characters

• KING RICHARD 3

  - 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 centered on Richard's mind.

  - Critics sometimes compare Richard to the medieval character, Vice, who was a flat and one-sided embodiment of evil.

  
  

  - However, especially in the later scenes of the play, Richard proves to be highly self-reflective and complicated—making his heinous acts all the more chilling.

  - the audience of Richard III experiences a complex, ambiguous, and highly changeable relationship with the main character.

  - Richard is clearly a villain—he declares outright in his very first speech that he intends to stop at nothing to achieve his nefarious designs.

  
  

  - But despite his open allegiance to evil, he is such a charismatic and fascinating figure that, for much of the play, we are likely to sympathise with him, or at least to be impressed with him.

  - In this way, our relationship with Richard mimics the other characters' relationships with him, conveying a powerful sense of the force of his personality.
• Richard part 2

  - 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 1, Scene 1, for example, Richard dolefully claims that his malice toward others stems from the fact that he is unloved, 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 sympathise with Richard during the first scenes of the play.

  
  

  -Richard simply uses his deformity as a tool to gain the sympathy of others—including us.

  - Richard's evil is a much more innate part of his character than simple bitterness about his ugly body.

  - But he uses this speech to win our trust, and he repeats this ploy throughout his struggle to be crowned king.

  
  

  - After he is crowned king and Richmond begins his uprising, Richard's monologues end.

  - Once Richard stops exerting his charisma on the audience, his real nature becomes much more apparent, and by the end of the play he can be seen for the monster that he is.
• Margaret (widow of King Henry VI)

  - Margaret is nevertheless one of the most important and memorable characters in Richard III.

  - The impotent, overpowering rage that she directs at Richard and his family stands for the helpless, righteous anger of all Richard's victims.

  - The curses she levels at the royals in Act I, which are among the most startling and memorable in all of Shakespeare, foreshadow and essentially determine future events of the play.

  - Her lesson to Elizabeth and the duchess about how to curse paints a striking picture of the psychology of victimisation and the use of language as a means of alleviating anguish.

  
  

  - As the wife of the dead and vanquished King Henry VI, Margaret also represents the plight of women under the patriarchal power structure of Renaissance England.

  - Without a husband to grant her status and security, she is reduced to depending on the charity of her family's murderers to survive—a dire situation that she later wishes on Elizabeth.

  
  

  - Margaret is a one-dimensional character, representing rage and pain, but she is vital to the play for the sheer focus of torment she brings to the world surrounding Richard's irresistible evil.
• The Princes (Young Edward and Richard)

  - Shakespeare make the princes memorable and engaging figures despite their youth and their relatively small roles in the story.

  - As a result, Shakespeare creates princes who are highly intelligent—they are among the only characters in the play to see through Richard's scheme entirely.

  - They are courageous, standing up fearlessly to the powerful Richard.

  - They are charismatic, outdoing Richard in games of wordplay. However, they are utterly, pitifully helpless because they are so young.

  
  

  - Though Elizabeth remarks that her younger son is a "parlous boy," meaning sharp or mischievous, the princes are never a threat to Richard, and they are unable to defend themselves against him (Act 2, Scene 4, line 35).

  - Yet Shakespeare creates the sense that, had the princes lived, they would have grown up to become more than a match for their wicked uncle.
• Buckingham

  - Buckingham is an example of one of Shakespeare's most commonly used archetypes: the villain's right-hand man.

  - Many of Shakespeare's villains have someone that they manipulate into doing their bidding.

  - In most cases, the villain is successfully able to maintain control over the other character due to a power imbalance.

  -This is the case for Buckingham, who aligns himself with Richard and participates in his dastardly schemes because Richard promises Buckingham the earldom of Hereford if he assists Richard in seizing the throne.

  - Buckingham also has an additional textual role because he is often the recipient of Richard's scheming, and it is often during conversations between the two of them that plans are both revealed and set in motion.
• buckingham part 2

  - Buckingham's most important narrative function does not occur until Act 4, Scene 2 when he hesitates after Richard asks him to murder the two princes.

  - Buckingham's unwillingness to kill the princes prompts him to flee to Wales and support Richmond in the fight against Richard.

  - Buckingham's defection is crucial to Shakespeare's narrative because it demonstrates that Richard has gone too far in his tyrannical bid for power.

  - Up until that moment, Buckingham has been an active participant in Richard's plots.

  - For example, he spreads lies about the legitimacy of King Edward's children and celebrates Hastings' death.

  - However, Richard's request to murder two innocent children forces Buckingham to realise how much of a monster Richard is.

  - Shakespeare has Richard's right-hand man desert him towards the end of the play to convey that Richard's lack of morality will be his undoing.
• Queen Elizabeth

  - Queen Elizabeth, like all of the women in Richard III, represents the unfair treatment of women in a power-hungry world that only sees them as a means to an end.

