King Richard III, how significant is act 3 scene 7 to the play as a whole?

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King Richard III

How significant is act 3 scene 7 to the play as a whole? You should take in account:

Character: presentation and relationships

Themes: conscience, appearance

Stage craft: role play, play within a play

Language: rhetoric, irony and juxtapositioning  

Audience response: characters, morality play.

Context: Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richards’s kingship and Tudor myth.

Introduction          

King Richard was set in Elizabethan era. In this period of time the War of the Roses was fought. It was a war fought for 32 years in 1455 to 1487, during the Tudor dynasty. The war of the roses had been fought against the two royal families known as the house of York and the house of Lancaster. Richard was apart of the York house and wanted kingship. Richard III is the final play of a cycle of eight plays that William Shakespeare wrote during the struggle for the crown during 1398 – 1485. Richards’s involvement in the play was to manipulate and murder any people who got in his way when he was trying to get the crown. In this essay I will be examining how significant act 3 scene 7 is to the play as a whole. Five sections will be taken in to account to solve this: Character, themes, stage, language and audience response.

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Character

Richard and Buckingham are presented as individuals in a multitude of different ways. Throughout the play Richard is portrayed as an actor. An example of this would be from 3 scene 7 where Richard is being persuaded to take the crown by Buckingham in front of noble men. However Richard is declining the offer for kingship. Richard had many faces within the play, he is known as a “deformed” man, as an actor and manipulator. This shows that Richard would be able to manipulate people and persuade people to do what he wants and as he is ...

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