A Convenient Villain: Richard III
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Shakespeare's Richard III is one of the Bard's "chronicle plays" that describes the eventual ascendancy of the House of Tudor to the English throne. Elizabeth I was the great-great niece of Richard III, who briefly ruled England before Elizabeth's grandfather, Henry Tudor (Henry VII) defeated him in battle and took the crown. Elizabeth's grandmother, also named Elizabeth, was the daughter of King Edward IV and had a claim to the throne in her own right. She was the "prize" won by Henry VII that gave legitimacy to the royal claims of the House of Tudor; her two younger brothers are said to have been murdered by Richard III to pave the way to his own taking of the crown (Parrott, p. 136). For Elizabeth I, therefore, Richard III had to be seen as little more than a villain whose defeat by her own grandfather was a sing from God that the Tudors were destined to rule in England. The question, of course, is whether or not Richard III was actually as thoroughgoing a villain and representative of Vice as he is painted by Shakespeare. The focus of this report, therefore, is on the assessment of the character of Richard III as that character was created by Shakespeare. The play describes the last battle in the "War of the Roses," a multi-decade period in which the powerful noble houses of England fought to obtain and keep the throne. It will be argued herein that though Shakespeare makes it clear that "his" Richard is a thoroughgoing villain, th
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laims that all too often Richard III is reduced to "Vice" in the interest of both politics and theatrical expression. This literary critic believes that Richard III is deliberately cast by Shakespeare in the worst possible light not necessarily because the real Richard III was completely evil, but rather because only a villainous Richard III would be worthy of losing his throne.
Dessen (pp. 42-43) maintains that during the reign of the Tudors, a tenuous claim to the throne made it necessary to portray Richard III and all members of the House of York, with the single exception of Elizabeth of York, as venal, corrupt, and immoral. From a literary perspective, Dessen (pp. 46-47) argues that Richard III was created by Shakespeare as a dramatic paradigm in which a Vice-like figure is confronted, exposed, arrested, and punished once his dramatic career has played out. To a degree, therefore, Richard III may be a model for Iago, the greatest of all of Shakespeare's villains.
As this particular play ends, Shakespeare introduces a new aspect of Richard that had been previously ignored. In the final battle during which Richard is unhorsed, Bloom (p. 66) states that "Richard suddenly does not seem to be Richard." He has discover
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Approximate Word count = 2963
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)
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