  - Queen Elizabeth is left vulnerable after her husband, King Edward, dies because he was the only person who could protect her and her children from Richard and anybody else who wanted the crown.

  - She is tragically forced to watch as Richard plots to kill her family and eliminate the line of succession, and is left to grieve her two young sons after Richard has them killed and assumes the throne.

  
  

  - However, Queen Elizabeth is clever. While she is aware that she cannot oppose Richard directly, she works out a plan to support his adversary.

  - She pretends to promise her daughter Princess Elizabeth to Richard to help solidify his rule but secretly promises her instead to Richmond, who plans to marry her after he takes the throne from Richard.

  - As a result, Queen Elizabeth also represents the ways in which women were able to subtly wield power in a male-dominated world.

  - Queen Elizabeth may not have been able to save her sons or vanquish Richard in battle but she was able to establish the Tudor line that would rule Britain for centuries.
• Anne (Widow of Prince Edward, and then Wife of Richard III)

  - Anne is a woman who becomes tangled in Richard's fight for power. When the play opens, Anne is still mourning her husband (Edward the Prince of Wales) and her father-in-law (Henry VI) who were both killed by Richard.

  - She hates Richard and even spits on him when he runs into her as she mourns over her husband's body.

  
  

  -However, over the course of Act 1, Scene 2, Richard is able to successfully manipulate Anne into marrying him by complimenting her beauty, professing his love for her, lying to her about his role in her husband's death, and messing with her emotions by offering to let Anne kill him.

  - Anne's role in this scene is crucial to the reader's understanding of Richard's character.

  - Through his masterful manipulation of Anne, the reader learns that Richard is highly intelligent and a skilled orator.

  - So skilled that he was able to trick a woman deep in mourning to marry him, the very man that killed her family.
• Anne Part 2

  - While the reader is able to see that Richard manipulated Anne, she is not afforded a happy ending and is, instead, punished for her choice (if you can call it that) to marry Richard.

  - At the start of Act 1, Scene 2, a few lines before Richard enters, Anne curses Richard and prays that he and any woman who dares to marry him will have a terrible life.

  
  

  - Anne unintentionally calls this curse upon herself when she agrees to marry Richard by the end of the scene.

  - Anne's prophecy becomes true when her miserable life as Richard's wife is only ended when Richard poisons her so that he can have a more advantageous match with Princess Elizabeth.

  - While flawed, Anne is meant to be a tragic character whose family and life were casualties in Richard's bid for power.
• Richmond (Later King Henry VII)


  - He is characterized as the very antithesis of Richard; he is just, heroic, and good, whereas Richard is tyrannical, scheming, and amoral.

  
  

  - Shakespeare effectively juxtaposes the two men on the eve of battle in 5.3 when the ghosts visit Richard and Richmond in their dreams.

  - Each ghost, among them Edward, Clarence, Anne, the princes, and more, condemns Richard and praises Richmond.

  
  

  - Richard wakes justifiably rattled whereas Richmond awakens from the "sweetest sleep" (Act 5, Secen 3, line 225).

  
  

  -He brings peace to the broken country of England and establishes stability with his marriage to Young Elizabeth to end the conflict driven from The Wars Of the Roses.
• King Edward VI brother of Richard


  - The older brother of Richard and Clarence, and the king of England at the start of the play.

  - Edward was deeply involved in the Yorkists' brutal overthrow of the Lancaster regime, but as king he is devoted to achieving a reconciliation among the various political factions of his reign.

  - He is unaware that Richard attempts to thwart him at every turn.
• Clarence - brother of Richard


  - The gentle, trusting brother born between Edward and Richard in the York family.

  - Richard has Clarence murdered in order to get him out of the way.

  - Clarence leaves two children, a son and a daughter.
• Dorset, Rivers and Grey - family of Elizabeth


  - The kinsmen and allies of Elizabeth, and members of the Woodeville and Gray families.

  
  

  - Rivers is Elizabeth's brother,

  - While Gray and Dorset are her sons from her first marriage.

  
  

  - Richard eventually executes Rivers and Gray, but Dorset flees and survives.
• Duchess of York - Cecily (Richard's Mother)


  - Widowed mother of Richard, Clarence, and King Edward IV.

  - The duchess of York is Elizabeth's mother-in-law, and she is very protective of Elizabeth and her children, who are the duchess's grandchildren.

  - She is angry with, and eventually curses, Richard for his heinous actions.

  "THOU CAM'ST ON EARTH TO MAKE MY EARTH MY HELL"
• Hastings


  - A lord who maintains his integrity, remaining loyal to the family of King Edward IV.

  - Hastings winds up dead for making the mistake of trusting Richard.