Shakespeare’s plays were grouped into three categories: comedies, tragedies and histories. The histories were those plays based on the lives of English kings. Shakespeare was one of the first writers to write about English history. According to Garber, “before Shakespeare’s time there were few history plays such written in England--- England history was told in verse and prose chronicles (239)”. It’s considered that Richard II is one of the early “historical plays”. The play became so iconic that even Queen Elizabeth said that she was “Richard the second, know ye not that”. Richard II tells the story about a king’s downfall. Richard II is not your average king. He is useless with his power and does not know how to use it. He is the king of England when the play begins but shortly after his kingship is taken away from him. Richard II is a young man who has not matured much since his adolescence. He is disconnected from his land and its people, which becomes one of the downfalls of his crown. He has an extraordinary flair for poetic language. He is witty and poetic personality doesn’t work with his higher calling in life. A king should be strong and fearless. King Richard II is not a man of action and as the play advances, he gets into more and more trouble. As his end approaches, he becomes very poetic. Like most Shakespearean heroes, Richard II has a strong theatrical personality. He likes putting on a show and enjoys a bit of wordplay, even at his own expense. What sets him apart from other Shakespearean characters is the perverse joy he takes in his downfall. There are many tragic events that lead to Richard’s downfall and consequently lost of his crown. The most important one was that he basically didn’t ... ... middle of paper ... ...n moral and royal principles. By the end of this play, it’s clear that Richard has completely questioned the concept of divine right and when he has to shed his crown and turn over England to his enemy, he dramatically states “Throw away respect, Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty; For you have but mistook me all this while. I live with bread like you, feel want, Taste grief, need friends. (3.3.172-76). Just because Richard as a divine right to be the King doesn’t mean that he is the right choice to accomplished the requirement of what it takes to be a great king. Richard was lacking on the will power of a leader. His downfall was his fault in the sense that he couldn’t concentrate to see what he was doing to his region as a ruler. He failed as a leader but at the same time he gain sometime much better than a crown, Richard gain the understanding of who he is.
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...
Instead of a powerful physical image, like Queen Elizabeth I, Richard implements elegant soliloquies, engages in witty banter, and attunes the audience to his motives with frequent asides. This flexibility demonstrates Richard's thespian superiority and power over the rest of the play's cast, making him a unique character in the play, but why does he do it? This constant battle between characters to claim mastery over a scene leaves the audience with a seemingly overlooked source of power for an actor [clarify/expand].
In conclusion, it is apparent that Richard III is quite a moral play. The characters in it are able to repent their own transgressions, and condemn those of others, and finally, retribution and judgement are always carried through. This text fully demonstrates a social morality that is, early on, ignored, but culminates in the fulfilment of a natural justice, and thereby endorses the moral codes it shows us.
This much I established earlier in my analysis. However, in addition to the divine, right absolutist, Shuger also discusses the sacred ruler, one who may or may not have absolute power, but who for the sake of its “legitimizing principle as well as its cultural power” possess the sacred aura that critics argue collapses upon Richard’s usurpation (59). While I originally applied this concept to explain Elizabeth’s use of divine rhetoric, seemingly after I argued the shift away from this, I would like to consider that perhaps, in creating this second "proto-citizen," Shakespeare allows the people to create a sacred ruler. By giving the commons the power to establish or destroy divine aura in their rulers, they have a strange power over those who otherwise rule them absolutely. The Gardener demystifies; the Groom re-mystifies. In place of expressing a movement from the medieval, divine politics of Richard’s rule to the more modern, secular rule of Bolingbroke—an easy argument to make when the only synecdoche for the people is the Gardener—both of these overarching models of audience behavior exemplify the role of the people as complex: rational and emotional—capable of both critical and ethical decisions. In Richard II, Shakespeare encourages the political and emotional participation of the people in the judgment of their rulers. That he then utilizes this participation by including the Groom to make a martyr of Richard ends the play not as a demystification of monarchy, nor an attempt to dramatize a move from the medieval to the modern world, but as a way of expressing to an audience of commoners what power they have in determining the divinity of their
Richard II serves as a model to show that having a powerful sense of carelessness as a duke can bring tremendous consequences. King Richard was terribly
"therefore, since I can not prove a lover, To entertain these fair well spoken days, I am determined to be a villain".As a villain Richard must be heartless, he can not let his emotions interfere with his actions.
Richard had weakened since he had become king and was no longer ruthless as he had no reason to be ruthless. He had got what he wanted and was pleased with himself. He thought he was invincible, and he was too confident, which cost him his life. If he had been more careful, he would have been aware of the danger that lied before him. But, he did use some similar techniques in both the scenes.
...in themes similar to those found in the two Henry IV plays, such as usurpation, rebellion, and the issue of lineage of royal right. But Richard II and King Henry V are decidedly more serious in tone, and in comparing them to I Henry IV and II Henry IV, the argument can be made that it is these two latter plays which resound with greater realism with the broader spectrum of life which they present. Shakespeare carefully balances comedy and drama in I Henry IV and II Henry IV, and in doing so the bard gives us what are perhaps the most memorable characters in all of English literature.
King Richard II is Shakespeare's example of a king who removes himself from the reality of the common people. Richard views his position as a source of amusement. His "cares" as King, other than an opportunity for an agreeable audience, are merely a burden. Instead of investigating the accusations of treachery from Henry and Mawbrick, he exiles both men as an easy way out. Richard was born a King, and knows no life other than that of royalty. Unfortunately the lesson that must know men to rule them costs him the thrown. Richard's lesson influences his usurper and his usurper's heir to the thrown, demonstrating to them both the value of humility.
... 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.
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 ...
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.
From the beginning of the play, Richard II is apathetic at best in his royal role. By exiling Bolingbroke and...
Nevertheless, as a man of action, Bolingbroke has achieved for himself the goal of retrieving his father Gaunt's estates and much more. He, in the end, is king, King Henry IV. And though Richard as king was full of pomp and ceremony, those things were no match for ambition carried to its fullest. His strong words belied incompetence as a ruler, and he could not hold his position. It seems that it was inevitable that Bolingbroke would be the victor at last. Richard should have taken more note of his usurper, before he was such, this man he called "[Gaunt's] bold son" (1.1.3).