edward and Clarence.

Richard forges an alliance with Buckingham, and plots to separate the young King Edward from the Queen’s faction.

Scene Three

London citizens discuss the state of the nation. First and Third Citizens fear imminent dangers, but Second Citizen trusts in the young King Edward’s uncles on both his father’s and his mother’s side.

Scene Four

Dorset reports that Richard and Buckingham have detained Rivers, Grey and Vaughan in Pomfret Castle in Yorkshire. Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York take the young king’s younger brother, the Duke of York, to sanctuary. (Royal women remain Richard’s chief opponents, as the war of the sexes theme continues.)

ACT TWO: CHARACTERISATION

Richard, Duke of Gloucester

Richard’s actions and his family’s reactions characterise him further.

His entrance in Scene One displays a superb sense of timing. He goes on to enact the King’s wish for reconciliation among his courtiers, turning inclusively to the Queen and her kindred and to Buckingham. This wins Queen Elizabeth over, so that she generously requests the King to release Clarence. Richard then casually lets slip the news of Clarence’s execution, initiating the confusion and danger that prevail through the rest of Act Two.

In 2.2 Clarence’s children and Richard’s mother, the Duchess of York, reveal more about Richard’s deceptiveness. The form taken by the Duchess’s blessing (see below) is highly significant, while Richard’s aside in response further exemplifies his energy, as well as the transgressive (rule- and convention-breaking) appeal that his character holds for an audience:

DUCHESS OF YORK: God bless thee, and put meekness in thy breast,
Love, charity, obedience, and true duty!

RICHARD: Amen! (Aside) And make me die a good old man!
That is the butt-end of a mother’s blessing;
I wonder that her grace did leave it out. (2.2.107-111)

The next scene (2.4) extends revelations about Richard by his close mother, talking to her grandson, the young Duke of York. The Duchess of York recalls symbolic features of Richard’s infancy: that he grew slowly and lacked grace; and that he was born with teeth. Renaissance theory perpetuated the medieval error, exemplified in Chaucer’s portrait of the Pardoner, that bodily features are a guide to the inner character. Shakespeare follows the Tudor apologist, Henry VIII’s Chancellor Sir Thomas More, in reading Richard’s misshapen body as a reflection of moral evil. More wrote:

Richard, the third son,…was in wit and courage equal with either of them [Edward and Clarence], in body and prowess far under them both, little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard-favoured of visage, and such as is in states [i.e. among people of rank] called warly [i.e. warlike], and in other men otherwise. He was malicious, wrathful, envious and from afore his birth ever forward. It is for truth reported that the Duchess his mother had so much ado in her travail [i.e. labour] that she could not be delivered of him uncut, and that he came into the world with feet forward, as men be born outward, and, as the fame runneth also, not untoothed….So that the full confluence of these qualities, with the defects of favour and amiable proportion, gave proof to this rule of physiognomy: Distortum vultum sequitur distortio morum. [Distortion of character follows from distortion of outward countenance.] (Sir Thomas More, History of Richard III]

Minor Characters

Like his brother Clarence in Act One, King Edward IV worries about guilt and redemption (2.1.4-5), and, also like Clarence, refers to the transcendent authority of Christ as the King of kings (compare 1.4.198-200 and 2.1. 13-14). Edward’s departing words repeat the theme of God’s justice (2.1.133-34).

Buckingham vows loyalty to Queen Elizabeth on pain of his own betrayal by his dearest friend (2.1.32-40)—terms which of course the poetic justice of this play is later to fulfill. In the following scene, Buckingham breaks his oath by plotting with Richard on how to separate the young king from the protection of his mother’s relations (2.2.146-54).

At the beginning of Act Two, Hastings swears on his “prosperity,” his “true heart’s” and “inviolable“ love to the Queen’s family. In Act 3 he will prove himself indeed to be loyal to King Edward and his sons, but indifferent, and somewhat pleased, about the imprisonment of the Queen’s relations. This creates yet another opportunity in Richard III for observing the working out of divine justice.

ACT TWO: THEMES

In addition to advancing the themes of divine justice, political deception and the power of acting, Act Two develops ideas about children and families. Lies and deception tear apart the royal York family: the natural affection between brothers, and between mother and son, is shown to be vulnerable to ambition, deception and violence. Richard emerges from Act Two as his family’s curse, the corrupt instrument of God’s justice. He is a manipulator who threatens to undermine the strict hierarchies that governed Elizabethan family life.

