In the second scene of Act 1 Richard is seducing Lady Anne even though he has just recently killed her husband and does so with the corpse next to them. This is again Shakespeare making Richard seem heartless and a man who bears no conscience.
“Your bedchamber”
In this quotation Richard is saying where he’d like to stay and this is a clear line, which is telling the reader he is trying to get Lady Anne to marry him. With this quotation and scene of the seducing of Lady Anne, Shakespeare is revealing another part of Richards’s character. He is showing us that this foul toad Richard can be charming and quite a ladies man when he wants to be. By doing this however he also implies that the character of Richard will be a very manipulative one, as he turns emotions and styles of behavior on and off as it is needed, it is not very often that he is sincere about the way he feels.
When Shakespeare wrote this play he made some peculiar changes to its chronological order, he moved things forward and backwards through time to suit his play. I suppose in this way Shakespeare has something in common with Richard, they both are very fond of using manipulation to makes things go their way. The method, which Shakespeare uses, is called the manipulation of history and the reason he does so is to make the image of Richard in the audiences head seem even worse and more evil still. What actually happened was that Richard married Lady Anne 6 years after her husband’s death. However, in Shakespeare’s version of events is that the coffin is still present and fresh when Richard seduces and goes on to marry in way under 6 years.
You see that Shakespeare hasn’t even finished the first act yet but still there is an awful lot to take in, in terms of plot, and you can see the basic structure Richard is cunningly using to get into power. We know that Richard does become king and does get killed at the end, but that isn’t what makes this play what it is, it is the way the character of Richard is gradually revealed to us in different forms, whether it be a murderer, a joker, a charmer or his majesty himself.
As Richard moves on he discovers (to his pleasure) that the king is very ill and will undoubtedly die soon from natural causes. You see that Richard isn’t at all bothered by the fact that a man is going to die, but is more bothered about how to become king after he is gone.
Act 3 scene 1 is an important scene in this play when looking at Richards’s character and shapes another side of Richard into your mind. This time it is the joker that he is playing. All the while though, when Richard puts on these fake moods and behaviors he always has on thing on his mind, and that is self-gain. Shakespeare seems to make him out as a greedy character as we see later on when he is finally crowned.
In this scene he talks with the young princes and is where he is joking with them. He has been made Lord protector of them and is a good example of irony as he is the one responsible for their death.
“My dagger, little cousin? With all my heart.”
This is when he is playing with the young princes and they are asking him for his dagger, he responds with this quotation, but actually the words he speaks are meant in a literal manner, but everyone takes it as a joke. This quotation, I think this is Richard at his evilest in this play and the way Shakespeare puts this across in my mind is by the way he makes Richard seem to not care at all he going to kill two innocent little children all for more power.
At the very end of this scene there is another example of pure evil in Richard.
“Chop off his head, man.”
This is when Buckingham is asking what he should do if Hastings should prove to be a problem, namely prevent Richard from becoming king. Richard replies with that line, and I think Shakespeare here has done a very good job of putting across a very obvious characteristic of Richard. He is pushing the ruthless side of him and just adding to list of words which all make up the methods in which Shakespeare makes this evil, manipulative character.
Richard, has now gotten rid of all that needs to be disposed of, and managed to convince most people he is the one who is fitting to take the place of the king. When the mayor comes around to ask him to become king Shakespeare’s starts playing on the minds of the reader by comparing Richard to the previous king. He makes Richard out at this point to be a perfect person, who wants only good for the country and a person of good habits unlike the previous lazy king who was always just lounging about.
“He is not lolling on a lewd day- bed,
But on his knees at meditation;”
We know of course all of this isn’t true and is part of Richards big plot to gain kingship, and so is another time where Shakespeare is using irony to get Richards character across to the reader.
The most effective method, in my opinion, of shaping Richards character to the way, which suited him and the country as it, was when written. This is the way in which Shakespeare lied about his character right from the start to make him out to be a very sinister, clever, sneaky, overpowering villain. If you knew nothing about Richard the third and turned to this book as a source of information you would think he was a terrible man and so proving that this is a very effective method. Shakespeare will have gave many people the wrong impression of Richard and shaped their minds to fit his own.
The question at the start is answered simply in two words and they are “Tudor Propaganda.” The truth is that Shakespeare didn’t have much choice in the way in which he described Richard as at the time when the play was written the house of Lancaster were in power. Richard was from the house of York so if he was made out to be a good decent king, Shakespeare could have been prevented from publishing or even locked up in prison. This is the reason why so many people have wrong beliefs about the good king Richard, and why Shakespeare shaped his audiences views on him to be a character of pure evil. It is the fault of a thing, which is the cause for most faults then and now, politics.
