More handpicked essays just for you.
An essay about the wars of the roses
An essay about the wars of the roses
The Complex Character of King Richard II
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In the late 1400’s the House of York fought the House of Lancaster for the English crown. Because Lancaster’s heraldic badge
was a red rose and the Yorks was a white rose, the long conflict became known as Wars of the Roses. The real lives of the
main participants of the Wars of the Roses will be displayed in this paper. In Shakespeare’s Richard III the participants in the
Wars of the Roses were not suitably displayed. The participants in Shakespeare’s Richard III were Henry Tudor, Clarence,
Edward V, Richard III; Queen Margaret will have their lives displayed in this paper.
In the Shakespeare play Richard III was depicted as a malformed mean, ill looking, tyrant. But this was not the case. Richard
III was a nice and handsome man. Shakespeare only did this so that Queen Elizabeth would be pleased with what she saw
when she went to watch the play. Because Queen Elizabeth was a Lancaster, Shakespeare wanted her family to look noble.
Richard III couldn’t have been deformed as Shakespeare said that he was, because in real life Richard III was a knight that
fought in battles. He couldn’t have been deformed if he were a knight because he would have to fight with his sword and shield.
www.yahoo.com search stated that in the play Clarence was a good guy who loved everybody, but in real life Clarence was
jailed and executed for committing treason. www.altavista.com search engine said that in the play, Shakespeare said that Richard
had Clarence killed so that he could have an uncontested line to the throne. Shakespeare also said that Richard killed young
Edward V and his brother so that he could be next in line for the crown. But that is not true for Richard really didn’t do it.
There is a lot of speculation about rather Richard did it or not. There is more evidence supporting Richard. Some scholars
believe that Richard didn’t trust the Southern English so he sent young Edward V and his brother up north to be guarded by
one of Richard’s consultants by the name of Sheriff Hutton. www.richardIII.com stated that Shakespeare also said that Richard
married Lady Anne but later killed her. In real life Clarence, disguised as a guardian, hid her in a London bakery. Richard later
found her and brought her to a church sanctuary so that they could have a legal marriage, in which they later did. Shakespeare
also said that Richard was always plotting ways that he could become king such as killing his brother Clarence and killing young
Richard III's Usurpation and His Downfall Richards rule was always unstable due to his unlawful usurpation to the throne and his part as far as the public was concerned in the death of the two princes. As a result right from the start he didn't have the trust or support from his country. As soon as he became King people were already plotting against him. After he was crowned he travelled the country trying to raise support by refusing the generous gifts offered to him by various cities. However unknown to him a rebellion was been planned in the South.
Richard did not manage to recover from the usurpation of Edward and after allegedly murdering the two Princes in the tower his reputation had fallen greatly. He had lost a lot of respect from nobles and from the populus. Killing the Princes could be seen as one of the major factors of his downfall. It was common place in monarchical families to have brothers and sisters "put out of the picture", but even in these primitive times, the murder of innocent children was a taboo.
Richard being generous gave his younger brother rewards of several lands in England and he also made John the Count of Mortain in France. Whilst he was planning to go through a series of wars, Richard did not want his brother to enter England and he forced John to promise that he wouldn’t and John kept his word until he found out that Richard was intending to give the role of successor to the throne to their nephew. John felt that he should be king and he entered England, breaking his promise and tried to persuade the English people in order to gain the throne but the English woul...
In this play of challenge and debate, could it be possibly suggested that King Richard had a part to play in the murder of his uncle the Duke of Gloucester? Could the reader possibly pick up this assumption having known nothing about the play? These are all factors that one must find by reading in between the lines, noticing and understanding the silence that is exchanged. For the silence is just as important as the speech.Why is it assumed that King Richard II has anything to do with the murder? Let us review a scene from the play were Gaunt accuses Richard of being accountable for Gloucester's death.
Second, Richard's family is known to have been extremely close in their affections for each other. Richard's older brother, Edward IV, seems to have trusted Richard a great deal; when the younger sibling was a mere teenager, Edward had him commanding armies in the battles over the succession (a.k.a. The Wars of the Roses). When Edward made his will, he left Richard as Regent to protect the two sons--Edward, Prince of Wales and Richard of York--of the dying king and his wife Elizabeth.
...e was also writing in Tudor England and seemed to have openly dislike Richard III. In other portions of his writing he describes Richard as an unattractive deformed man who was born with a full set of teeth. He writes that he had a “sour countenance , which seemed to savour of mischief, and utter evidently craft and deceit.”