RICHARD III ACT THREE: What happens?

This climactic Act dramatises the sequential stages of a carefully executed coup d’etat:

• Richard advances his plot against his brother Edward’s heirs: the two young princes are sent to the Tower.
• By Richard’s order, Queen Elizabeth’s faction, Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan are executed at Pomfret Castle.
• Richard entraps and betrays William Lord Hastings, who is beheaded when he remains loyal to the young King Edward and his brother York.
• Richard and Buckingham persuade the Mayor of London to accept Hastings’ execution as just.
• Finally, the two plotters engineer the Mayor and citizens’ consent to Richard’s crowning.

Richard’s procedure for seizing and consolidating power is the same as that of many modern dictators. Richard’s position as the young Princes’ “Protector” gives him control of the army and the medieval equivalent of the “police.” Act Three gives a false appearance of legitimacy to the power that Richard has seized.

Buckingham acts as Richard’s campaign manager, theatrical agent or stage manager. He extends the whole play’s exploration of politics as acting and performance.

ACT THREE: DETAILED ANALYSIS

Scene One: Princes Taken to the Tower of London

This scene confirms that the two young princes are full of promise, so the audience will feel more sorrow for their loss. The young Edward (now technically the King) knows that Richard is his enemy, but is helpless to resist Richard’s adult power as “Protector”. When Edward protests at the death of his uncles, the Queen’s relations (line 6); Richard’s reply (lines 7-11) is ironical, because the charge of the uncles’ deceit above all to himself. The young king mistakenly overrules his mother’s retreat to sanctuary because he wants the comfort of his brother York’s presence. His interest in the Tower’s history shows his intelligence. He plans, like Julius Caesar, to be immortalised after his death as a famous soldier. When young York plays dangerously with Richard by drawing attention to the latter’s physical disabilities, Edward’s tension and his apology (lines 126-7) again show his astuteness. Deadly fear underlies the playfulness between Richard and the young York. The elder brother’s remark, “I fear no uncles dead” (line 146), and both boys’ terror at the sight of the Tower show that they recognise the perils of their high rank.

Minor Characters in Scene One

Although he stands firm at first, the Cardinal soon capitulates and agrees to bring the Queen and young York from sanctuary. Presumably he thereby activates against himself his oath, sworn at the end of Act 2: “and so betide to me/ As well I tender you and all of yours” (2.4.75-76).

Buckingham’s specious legal arguments against the sanctuary claimed by the Queen (3.1.44-56) will remind some modern readers of Sir Humphrey Appleby’s double-talk in Yes, Minister.

From line 150, Scene One deals with the plots of Richard, his confidant Buckingham, and his servant, Catesby. Buckingham seems to act as leader when he sends Catesby to test how far Hastings will go in supporting Richard as king. However, Richard’s evil shocks even Buckingham, when Richard casually announces Hastings’ fate: “Chop off his head man. Somewhat we will do” (line 193).

Like a shadow minister negotiating with his party leader before an election in a modern democracy, Buckingham brokers his reward with Richard: he is to receive the earldom of Hereford and all the former king’s furniture and goods (191-3). The blindness of Buckingham’s avarice and ambition in trusting Richard, and the irony of his position are obvious to the audience.

Scene Two: Hastings Taken to the Tower

Hastings chooses to ignore Lord Stanley’s dream of the “boar”  that “razed his helm.” Richard’s coat of arms on his shield and pennant is a boar. Like Clarence’s dream, Stanley’s dream is an ironic prediction, not only of Hastings’ death, but also of the manner of his death–beheading. Further irony occurs in Hastings’ words to Catesby, by which he dooms himself: “I’ll have this crown of mine cut from my shoulders/Ere I will see the crown so foul misplaced” (41-2).

Hastings is quite a complex figure and our sympathies are divided: he has shared Mistress Shore, King Edward’s mistress, with the King; and he is pleased that the Queen’s brother and sons have been executed. Hastings has a hearty but misguided optimism and self-confidence. Scene Two ends when he sets out for the Tower, which has become a slaughterhouse for everyone who might hinder Richard’s progress to the crown.

Scene Three: Executions at Pomfret Castle

The last conversation between Rivers, Grey and Vaughan reminds the audience that these deaths of the Queen’s supporters fulfill some of the old Queen Margaret’s curses. Like Clarence, Rivers in a redemptive ending prays for his family.

