'Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York'
The opening soliloquy, which is not a complaint but a boast
Shakespeare · Histories
Richard III
c. 1592–93
History — the last play of the first tetralogy, from Thomas More and Holinshed
The close of the Wars of the Roses and of Shakespeare's first sequence of histories. A deformed younger brother of Edward IV, excluded by birth and body from the pleasures of peace, determines to prove a villain: he has Clarence drowned, woos the widow of a man he killed over her father-in-law's corpse, disposes of the princes in the Tower, and takes the crown. On the eve of Bosworth the ghosts of his victims curse him, and he dies offering his kingdom for a horse, leaving Henry Tudor to found a dynasty.
How to spot them
- ▸The Wars of the Roses ending at Bosworth Field in 1485
- ▸A limping, hunchbacked usurper who takes the audience into his confidence
- ▸Two young princes smothered in the Tower of London
- ▸A wooing over a corpse in a funeral procession
- ▸The longest play in the canon after Hamlet
Scenes, characters & lines
'I am determined to prove a villain'
From the same speech
'A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!'
The last lines he speaks, on foot at Bosworth
A hunchback woos a widow over the corpse of the father-in-law he has killed — and wins her
Lady Anne, in Act 1 Scene 2: 'Was ever woman in this humour woo'd?'
A brother is stabbed and drowned in a butt of malmsey wine in the Tower
George, Duke of Clarence, and his dream of drowning
Two boys are smothered in their beds in the Tower and buried at the stair-foot
Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury, murdered by Tyrrel's hired men
On the eve of battle, the ghosts of eleven victims appear one by one and say 'Despair, and die!'
They then cross to bless his rival's tent
'Off with his head; so much for Buckingham' — a line the play does not actually contain
Colley Cibber's addition of 1700, long mistaken for Shakespeare's
Key ideas
- The play is the culmination of the Tudor myth, which made the last Plantagenet a monster so that the dynasty that replaced him looked like providence
- Margaret of Anjou, historically dead before the action begins, is kept alive as a choric curser who binds the four plays together
Quick-fire facts
- •At around 3,900 lines it is the longest play in the canon after Hamlet, and the title role is the second largest part
- •The chief source is Sir Thomas More's History of King Richard III, transmitted through Hall and Holinshed
- •It completes the first tetralogy: Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3, then this play
- •Colley Cibber's adaptation of 1700 cut a third of the text and added lines of his own; it held the English stage for about 150 years, and Laurence Olivier still used some of it in his 1955 film
- •Ian McKellen's 1995 film, directed by Richard Loncraine, sets the play in a 1930s Britain turning fascist
- •The real Richard's remains were found beneath a Leicester car park in 2012 and reburied in Leicester Cathedral in 2015; the skeleton showed severe scoliosis, not a hunched back or withered arm
- •Richard is defeated by Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who becomes Henry VII and marries Elizabeth of York
- •Antony Sher's 1984 RSC performance on crutches, as a 'bottled spider', is among the most famous of modern Shakespeare portrayals
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- Folger Shakespeare Library — Richard III
- James R. Siemon (ed.) — King Richard III (The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series)