Richard III Research Paper

Introduction to W. Shakespeare’s Richard III
Richard III is among the plays that Shakespeare wrote about the history of England. The events in Richard III come directly after the 3rd part of Henry VI. These two plays make Shakespeare’s first tetralogy; Henry VI that has 3 parts and Richard III are altogether 4 plays in which the events are related. He used Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland(1587) as the main source of his “History Plays” (or Chronicle Plays–sometimes the Histories or the Chronicles). These are Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Henry VIII, King John, Richard II and Richard III. He also used Edward Hall’s historical story, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548),
for this tetralogy. Although Shakespeare’s history plays were based on historical records, he had never been strictly loyal to the original sources. He made many changes, stretched and altered the time line, possibly to increase the dramatic effect of his plays.
The events in these historical plays start from deposing of King Richard II and establishing the Lancaster Dynasty by Henry IV and go up to establishing of the Tudor Dynasty by King Henry VII who is grandfather of Queen Elizabeth. During this time period one of the most important domestic turmoil of the British history took place. Historians labelled this war as the Wars of Roses after the family symbols of the two rival groups: the Lancaster family, symbolized by a red rose, and the York family, symbolized by a white rose. According to Shakespeare’s world view deposing and execution of King Richard II by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who became King Henry IV, was a great sin and Lancaster Dynasty was established over this sin. They ruined the order of Kingdom and captured the Crown by force (Urgan, 162). So, none of his Lancaster successors, Henry V and Henry VI had peaceful days during their reigns. On the other hand when Shakespeare wrote this play, Queen Elizabeth I ruled England. She was the granddaughter of King Henry VII who deposed Richard III. In Elizabethan era, according to general view, Richard was a monster and not a legitimate king of England. It would have been dangerous for anyone to suggest the opposite of this view. (http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/richardiii/context.html)
After a bloody struggle, the Lancastrian Henry VI was deposed and the head of the York family took the throne as King Edward IV in 1461.
Henry IV gained the kingship in 1470 but again he was disposed in 1471. King Henry IV was executed and his son Edward, the Prince of Wales was killed in the battle. After the executions, Edward took the throne once again. The long civil war between the royal families of York and Lancaster wasn’t finished by this, but they gave a brake until the Battle of Bosworth, the last battle of Wars of Roses. England enjoyed a period of peace under King Edward IV and the victorious Yorks. The events of the civil war and the executions of the kings and the princes are important background to Richard III. The action in this play begins shortly after Edward became the king again. Richard was the King’s, who was growing older and was often in poor health, younger brother. He resents his power and the happiness of those around him. Richard was a cruel and power-hungry man and he was also unpleasant about his physical deformity. He wanted to become the new king after the death of his brother. But there were many people standing between him and the kingship. When King Edward died he left behind two sons who were in line for the throne. In addition to this Richard had another older brother George, the duke of Clarence. He was also an obstacle between Richard and the kingship. But nothing could stop Richard; he decided to kill his rivals in order to become
king.
Using his intelligence and his skills of deception and political manipulation, Richard began his campaign for the throne. He turned old King Edward against their brother George by libelling him with the suspicion of plotting to kill the king. So George was imprisoned in the Tower, then in the 4th scene he was murdered. After the death of his brother, King Edward who was thinking to cancel the death warrant started grieving and this accelerated his illness and death. After death of King Edward, Richard became lord protector of England until the elder of Edward’s sons grow up.
In act 1 scene 2 Richard tried to manipulate a noble woman, Lady Anne, to marry him. Even though Richard killed her husband, Prince Edward and her father-in-law, former king Henry VI, she accepted marrying Richard. Because he told her that he had killed her husband and father-in-law for the sake of her beauty. And she believed him.
After the death of his brothers the main obstacle between Richard and the crown was his nephews. But it was not so easy to eliminate them because their mother was a princes and she had very powerful relatives who could protect her and her sons. Then Richard made another plan and killed the court noblemen who were loyal to the princes. He then had the princes’ relatives on their mother’s side arrested and executed. This left the princes unprotected. After that, Richard had his political allies, particularly his right-hand man, Lord Buckingham, campaign to have Richard crowned king. Richard then imprisoned the young princes in the Tower and, sends hired murderers to kill both children.
By this time, Richard’s reign of terror caused the common people of England to fear and hate him, and he had alienated nearly all the noblemen of the court—even the power-hungry Lord Buckingham. When he hesitated to consent to killing the young princes, he lost Richard’s confidence. Though later he agreed and claimed the earldom of Hereford as he had been promised, Richard refused him. When rumours began to circulate about a challenger to the throne who was gathering forces in France, many offended noblemen were eager to join his forces. The challenger was the earl of Richmond, a descendant of a secondary arm of the Lancaster family. England and many Englishmen were ready to welcome him.