Scene Four: The Council in the Tower

Richard switches suddenly from acting the part of an affable ruler to acting he part of a betrayed and furious auotcrat as he engineers Hastings’ condemnation. However Hastings’ last words comment on the foolishness of worldly ambition.

Scene Five: Richard and Buckingham Persuade the Lord Mayor

Richard and Buckingham act as if they are “distraught and mad with terror,” threatened by Hastings’ supposed plots. “I can counterfeit the deep tragedian,” says Buckingham (line 6). Catesby’s entrance bearing Hastings’ head resolves all questions.

Scene Six: The Scrivener

In this interlude a scrivener (copyist of legal documents for the illiterate) comments that Catesby commissioned him to write Hastings’ indictment, or notice of execution, hours before any accusation was made against him. This scene ends the Hastings sequence, and slackens off suspense before the Act Three climax in Scene seven.

Scene Seven: Climax—Richard’s Acclamation as King

Richard’s triumph here is the culmination of all foregoing plots and counter plots. In a tense and rushed opening dialogue, Buckingham reveals that his address to the citizens at the Guildhall has had only token success. Like a pair of actors preparing a scene, Richard and Buckingham plot their address to the citizens: they discuss the set (Richard up high under the roof); the support actors (the two Bishops who attend Richard); theatrical property (his book of prayers); and the action (Richard will at first refuse abut accept the crown).

Richard’s hypocritical piety and humility are a great acting opportunity, packed with irony: “O do not swear, my lord of Buckingham” (line 219) (!!)

Act Three: Speeches for Analysis

Hastings’ death speech (3.4.96-107); Richard refuses the crown (3.7.140-72).

RICHARD III: ACT FOUR

QUEEN MARGARET: So now prosperity begins to mellow
And drop into the rotten mouth of death. (4. 4. 1-2)

The interval between Acts 3 and 4 is a turning point in Richard III. From this point the mood darkens, as the focus shifts from Richard’s brilliance as a hypocritical actor/politician to its horrific real consequences of his brilliance: the death of the young princes, the bereavement of mothers; the betrayal and deaths of his wife and friends. The play’s centre of interest moves away from Machiavellian politics to Richard himself. The tale of Richard’s internal disintegration in Act Four and of his death in Act Five are a morally satisfying portrayal of the fate of evil-doers.

ACT FOUR: EVENTS AND CHARACTERS

Richard as King

Acts One to Three dramatise Richard’s rise; Acts Four-Five trace his decline. In Act 4 there are three signs of Richard’s declining power:

1. Richard’s triumph gives him no peace: no sooner does he mount the throne than he’s afraid of losing it: “But shall we wear these honours for a day?/Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?” (4.2.4-5). Reservations expressed earlier by other characters about royal power and glory become the moral teaching that these are worth the murders and betrayals that Richard has committed to obtain them.
2. Richard is threatened by disintegration from within. We now learn from Queen Anne that during his marriage he suffered every night from “timorous dreams” (4.1.82-84). Like Clarence’s Second Murderer, even Richard is subject to conscience, despite his claim, in a brief recovery of his energy and wit, that “tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye.” (4.2.64);
3. Richard is defensive, and fails to act competently against external threats. From Act Four he is no longer the masterly plotter, focused on winning the crown and methodically eliminating obstacles. Instead, fear drives him to murder his young nephews, to contrive Queen Anne’s death, and to persuade Queen Elizabeth to allow him to marry her daughter, his niece the Princess Elizabeth.

By the end of Act Four, Richard is leading his army towards Salisbury to meet Richmond in battle, but his command over external forces has been shaken by events that are performed or reported in this suspenseful Act:

• Buckingham’s hesitation over the princes’ murder undermines his relationship with Richard. When Buckingham sense his danger, flees, and revolts, the flooding River Severn destroys his army and he is captured. Buckingham’s fate is unresolved when Act Four ends.
• We discover (4.5.17-18) that Queen Elizabeth’s acquiescence to Richard’s proposal to wed Elizabeth’s daughter in the second courtship scene of the play (4.4.186-350) was only a strategy, and that the Queen supports her daughter’s marriage to Richmond, not to Richard.
• While Buckingham is requesting his reward, Richard is preoccupied with fearful speculations about prophecies of Richmond’s kingship (4.2. 93-109).
• In a panic when bad news comes of revolts at home and of Richmond’s army, Richard gives confused orders (4.4.361-73).
• Instead of his sending out obedient executioners and murderers as previously, now messengers from diverse geographical sites in England converge on Richard with news of military losses and challenges. He behaves irrationally by striking a messenger (4. 4. 416-35).

