richard III critics

• Tillyard


  'Shakespeare accepted the prevalent belief that God had guided England into her haven of Tudor prosperity
• Kott


  'for Shakespeare, history stands still
• Moseley on Richard's victims

  None of Richard's victims are gutless of innocent blood
• Young on women


  Women have power in the play because they seem to be beyond Richards control
• Prescott on Hastings


  a figure of colossal complacency
• Connolly


  part of a wider narrative of divine retribution
• Dollimoore on women


  unusual...in the prominence of its female character
• Galloway on women


  [the women] mitigate the natural destructiveness inherent in a male dominated world
• Kott on Margaret


  [Shakespeare] has revivified her
• In the Michael Boyd production, Margaret


  literally carried the past with her (in the form of the skeleton of her son)
• Kott on Richmond


  Necessary but personally uninteresting
• Hebron on the Tudor Myth interpretation

  Tudor triumphalism... is remarkably muted
• Barker and Murray on disability


  metaphorical shortcut to ideas of deviance
• Greenblat on disability


  he has internalised the loathing he inspires
• Donkor on disability


  parroting ugly and abusive taunts
• Schaap Williams: 'body anomalies were seen as...

  ...evidence of deeper moral truths
• Schaap Williams: 'the body...


  ...enables his actions
• Greenblat on Margaret


  haunts the royal court like a half-crazed Greek tragic chorus
• Hebron on women


  reminders of the past which suggest that a cosmic force is at work
• Belsey on women


  Richard appropriates the theatrical power and agency of the women
• Tillyard on women


  a chorus to lament and observes but powerless to influence events
• Tillyard: 'women's lamentations were...

  ...ritual, incantory, and ecclesiastical in tone
• Dash on women


  Margaret empowers the other women to stand up to Richard
• Dusinberre


  Shakespeare challenged an Elizabethan view of gender
• Rackin on women


  women are marginalised
• Bushnell: 'Richard becomes...


  ...both the man who possesses and the woman who submits
• Greenblat on Richard as the Vice

  a wickedly engaging ability to defer though not finally to escape well-deserved punishment
• Hebron on the Vice


  Shakespeare adds layers which take him away from the medieval tradition
• Donkor on Machiavelli


  Richard's actions disfigure Machiavellian ideas
• Donkor: 'Richard's barbarism...


  ...is gratuitous
• Donkor: 'Richard's anti-Machiavellian...


  ...wavering between roles and modes of conduct
• Greenblat: 'Richard thrives...


  ...on the violation of social and natural bonds
• Maniutiu


  Richard III means nothing without love
• In Maniutiu's production the exchanges between Richard and Margaret become...

  raunchy flirtation driven by mutual sexual fascination
• Greenblat: 'Tudor apologists depict Richard as...

  ... a monster of evil
• Kott: 'the plays was rehearsing...


  ...repressed anxieties about the Elizabethan succession
• Hebron on free will


  decision-making is an illusion disguising a scripted reality