ctiveness of his character; instead, Henry is an emblem of right-minded devotion to duty and to God (Muir and Schoenbaum, p. 132)." It is from this necessity, perhaps, that the character of Richard III is painted in such broad terms as containing little that is redeeming.
We are exposed to the nature of Richard III early in the play. Richard tells the audience "Ià/ Have no delight to pass away the time,/You unless to spy my shadow in the sun (Shakespeare, I, i)." He has also announced in the opening lines of the play that "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York (Shakespeare, I, i, 1-2)." Edward, the dead king and Richard's older brother, was known as the "Sun in Splendor" and these lines are a play in this nickname. The lines also emphasize Richard's own discontent" with his secondary status as the uncle of an underage boy-king whose own claim to the throne is dubious, given the probability that his father and mother were not legally married due to a pre-contract undertaken by
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