In his opening soliloquy, the true nature of Richards character is revealed, his villainy being divulged in the devious plans that he has plotted in order to usurp the throne.

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In his opening soliloquy, the true nature of Richard’s character is revealed, his villainy being divulged in the devious plans that he has plotted in order to usurp the throne. An array of puns, metaphors, and antitheses are used with ironic flair to convey the undertones in his monologue, granting the audience valuable insight to the play.

The language that is used masterfully conveys the sarcasm in Richards’s words, this being seen in the antithesis of ‘winter’ and ‘summer’ in the first two lines. The contrasting metaphors in these lines are seemingly used as a tool to relay the contrary meanings in his words, suggesting that what he speaks is not what he thinks. This hence serves as a hint to the fact that he is not entirely happy about the victory of the ‘son of York’- a pun for the house of York, as it was followed by the crowning of his brother. Also, it is evident that Richard is not agreeable to changes in his life, this being exemplified in another antithesis seen in “stern alarums changed to merry meetings” (1.1.7). In fact, he explicitly speaks of this unhappiness in the line where he states that in “this weak piping time of peace”, he has “no delight to pass way the time” (1.1.24-25). As such, it is clear that Richard is one who is innately evil; he is never satisfied in peaceful times, with chaos seemingly the only thing would truly allow him to feel alive. Furthermore, the covert bitterness that he feels is subtlely made known with the suggestive and deliberate comparison of wartime activities and the present ones; “And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds….he capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber” (1.1.10-12). With this, he implies that the glorious tasks that he has accomplished in war have been reduced to frivolity in peacetime; spending his time in the company of women.

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In the subsequent lines, Richard proceeds on to an extensive elaboration on the ugliness of his physique; the deformities that separate him from society. The assonance in ‘cheated of feature’ emphasizes and reminds the audience of the extent of his ugliness, perhaps, also suggestive of his ‘moral deformities’. Once again, the bitterness is evident in his tone as he claims that nature is unfair towards him – hence preventing him from ‘proving a lover’. He then goes on to proclaim that he is thus “determined to prove a villain” (1.1.30), as though the fact that nature has create him as ...

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