But Buckingham knows what to do. He tells Richard to take two priests with him, since the people are very religious and will follow the priest's’ actions. After doing as if he was denying the request for being the king, the crowd tried to persuade him. Because of doing as if he didn’t want the crown, the crowd thought they could trust him more, and begged him to be the king. Eventually he said yes, and finally became king of England. He orders Buckingham to kill prince Edward, but Buckingham refuses to. He asks for his Earlship, but Richard gets mad and dismisses him. He knows he also has to get rid of Buckingham now, since he is not loyal to him anymore. He hires a murderer called Tyrrel to kill the princes and finally he got rid of
... bloody pathway to kingship. Filled with scorn against a society that rejects him and nature that curses him with a weakened body, Richard decides to take revenge and ultimately declares a war between himself and the world. By achieving goals for the mere sake of self-advancement, a self-made hero, an ambitious king, and an atrocious villain were created. Richard assumes that love forms a bond which men can break, but fear is supported by the dread of ever-present pain (Machiavelli ch. XXIV); thus, for true success the hero must be a villain too. Richard III becomes one of literature’s most recognized anti-heroes under the hands of Shakespeare as he has no objective or thought to take up any other profession than the art of hatred; however, ironically being a representative of a heroic ruler sent by God, he is made to commit murder to redeem society of their sins.
The undeniable pursuit for power is Richard’s flaw as a Vice character. This aspect is demonstrated in Shakespeare’s play King Richard III through the actions Richard portrays in an attempt to take the throne, allowing the audience to perceive this as an abhorrent transgression against the divine order. The deformity of Richards arm and back also symbolically imply a sense of villainy through Shakespeare’s context. In one of Richard’s soliloquies, he states how ‘thus like the formal Vice Iniquity/ I moralize two meanings in one word’. Through the use of immoral jargons, Shakespeare emphasises Richard’s tenacity to attain a sense of power. However, Richard’s personal struggle with power causes him to become paranoid and demanding, as demonstrated through the use of modality ‘I wish’ in ‘I wish the bastards dead’. This act thus becomes heavily discordant to the accepted great chain of being and conveys Richard’s consumption by power.
How Shakespeare Portrays the Relationship between Richard and Buckingham in Richard the Third by William Shakespeare
At the very outset of the play, readers are presented with the power-hungry, self-loathing Duke of Gloucester, defined by his thirst for vengeance and power and by his uncanny ability to manipulate the minds of the people around him. Richard appeals to the audience’s sympathies in his self-deprecating description, when he declares that he is deformed, unfinished, and so hideous and unfashionable that dogs bark at him as he passes by. The imagery he utilizes throughout the opening soliloquy also evokes a feeling of opposition and juxtaposition which speaks to the duality of his nature.The juxtapositions he employs are more than rhetorical devices, as ...
This contributes to a very villainous role. Richard begins his journey to the throne. He manipulates Lady Anne. into marrying him, even though she knows that he murdered her first. husband.
Shakespeare Richard III was a traitor, a murderer, a tyrant, and a hypocrite. The leading characteristics of his mind are scorn, sarcasm, and an overwhelming contempt. It appears that the contempt for his victims rather than active hatred or cruelty was the motive for murdering them. Upon meeting him he sounds the keynote to his whole character. " I, that am curtailed of this proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd sent before my time Into this word scarce half made up"( 1.1.20-23)
Shakespeare constructs King Richard III to perform his contextual agenda, or to perpetrate political propaganda in the light of a historical power struggle, mirroring the political concerns of his era through his adaptation and selection of source material. Shakespeare’s influences include Thomas More’s The History of King Richard the Third, both constructing a certain historical perspective of the play. The negative perspective of Richard III’s character is a perpetuation of established Tudor history, where Vergil constructed a history intermixed with Tudor history, and More’s connection to John Morton affected the villainous image of the tyrannous king. This negative image is accentuated through the antithesis of Richards treachery in juxtaposition of Richmond’s devotion, exemplified in the parallelism of ‘God and Saint George! Richmond and victory.’ The need to legitimize Elizabeth’s reign influenced Shakespeare’s portra...
He breeds anger in Clarence and the populace, not of himself, but of Edward and the rightful heirs. "We are not safe, Clarence, we are not safe,"3 he exclaims as his brother is hauled away to the tower. He preys on the "hateful luxury And bestial appetite"4 of the citizenry, catapulting himself to the thrown over a heap of bodies: deaths that hang on his head. But, it is Richard's attitude that his end goal of the crown justifies the murderous means that so closely links ...