Shakespeare is adept at creating monsters, but has a special capacity to make us empathetic with them as well as appalled by them. Use Richard III to focus a discussion on the extent to which this is true.
Shakespeare’s Richard is full of charm and wit, however he admits he is also “determined to prove a villain”. Throughout Richard III, we see Richard commit horrific and appalling acts – betraying his own brother, wooing Anne and manipulating the common people, all in an attempt to secure the throne. But, despite this, there are moments where we, as the audience, empathise with Richard because even we are not altogether immune to his charismatic allure.
From the opening scene, Richard’s manipulation of the audience to evoke empathy begins. In his opening soliloquy Richard plays to the audience’s weakness in that we do not know him or his intentions, he has the ability to give us a first impression of him of his own creation. He exaggerates his “withered arm”, a deformity which he continually tells us, not only in the opening soliloquy but throughout the play, causes him to be an outcast. Furthermore, he expresses how his deformity renders him unloved, and that because he “cannot prove to be a lover” like his handsome brother King Edward, he is “determined to prove a villain”. He justifies the villainous actions he is to commit throughout the play by allowing the audience to pity him in the opening scene. We, like various characters in Richard III, are manipulated by Richard’s duplicitous nature. We feel empathy toward him when in actuality none is deserved.
