Richard Iii

How does Shakespeare present Richard and Buckingham in Act 3 Scene 7 and Act 4 Scene 2 and how does he want the audience to respond? How significant are they to the play as a whole?

Shakespeare’s Richard III is the story of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, an unscrupulous protagonist, and how he tries to fulfil his desire to gain the throne of England. Richard is so self-absorbed and power hungry he ends up blinding himself with greed and manipulating those closest to him in order to hatch his plot and reek havoc. In order to get a good enough understanding of the play, I read and annotated every scene, but I will talk about only Act 3 Scene 7 and Act 4 Scene 2, as they are arguably the two most important and pivotal scenes in the whole of the play. Richard III, being tmain purpose of the play -other than voicing his opinion of these circumstances world wide- was in order to warn the audience about the fragility of the English monarchy and its kingship. Elizabeth I, also known as the �virgin’ queen was Richmond’s granddaughter, her reign bringing peace and stability to England in times of need; however, this virginity of Elizabeth’s left her childless, so if she was to pass away who knows who was to be next in line; anything could happen; hence the term �fragility’.

Richard and Buckingham’s partnership at the beginning was not altogether obvious; in fact maybe they weren’t even partners. Early on in the play we and presented with an evil and succumb viewpoint of Richard, how he murders his older brother Clarence, shortly followed by his oldest brother Edward; this ironically to why he behaves so? - maybe his deformity, symbolic to his inner depravity. However, we are also presented with a different side of him in Act 1 Scene 2, Richard the lover. In addition, by this point Richard has already killed Henry IV and Clarence, and already he is on the lookout for a possible Queen and quite ironically no other than Lady Anne, Henry VI’s daughter. Other than the obvious connotations for him wanting a wife so young and beautiful, it could also be suggested that he wants to marry her not for love, but for another reason close intent (page 15, lines 155-160); in order for Richard to be able to pull his plot off he needs power, money and loyal allies at the least if he is not to be detected whilst committing various crimes and conducting his scheming and plotting, coincidently, everything that he will be provided with if he was to marry Lady Anne. It is at this point we realise Richard’s true potential, how he wins over a somewhat stubborn and single minded Lady Anne in a matter of minutes. In order to do so, Richard employed the use of specific techniques and strategies, for example: Richard stays very close to Anne, he dominates her and bombards her with flattery and words of a sweet, kind nature, �lips for kissing, not for cursing’. Richards ability to command the English language is a further factor as to why he persuades and manages to manipulate and lure who ever he pleases into a false sense of security; this leading to people placing their trust in him, just like he wants them to. In addition, Richard also uses a technique called stichomythia. This is where you speak in rally like fashion, fast pased and highly crafted language not leaving them room to speak, in order to babble, overwhelm and in some cases seduce the chosen �victim’. Furthermore, Richard can be highly sensitive and is psychologically astute, this enabling him to manipulate and use people as and when he pleases.

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 centred 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. Perhaps more than in any other play by Shakespeare, 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 sympathize 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. Even characters such as Lady Anne, who have an explicit knowledge of his wickedness, allow themselves to be seduced by his brilliant wordplay, his skill-full argumentation, and his relentless pursuit of his selfish desires. 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 I, scene I, 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 sympathize with Richard during the first scenes of the play. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that 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.

Richard and Buckingham’s partnership gradually evolved through the course of the play. Buckingham proves to Richard how valuable he is, one of the first moments when Buckingham does so is when he shows Richard how he can use his initiative to separate the Queen from her sons (the prince’s), so that they could be more easily imprisoned in the tower. As the play