Richard III (play) Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The Tragedy of Richard III is a play by William Shakespeare, in which the monarch Richard III of England is unflatteringly depicted.
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2 Depiction of Richard 3 Film versions 4 Dramatis personae 5 External links |
The play opens with Richard standing in "a street, delivering the beginning,
Synopsis
The speech reveals Richard's jealousy and ambition, as his brother, Edward IV of England, the eldest son of the late Duke of York (hence the pun on 'sun' and 'son'), rules the country successfully. Richard is an ugly hunchback, describing himself as "rudely stamp'd" and "deformed, unfinish'd", who cannot "strut before a wanton ambling nymph." He responds to the anguish of his condition with an outcast's credo: "I am determined to prove a villain/ And hate the idle pleasures of these days." With little attempt at chronological accuracy (which he professes to despise), Richard conspires to have his brother George, who stands before him in the line of succession, conducted to the tower as a suspected assassin; having bribed a soothsayer to fenagle the suspicious king.
The scheming Richard next ingratiates himself with "the Lady Anne" -- Anne Neville, widow of the Lancastrian Prince of Wales. Richard confides to the audience, "I'll marry Warwick's youngest daughter. What though I kill'd her husband and her father?" Despite her prejudice against him, Anne is won over by his pleas and agrees to marry him. Richard, in collaboration with his friend Buckingham (Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham), plots to be the next king, and presents himself to the other lords as a modest, devout man with no pretensions to greatness. This causes them to select him as king after Edward IV's death, putting aside the claims of his innocent young nephews (the Princes in the Tower).
Richard's crimes go from bad to worse. He murders all who stand in his way, including the young princes, Lord Hastings, his former ally Buckingham, and even his wife. When he has lost all popular support, he faces the invading Earl of Richmond (Henry VII) at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Prior to the battle, Richard is visited by the ghosts of those whose deaths he has caused, all of whom tell him to Despair and die! Alone on the field at the climax of the battle, he utters the often-quoted line, A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! He is defeated in hand-to-hand combat by Richmond, and dies dramatically.
In dramatic terms, perhaps the most important (and, arguably, the most entertaining) feature of the play is the sudden alteration in Richard's character. For the first 'half' of the play, we see Gloucester as something of a demonic larrikin, causing mayhem and enjoying himself hugely in the process:
- I do mistake my person all this while;
- Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,
- Myself to be a marvellous proper man.
- I'll be at charges for a looking-glass;
Shakespeare's depiction of Richard is unflattering, and modern historians find it a distortion of historical truth. Shakespeare's "history" plays were not, of course, intended to be historically accurate, but were designed for entertainment. As with Macbeth, Richard's supposed villainy is depicted as extreme in order to achieve maximum dramatic effect. In addition, many previous writers had depicted Richard as a villain, and Shakespeare was thus following tradition.
Nevertheless, it is important to question why this particular king became a symbol of villainy during the Elizabethan period. Critics have argued that this dark depiction of Richard developed because the ruling monarch of Shakespeare's time, Elizabeth I, was a descendant of Henry VII of England the Lancastrian Earl of Richmond, who had defeated the last Yorkist king and started the Tudor dynasty, and Shakespeare's play thus presents the version of Richard that the ruling family would have wanted to see.
Shakespeare's main source for his play was the chronicle of Raphael Holinshed but it also seems likely that he drew on the work of Sir Thomas More author of the unfinished 'History of King Richard III' published by John Rastell after More's death. Rastell, More's son in law, compiled the text from two work-in-progress manuscripts, one in English and one in Latin in different stages of composition. More's work is not a history in the modern sense. It is a highly coloured and literary account which contains accurate and invented details in (arguably) roughly equal portions. More had many sources available for his account (most of whom, like his patron Cardinal John Morton were extremely hostile to the old regime) but like Shakespeare his main source is his own imagination: over a third of the text consists of invented speeches.
Richard III is the culmination of the cycle of Wars of the Roses plays. In Henry VI Part III, Shakespeare had already begun the process of building Richard's character into that of a villain, even though he could not possibly have been involved in some of the events depicted. From an overview of the cycle, it can be seen that Shakespeare's inaccuracy works both ways.
The most famous player of the part in recent times was Sir Laurence Olivier in the 1955 film version. His inimitable rendition has been satirised by many comedians including Peter Cook, and Peter Sellers (who had aspirations to do the role straight). Sellers' version of A Hard Day's Night was delivered in the style of Olivier as Richard III. The first series of the BBC television comedy in part parodies the Olivier film, both visually (as in the crown motif) and by mangling Shakespearean text.
More recently, Shakespeare's Richard III has been brought to the screen by Sir Ian McKellen (1995) in an abbreviated version set in a 1930s fascist England, and by Al Pacino in the 1997 documentary, Looking for Richard.
(Links are to articles on the historical personages, who may not precisely correspond to Shakespeare's portrayal of them.)
This is an Article on Richard III (play). Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Richard III (play) Depiction of Richard
Film versions
Dramatis personae
External links