The Murder of the Princes in the Tower: Scene 3

TYRRELL: The tyrannous and bloody deed is done,
The most arch-act of piteous massacre
That ever yet this land was guilty of.
Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn
To do this ruthless piece of butchery—
Although they were fleshèd villains, bloody dogs—
Melting with tenderness and kind compassion,
Wept like two children in their deaths’ sad stories.
‘Lo, thus,’ quoth Dighton, ‘lay those tender babes.’
‘Thus, thus,’ quoth Forrest, ‘girdling one another
Within their innocent, alabaster arms.
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk
Which in their summer beauty kissed each other.
A book of prayers on their pillow lay,
‘Which once,’ quoth Forrest, ‘almost changed my mind.
But O, the devil—’ There the villain stopped,
Whilst Dighton thus told on: ‘We smotherèd
The most replenishèd sweet work of nature
That from the prime creation e’er she framed.’
Thus both are gone with conscience and remorse.
They could not speak; and so I left them both,
To bring this tidings to the bloody King.  (4.3.1-22)

What are the theatrical advantages of the method that Shakespeare chose to convey the young princes’ murder to the audience?

Scene Four

The bereaved Queen Elizabeth, Queen Anne, and the Duchess of York form an alliance of women against Richard. This alliance turns out to be more powerful than it at first appears. The queenly women send Queen Elizabeth’s son, the Marquis of Dorset, to be Richmond’s ally against Richard. In a scene of lamentation (4.4.1-119) which begins in gentle sorrow, Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York learn the art of cursing from Queen Margaret. The scene is filled with patterned rhetorical language—exclamations, antitheses, parallels, balances and rhetorical questions—which create the effect of a chorus:

MARGARET: I had an Edward till a Richard killed him.
Thou hadst an Edward till a Richard killed him….

DUCHESS: I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him.
I had a Rutland too, thou holp’st to kill him…

Queen Margaret’s curses reach a new level of venom in this her final scene (notice the animal metaphors):

From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept
A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death.
That dog that had his teeth before his eyes,
To worry lambs and lap their gentle bloods,
That foul defacer of God’s handiwork
Thy womb let loose, to chase us to our graves.
O upright, just, and true-disposing God,
How do I thank thee that this charnel-cur
Preys on the issue of his mother’s body,
And makes her pew-fellow with others’ moan. (4.4. 44-54)

This is the Duchess of York’s last meeting with her son, and it burdens Richard in the coming battle with his mother’s curse. This is the climax of the female opposition to Richard in the play, and it would have deeply shocked the Elizabethan audience’s reverence for kinship and for the father’s authority in the family.

Question: What poetic and rhetorical devices can you find in the speeches just quoted, and what is their emotional impact?

Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby

Shakespeare piles on more suspense in Scene Four when Richard makes George Stanley a hostage for the loyalty of George’s father, the Earl of Derby. The Lord Stanley of the play is stepfather to Henry, Earl of Richmond, later Henry VII. Stanley’s wife, Margaret, Richmond’s mother, is a Lancastrian descendant of Edward III. Richmond, later Henry VII, is Margaret’s son by her first husband, Edmund Tudor: John Jowett’s introduction to the Oxford UP edition of Richard III outlines Shakespeare’s connections with the Stanley family (Introduction 4-6).

RICHARD III: ACT FIVE

STRUCTURE

In contrast with the diffuse events and wide-ranging geographical references in Acts Two, Three and Four, Act Five achieves conciseness through structural patterning supported by rhetoric.

Scene One enacts Buckingham’s execution at Salisbury. Scene Five, the last, is Richmond’s killing of Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the last battle in the Wars of the Roses. Thus the deaths of the two principal plotters frame the Act.

In Richmond, the play at last finds a male champion who can fight Richard physically. The middle scenes of Act Five are a series of paired actions that contrast Richard’s and Richmond’s preparations for battle:

• Pitching tents: Both rulers communicate with Lord Stanley, who visits Richmond. [The fate of Stanley’s son George is not known until battle begins (5.5.71-5).]
• Preparing for sleep: Richard calls for wine; Richmond prays.
• Visitations of the ghosts: The ghosts appear almost in order of their slaying: Prince Edward of Lancaster; Henry VI; Clarence; Rivers, Grey and Vaughan; the Princes in the Tower; Hastings; Anne; and Buckingham.
• Richard’s and Richmond’s contrasting awakenings;
• Richmond’s and Richard’s contrasting orations to their soldiers.

