Richard III Use Of Blood Essay

Use of Blood in Richard III
In Richard III, by William Shakespeare, there are many references and depictions of blood. Anne, Richard, and Richmond all make numerous speeches that involve this sanguine image. By using the various speeches and related fates of the characters in this work as a vehicle, Shakespeare calls upon the motif of blood throughout Richard III in order to demonstrate the futility of revenge.
Following the blade-assisted demise of the once (but not future!) king, Henry, Lady Anne attends his funeral service and laments over his body as he is lowered into his final resting place. She refers to him as a “bloodless remnant of that royal blood,” (1.2.7), implying that she thinks of him only in terms of his blood, rather than

any of his other characteristics. His royal status, based on his bloodline, is the only aspect of him that matters to Lady Anne. In this way, she acts as a window into the minds of the other characters (and, to an extent, into the mind of society as a whole) showing the importance of the imagery of blood throughout the play. In pondering her revenge for the murder of King Henry, she suggests that “Cursèd be the blood that let this blood from hence,” (1.2.17). Even though she is cognizant of the fact that king regnant has been slain by Richard, she still only defines Richard, King Henry’s loathsome murderer, by his blood - she wants to inflict retribution on the blood of the killer in order to show the futility of Richard’s letting of the blood of the formerly-incumbent king. However, once Richard, the man who she knows caused the death of King Henry, and upon whom she desperately seeks revenge, arrives at the funeral and proposes to her, she changes her mind, saying that “it joys me too / to see you are become so penitent,” (1.2.239). Even with all of her anger and cursing, her reprisal is never realized, showing the futility of her attempt at revenge.
Richard III, though generally the object of revenge for other people in this play, has many of his own plots for vengeance. When confronted by Queen Elizabeth about his alleged murders, he claims that he actually helped those that he killed, suggesting that “to royalize their blood, I spent mine own,” (1.3.129). As to whether or not he truly believes that what is doing is moral, he is still able to present the case that his actions are noble, righteous, and justified. When trying to seek revenge upon those who, in his mind, interfered with his chances of being coronated as England’s latest monarch, he disseminates slander about those who he perceives as having wronged him. Thus, he is effectively able to maintain his victory of vengeance upon those who he believes have, in his deluded mind, broken their word to him, even under exceptional circumstances, such as the cold-blooded execution of an innocent child. While planning a battle, he motivates his soldiers by saying that “tomorrow we are let blood at Pomfret Castle,” (3.1.186). He thinks that if he and his company lose enough blood, then they will emerge as the victorious conquerors. To Richard, the amount of blood lost has a direct relationship to how successful a mission is, without regard to whether the blood flow is the hemorrhaging of the enemy troops or his own. However, this misplaced malevolence proves ineffectual, as it does not help him in winning the battle. As his focus is the shedding of blood rather than tactical strategy, he and his soldiers are massacred wholesale, proving the uselessness of bloodlust. Nonetheless, he does not realize the faults in his sanguinary stratagem until death claims a nontrivial portion of his soldiers, as he “thrives in [his] enterprise / and dangerous success of bloody wars,” (4.4.246-247). In Richard’s eyes, the more blood that is spilled in a war, the more the war is worth fighting. However, this bloodlust proves to be futile, as he loses both the war (and his life!).
Richmond, before his final battle with Richard, speaks of him as a “wretched, bloody, and usurping boar,” (5.2.7). In saying this, he refers to Richard as ‘bloody’, saying that he is the one that will be defeated - his ambition will prove fruitless. Richmond equates blood to a lack of success; that is to say, he believes that events centered around blood will inevitably fail to produce anything of any meaningful consequence. Richmond plans to “reap the harvest of perpetual peace / by this one bloody trial,” (5.2.17), insinuating that he knows the futility of blood loss and therefore wants to minimize the fighting. While he recognizes that some blood must be spilled initially, he hopes that it happens with the goal of stopping further death. As part of his final speech, he tells his men that Richard is a “bloody tyrant and a homicide;” (5.3.260). All Richard wants is blood, so his pursuit of it in both his life and his death is ineffective.
There exist parallels that can be drawn between the thoughts expressed by Shakespeare's characters and the thoughts of modern singers.

For example, the band Bastille have published a song on the topic of “bad blood”, which is among one of the multifarious motifs upon which Richard has a tendency to soliloquise. In the lyrics of the aforementioned song, it is mandated that “all this bad blood here… be let dry,”. Bastille, in this work, use the image of blood to represent past events whose courses have run and that are no longer susceptible to human intervention. Similarly, Richard has a lot of ‘bad blood’ in this sense, but he refuses to ‘let it dry’, and instead chooses to pick at these past events, as though they were oozing, festering scabs that he refuses to let heal over. In the song, the line mentioning the titular ‘bad blood’ is followed by a few seconds of a high-pitched, banshee-like screaming, which is rather reminiscent of the (implied) dreadful wails emitted by Richard in the course of his eventual climactic demise, where his attempts at revenge prove to be a mortal exercise in folly. Following the surprisingly-in-tune howls of a sad, solitary singer, this musician goes on to philosophically muse that because “[the blood]’s been cold for years, won’t you let it lie?”, to which Richard answers with a resounding ‘no’, shortly before he loses the ability to reply at all, when he is ‘let lie’ in his grave. Though both Shakespeare and Bastille use blood in similar ways, Shakespeare expands upon what would happen if the blood were not allowed to

lie.
Through references to blood, both Shakespeare and Bastille demonstrate that revenge is futile. Little good comes from the maintenance of old arguments, and even less from trying to gain revenge over said arguments.