How Shakespeare Portrays the Relationship between Richard and Buckingham in Richard the Third by William Shakespeare

How Shakespeare Portrays the Relationship between Richard and Buckingham in Richard the Third by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare develops and changes the relationship between Richard and

Buckingham throughout the play. We see that Richard and Buckingham are

total opposites when they first meet, but it all starts to change when

Buckingham meets Richard and he starts to change.

Shakespeare opens the play with Richards’s soliloquy. He says the

civil war has ended and the new crowned king is Richards’s brother

Edward. Now there is peace. But Richard doesn’t like peace because

peace is a time of love and happiness and he says he doesn’t suit this

because of his physique. “Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time

into this breathing world, scarce half made up”. He is not a man of

love “And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, to entertain these

fair well spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain” This means

he is saying that if he can’t be loved he has to be a villain to pass

away the time as he has nothing else to do. This tells the audience

that Richard has low self esteem and not much confidence with women.

The first impressions the audience will have about him is that he is a

lonely, ugly man who has nothing else to do except to be a villain;

that’s why Richard behaves in that way. I think Shakespeare opened

with this to give the audience an understanding of why Richard is a

villain and the description of himself creates imagery and links his

looks to his personality. Basically he introduces Richards’s evil,

ugly character into the play.

Richards’s evilness builds up with his image throughout the play. The

first real plo...

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... Buckingham says “And it is

thus? Repays he my deep service. With such contempt? Made I him king

for this? O let me think of Hastings, and be gone to Breknock while my

fearful head is on” Buckingham now knows that Richard will kill him.

So he runs.

All of this summarises that Shakespeare portrayed the relationship

during the play and made it more mind stirring and interesting for the

audience. He showed that Richard was a very evil man and Buckingham

thought he could get power from him if he helped and he turned greedy

for this and didn’t think about what he was doing properly. Richard

and Buckingham were very clever and cunning but Buckingham is not as

clever as he didn’t realise that he could have overthrown Richard

easily because he knew so much about Richard. He also didn’t realise

that Richard would use him.