In the meantime Richard was trying to consolidate his power. He murdered his wife Queen Anne, so that he could marry young Elizabeth, the daughter of the former Queen and the dead King Edward. Though young Elizabeth was his niece, the alliance would secure his claim to the throne. Nevertheless, Richard had begun to lose control of events, and Queen Elizabeth managed to forestall him. Meanwhile, she secretly promised to marry young Elizabeth to Richmond.
Finally Richmond invaded England. The night before the Bosworth, the last battle of the War of Roses, that would decide everything, Richard had a terrible dream in which the ghosts of all the people he had murdered appeared and cursed him, telling him that he would die the next day. When he woke up he said;
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? (Richard III, V, 3, 183-186)
He felt the illusion of dominating everything around him. But it was not the case. He was faltering and he was thinking of the murders he had committed. In the battle on the following morning, Richard was killed, and Richmond was crowned King Henry VII. Promising a new era of peace for England, the new king was betrothed to young Elizabeth in order to unite the fighting houses of Lancaster and York.
Character Analysis of 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 placed on Richard’s mind. Critics sometimes compare Richard to the medieval character, Vice, who was a flat and one-sided embodiment of evil. Richard links himself with the Vice when he declares:
Thus like the formal Vice, Iniquity,
I moralize two meanings in one word (III, 1, 82-83)
According to the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, “Richard’s jaunty sangfroid and conspiratorial self-disclosure are also indebted to the dramatic traditions of the morality play Vice, and his Elizabethan heir, the Machiavel, who villainously parodies the pragmatic political philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli.” (Dobson and Wells,
387).
However, especially in the later scenes of the play, Richard proves to be highly self-reflective and complicated by making his terrible acts all the more terrifying (http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/richardiii/canalysis.html). For example in the last act before the battle that he was going to die he says;
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul will pity me. (Richard III,V,3, 200-201)
Yet, by looking at his words one cannot fall the illusion that he was suffering or regretful about what he had done. His conscious bothered him only when he was asleep. When he woke up, he turned to his normal mood;
Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls;
Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devis’d at first to keep the strong awe;
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. (V, 3, 309-312)
Perhaps more than in any other play by Shakespeare, the audience or the readers of Richard III experience a complex, ambiguous, and highly changeable relationship with the main character. Richard is clearly a villain; he declares this clearly in his very first speech that he wasn’t intended to stop before achieving his wicked designs. But despite his open commitment to evil, he was 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. “Shakespeare took obvious delight in exploring the crevices of his tragic hero – for there is something heroic in Richard 's ambition and scheming against such odds, and his eventual arriving where he intended to be, as also his fate was tragic”.(Rowse, 954)
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 a clear knowledge of his evil, allow themselves to be seduced by his brilliant wordplay, his skilful argumentation, and his insistent pursuit of his selfish desires. “By considering his skilful behaviours against his enemies he was seen as one of the anti-heroes of English literature” (Wells, 25).
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 1, for example, Richard unhappily claims that his malice toward others stems from the fact 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. (http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/richardiii/canalysis.html)
It quickly became apparent, however, that Richard simply used his deformity as a tool to gain the sympathy of others. Richard’s evil was a much more innate part of his character than simple bitterness about his ugly body. On the other hand, according to John Palmer, he was almost in love with his hunchback (Palmer, 84-85) because; his physical deformity was also a symbol of his superiority. He was born ugly and malformed but he was proud of managing things that many handsome men couldn’t succeed. And he also used this speech to win trust; he repeated this strategy throughout his struggle to be the king. After he was crowned king and Richmond began his uprising, Richard’s monologues ended. Once Richard stopped using his charisma on the audience, his real nature became much more apparent; he died fearlessly as he lived during the Bosworth Battle, without feeling sorry for the murders that he committed.

Works Cited
Dobson, Michael, and Stanley Wells.The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. New York: Oxford University Press. 2001. Pdf file.
Rowse, A.L., The Annotated Shakespeare The Comedies The Histories, Sonnets and Other Poems The Tragedies and Romances. New York: Greenwich House. 1988. Pdf file.
Shakespeare, William. “Richard III.” The Annotated Shakespeare The Comedies The Histories, Sonnets and Other Poems The Tragedies and Romances. Ed. A.L. Rowse. New York: Greenwich House. 1988. Pdf file
Urgan, Mina. Shakespeare ve Hamlet.İstanbul: CemYayınevi. 1996. Print.
Wells, Stanley. Shakespeare: YazarveEserleri (Shakespeare: The Writer and his Work). İstanbul: YapıKrediYayınları. 1995. Print
Web sources
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/richardiii/context.html