ACT FIVE: CHARACTERISATION AND THEMES

The many obvious contrasts that the play makes between Richard and Richmond embody Elizabethan notions of evil and goodness. The unfolding of the play’s many plots—including but also going beyond the plot that has Richard at its centre—upholds faith in God’s justice as the determinant of final outcomes for humans. Action and language in Act Five contrast Richmond’s sturdy good spirits with Richard’s doubts. The ghostly visitations change his doubts into terror. Richmond’s rhetoric as he waits for battle is flowing and untroubled, e.g.

The weary sun hath made a golden set,
And by the bright track of his fiery car
Gives signal of a goodly day tomorrow. (5.3.19-21)

By contrast, Richard’s fears interrupt his outward assertions of confidence, e.g.

Up with my tent! Here will I lie tonight.
But where tomorrow? Well, all’s one for that. (5.3.7-8)

Give me a bowl of wine.
I have not that alacrity of spirit
Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have. (5.3.72-74)

Richard’s awakening from his nightmare, in which the ghosts of those he has murdered foretell his defeat and death the very next day, is a near-tragic study of a man’s turmoil and disintegration. It contrasts pointedly with Richard’s earlier gleeful soliloquies and asides as he plots and murders his way to the crown:

Give me another horse! Bind up my wounds!
Have mercy, Jesu! Soft, I did but dream.
O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by.
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No.—Yes, I am.
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why—
Lest I revenge. Myself upon myself?
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O no! Alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself.
I am a villain. Yet I lie: I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree.
Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree,
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, ‘Guilty, guilty!’
I shall despair. 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?
Methought the souls of all that I had murdered
Came to my tent, and every one did threat
Tomorrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.
(5.3.178-207)

Richard’s Awakening Speech: Questions for Discussion

1. What points of comparison and contrast are there with Clarence’s telling of his dream in Act 1?
2. What points of comparison and contrast are there with Buckingham’s execution speech in Act 5 Scene 1?
3. How does the syntax and rhetoric differ from earlier speeches by Richard himself? What linguistic devices does Shakespeare use to suggest Richard’s inner division and threatened disintegration?
4. What do the following simple lines suggest about the nature of evil and the fate of evil doers? : “I shall despair. There is no creature loves me,/And if I die, no soul will pity me.”
5. How far do you agree with Harold Bloom’s negative judgments on this speech, in relation to Richard’s characterisation earlier in the play?:

Shakespeare’s Richard is a master of persuasive language rather than a profound psychologist or criminal visionary. This Richard has no inwardness, and when Shakespeare attempts to imbue him with an anxious inner self, on the eve of his fatal battle, the result is poetic bathos and dramatic disaster. Starting up out of bad dreams, Richard suddenly does not seem to be Richard, and Shakespeare scarcely knows how to represent the change.
(Harold Bloom. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. London: Fourth Estate, 1999: 66)

Richard III Act Five: The Ending

Richard pulls himself together, overcoming the effects of nightmares, ghosts, prophecies and evil omens, including the sky’s “louring” upon his army. At the last moment he rallies his soldiers. He fights like a fiend—“The King enacts more wonders than a man/…Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death” (5.4.2-5). In his final battle Richard, like Macbeth, the evil protagonist of Shakespeare’s later tragedy, displays the virtues of courage and fortitude. The irony of his famous line, “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!” (5.4.13) is obvious: the kingdom for which Richard has committed so many crimes is now worth less to him than a horse on which to fight (or flee). Directors and actors have presented the killing of Richard in many different ways, most of them bloody and sensational.

Richmond, as the first Tudor monarch concludes the play with a victory speech that celebrates the end the War of the Roses. He prays that God will blunt the swords of traitors who might again “make poor England weep in streams of blood” (5.5.37). This is a warning against insurrection in the reign of Shakespeare’s present Tudor Queen, Elizabeth I, who was Richmond’s granddaughter.

Question: In view of the violence, treachery, child murders and warfare that you as a member of Shakespeare’s audience have witnessed, how reassured are you by the optimistic ending of Richard III, including Richmond’s prophecy of a future “enriched with smooth-faced peace,/ With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days”–a future when Richmond’s descendants will reign over England?