Indeed, the proliferation of potential successors becomes apparent in Act 1. The three sons of York prepare for the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross and as they converse, Richard spots ‘three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun’ (3HVI 2.1.25) in the sky above the battlefield. Wondering what the phenomenon might mean, Edward offers an interpretation: I think it cites us, brother, to the field, That we, the sons of brave Plantagenet, Each one already blazing by our meeds, Should notwithstanding join our lights together And over-shine the earth as this the world. (3HVI 2.1.34-8) Playing on the homophones ‘sun’ and ‘son’, Edward interprets the sky in relation to the House of York’s battle for the crown. The three sons of York – Edward, Richard and …show more content…
Together, by securing the monarchy, he proclaims that they will ‘over-shine the earth’. By addressing Richard as ‘brother’, the image of the three suns is ostensibly one of unity between the trio. In the following line, Edward promises to ‘bear/upon my target three fair-shining suns’ (3 HVI 2.1.40) – therefore linking the sun directly with the Yorkist campaign for the kingdom. Yet importantly, Edward’s assertion of unity is immediately undercut. His poetic speech is rapidly followed with Richard’s bathetic answer: that Edward should instead ‘bear three daughters’ instead because he loves ‘the breeder better than the male’ (3 HVI 2.1.41-2). The otherworldliness of the three suns is undercut with scatological language (‘breeder’). Moreover, due to Shakespeare’s use of iambic pentameter, the first syllable of Richard’s response (‘nay’ (3 HVI 2.1.41)) is stressed. Richard’s response is deprecating and negative, and the image of unity expressed by Edward of the brothers as ‘one lamp, one light, one sun’ is undermined. Only one brother can be the king, and this sense of disunity prompts a different reading of the three suns: that there are three,
First power, amongst the royal family the mother, Eleanor is the Queen; the father is King Henry, the youngest son John, middle son Geoffrey, and oldest son Richard. In the play not one, but all of these characters have power in some kind of way. King Henry spent his life conquering many regions and wants to continue to conquer by passing king down to one of his three sons. A quote from the play that shows the greed that having power can create Henry asked, “Isn’t being chancellor power enough?” Geoffrey replies, “It’s not the power I feel deprived of. It’s the mention I miss.” Geoffrey does not think he will receive enough respect if he is just the chancellor and his younger brother John is king. When he comes to Richard, the oldest brother he thinks he should be king because of his army he has behind him, but this is where futility comes into play. It is not always about war and killing people to prove your powerful, but in Richards’s ways that is the only way. Richard says, “I am a constant soldier, a sometime poet, and I will be king.” This quote describes the type of person Richard wants to be, he wants to have all the power to rein over the castle and do it through war. Each of the family members is jealous of one another especially the children of the king and queen, it is pretty much a sibling rivalry between them. Having power can be a good thing or bad thing, in this situation the king and queens children have a different view on having power and what they would do if crowned
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...
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.
William Shakespeare, an illustrious and eminent playwright from the Elizabethan Age (16th Century) and part owner of the Globe theatre wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which he portrays the theme of love in many different ways. These include the paternal love seen in the troubled times for Egeus and his rebellious daughter Hermia, true Love displayed with the valiant acts of Lysander and Hermia and the destructive love present in the agonizing acts of Titania towards her desperate lover Oberon. Through the highs and lows of love, the first love we clasp is the paternal love from our family.
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...
“…we three meet again in thunder, lighting or in rain?….When the battle’s lost and won….That will be ere the set of sun….There to meet with Macbeth.”
The relationship between a father and his son is an important theme in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part One, as it relates to the two main characters of the play, Prince Hal and Hotspur. These two characters, considered as youths and future rulers to the reader, are exposed to father-figures whose actions will influence their actions in later years. Both characters have two such father-figures; Henry IV and Falstaff for Prince Hal, and the Earl of Northumberland and the Earl of Worcester for Hotspur. Both father-figures for Hal and Hotspur have obvious good and bad connotations in their influence on the character. For example, Falstaff, in his drinking and reveling, is clearly a poor influence for a future ruler such as Prince Hal, and Worcester, who shares Hotspur's temper, encourages Hotspur to make rash decisions. The entire plot of the play is based on which father-figure these characters choose to follow: had they chosen the other, the outcome would have been wholly different.
King Richard III was the last Plantagenet king and is doubtlessly one of the most controversial British rulers of the Middle Ages. His reign marked the end of the Wars of the Roses between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians and the beginning of a new myth based not only on his physical appearance but also on this moral. He is depicted as a deformed human being; he is believed to have had a hunchback and his physical description is one of a monster, of a deformed creature. However, this allegation most likely lies on the grounds that he has been an inhumanly cruel and wicked person; a ruthless tyrant who is thought to have murdered and bastardised his two young nephews in the Tower of London, one of which had been crowned to the throne. In order to provide evidence to the accusations levelled at Richard III, archaeologists have conducted numerous excavations to find out whether this portrait of Richard III was real or a mere metaphor to describe his actions. It is just conceivably that this physical representation is based on the Tudor Myth -a myth that initially started by Tudor’s historians such as Polydore Vergir and Sir Thomas More, and perpetuated by Shakespreare’s play Richard III, in which he is also described as an abnormal King.
Knight, G. Wilson. The Wheel of Fire: Essays in Interpretation of Shakespeare’s Sombre Tragedies. London: Oxford UP, 1930.
Shakespeare's plays beginning with Richard II and concluding with Henry V presents an interesting look at the role of a king. England's search for "the mirror of all Christian kings" provided the opportunity to explore the many facets of kingship showing the strengths and weaknesses of both the position and the men who filled that position. Through careful examination, Shakespeare develops the "king" as a physical, emotional, and psychological being. By presenting the strengths and weaknesses of these characteristics, Shakespeare presents a unified look at the concept of "kingship" and demonstrates that failure to achieve proper balance in "the king versus the man" struggle, leads to the ongoing bloodshed examined in this tetralogy and the next.
In the late 1400’s the House of York fought the House of Lancaster for the English crown. Because Lancaster’s heraldic badge
William Shakespeare often examines the personal transformation of characters in his works. His frequent illustrations of changing players most likely suggests that he is a true believer in the idea of people being able to emotionally grow. Moreso, the author essentially endorses the thought of developing humanity as a living being. Parallel to King Richard in Richard II, he illustrates many characters throughout his works whom undergo similar personal growth. Oftentimes these personal changes occur when a character suffers great loss in life. In this particular play these changes give the readers a chance to develop a bit of fondness in the once ignorant king. Most readers would normally accept positive changes within the mind and soul of characters. In Richard II, Shakespeare depicts the personal stages of King Richard. Ultimately, Richard is illustrated as one who finally embraces humanity, and, in turn, affects the readers’ final response to the ever-changed king in a positive way.
Richard, the main character of the Shakespeare’s play, Richard III is portrayed as socially destructive and politically over-ambitious. His destructive potential is depicted by the way he relates with the other protagonists in the play and also by what he confesses as his intentions.
King Henry stumbles onto the battlefield and hides behind a tree, just in time to grab a front row seat to the metaphorical birth of King Richard. This scene draws a comparison between the gentle King Henry and the monstrous, merciless ruler Richard is on his way to becoming. It was with a look of almost childlike wonder that Richard rallied behind his father, and with a look of absolute horror as he hid, much like Henry in this scene, and witnessed the murder of his brother. King Henry as witness to the fight between Richard and Clifford serves to highlight Richard’s development as a character as well as Henry’s ruin.
2,000 Lancastrian men.” (“Wars of the Roses”) The Yorkists led by the Earls of Salisbury