nature of richard iii
The Nature of the Character of Richard III Introduction Tudor propaganda created a monster and named him Richard. ... Richard III is a Shakespeare tale of the rise and fall of a man who will stop at nothing to become a king. ... In the first three acts a charismatic Richard successfully removes anyone who stands his way to kingship. ... Within this structure, with its multiplicity of characters and episodes, Richard is always at the centre of attention, even when not on stage. All events are part of Richard’s rise and fall. The play is a searching examination of power politics, but it is also an intense exploration of the nature of crime and punishment. Richard III is clearly an apprentice work. ... Body Shakespeares Richard III was a traitor, a murderer, a tyrant, and a hypocrite. ... Upon our meeting him, he sounds the keynote to his whole character--that of contempt--in the celebrated apostrophe to his own person: I, that am curtaild of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformd, unfinishd, sent before my time Into this breathing world scarce half made up. ... Richard had to contend with the prejudices arising from his bodily deformity which was considered an indication of the depravity and wickedness of his nature. Richards ambitious nature, his elastic intellect, and his want of faith in goodness conspire to produce his tendency to despise and degrade every surrounding being and object, even (as just quoted) his own person. ... The character of Richard III is the picture of a demonical incarnation. Of his isolated and peculiar state of being, Richard himself seems sensible when he declares, I am alone. Richard, stripped as he is of all the softer feelings and all the common charities of humanity, possessed of neither pity, love, nor fear, and loaded with every dangerous and dreadful vice, is insufferably revolting. Richard is insatiate in his ambition, envious and hypocritical in his disposition, cruel, bloody, and remorseless in all his deeds. ... From Marlowes Jew of Malta, Shakespeares Richard gives that rationale of the ambitious villain that the Elizabethans made of Machiavellis thought. ... He portrayed and analyzed the passion of ambition that caused Richard to sin and the passion of fear that at the same time punished him for his sins and forced him to wade still further in blood. ... He showed Gods revenge exacted through the agency of the evil Richard, who was nevertheless held to account for his evil-doing. ... Richard is evil and murders his way to the crown, whereupon his power gradually disintegrates until his final death in battle. ... In that sense Richard is both an agent of Gods providence (because he punishes a lot of wrongdoers, like Clarence and Hastings) and a sinner who is justly punished by God. Richard is quite clearly an amalgam of different traditions, and we can see in the play that these elements of his ancestry are not seamlessly fused. ... Richard, for example, is obviously, in part, a Vice figure, an embodiment of pure evil. ... The fact that Richard is, particularly in the first half of the play, very funny is one of the most intriguing and appealing aspects of the role. ... Richard also comes straight from the tradition of the Machiavel. In a soliloquy near the end of Henry VI, Part 3 (parts of which are often added to the opening soliloquy of Richard III) he identifies himself with the Machiavel, and his actions are a demonstration of the standard tactics of the Machiavel at work.