Is Richard the Hero of the play or its villain

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English Essay

Q: Is Richard the Hero of the play or its villain

In the play Richard could be considered as the hero and also the villain however as the play develops we find out that he is mainly the villain, but he does have some appealing/heroic aspects to him.

In the first scene that we read in the play we see Richard and the soliloquy, in this soliloquy Richard becomes a self confessed villain and says “And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover to entertain the fair well spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain” with him saying this we automatically think that he is the villain and will be up causing disruption between the people in the play, Richard does this because he is deformed and nobody will be liking him much because of his deformity and evilness. In the opening soliloquy we find out that Richard is deformed “unless to see my shadow in the sun and descant upon my own deformity”, in the times in which this play was written the audience find that any form of deformity or weird birth marks are a sign of the devil and evil, Richard has gone along with this and seen his brothers and more good looking than he is because he is deformed, this meaning that he has to be evil.

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In act 1 scene 2, In this scene Richards persuasive and manipulative side is shown, Anne absolutely despises Richard to start off with but this suddenly changes with a few of Richards words, She calls him “Foul devil” and “Lump of foul deformity” this shows complete hatred for Richard, but Richard still tries to win her over by being a gentleman and complimenting her by calling her a “Sweet saint”, this shows that he is determined to win her over and will not be put down easily by the words she uses against him.

Richard denies that he killed ...

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