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    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Richard III"
    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Richard III"
    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Richard III"
    Ebook63 pages48 minutes

    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Richard III"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Richard III," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Shakespeare for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Shakespeare for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 20, 2016
    ISBN9781535832106
    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Richard III"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Richard III" - Gale

      1

      Richard III

      William Shakespeare

      1592

      Introduction

      Although Richard III was first published in 1597, most scholars believe that this play about the rise and fall of a wicked king was written several years earlier, probably in 1592 or 1593, and was first performed shortly afterward. Evidence shows that it was popular from the beginning. The Elizabethan actor Richard Burbage achieved distinction playing Richard III, and the character's final line—A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!—was already famous by the time Richard Corbet wrote a poem about the play in 1618 or 1621. Historians believe that Shakespeare's audiences would have especially appreciated the patriotic speech given by Richmond, who becomes King Henry VII in the last act and was Queen Elizabeth I's grandfather.

      Early critical assessment of Richard III was mixed. Sir William Cornwallis (1600) and William Winstanley (1660), for example, objected to Shakespeare's portrayal of King Richard as a monster. In contrast, the poet John Milton (1650) argued that the character in the play was true to his historical counterpart. Today, most scholars agree that Shakespeare based the drama primarily on Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (1548). Hall's work relies on both fact and fiction to tell the history of King Richard III's family, the House of York, and its long power struggle—known as the Wars of the Roses—with King Henry VII's family, the House of Lancaster. A secondary source was probably Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587). In turn, each of these works was based upon Sir Thomas More's witty and ironic Historie of King Richard the Thirde, published around 1513. In this account, More—who grew up in the household of the bishop of Ely, a minister to Henry VII—used a dry, almost humorous tone to describe Richard as hunchbacked, tyrannical, and evil.

      Shakespeare's play varies from its sources in numerous ways but two are of particular importance. The first is that, although Shakespeare borrowed More's ironic narrative tone, he placed it in Richard's mouth, so that the character becomes a complex, semicomical villain who laughs at himself and others even while he is plotting to do harm. The fact that Richard III functions as a sequel to Shakespeare's three plays on the previous monarch, King Henry VI, accounts for the second of Shakespeare's significant modifications: in Richard III, Margaret, the widow of Henry VI—the Lancastrian king who was murdered by Richard in Henry VI, Part Three—remains in England, where the play is set, rather than sailing home to France, as she did according to history. Onstage, Margaret voices her opinion on the action in the play, predicting the doom and misery that will serve as her revenge on Richard and his supporters. In cursing those who brought about her and her husband's downfall, Margaret serves the same dramatic function as a chorus; a chorus, or individual choral figures, are sometimes used to describe events that occur before the beginning of a play or to comment on the play's action as it unfolds.

      Richard's complexity and Margaret's haunting presence have generated much critical discussion, especially with regard to the play's themes of divine retribution. Richard's coronation comes toward the end of the Wars of the Roses, a long period of bloody civil strife, and some critics argue that his wickedness functions as both divine punishment against the warring parties and also as a method of cleansing England in preparation for a new era of peace. Margaret proves intricately involved in the development of the play, with her curses on each guilty character eventually being fulfilled. Above all, Richard is the central focus of the play. He is a ruthless, compellingly witty character who arguably has firm control of the people and events around him. In large measure thanks to Richard's dazzling wickedness, Richard III remains one of Shakespeare's most popular plays.

      Plot Summary

      Act 1, Scene 1

      At the beginning of Richard III, on a London street, Richard, Duke of Gloucester and brother to King Edward IV, remarks that times of war have come and gone—and since his deformed person (he was purportedly hunchbacked) turns him away from romantic or peaceful interests, he will play the

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