Read a translation of
Act IV, scene iii →
Analysis
Now that Richard has attained the throne, it is more difficult
to sympathize with him than it was before. He begins the play as
a brilliant, driven underdog—a brutal and possibly psychopathic
one, albeit, but an underdog nonetheless. After attaining his goal,
however, Richard directs his actions toward securing and maintaining his
power. We no longer feel any sense of suspense about when and how
he will seize the throne. He has reached the pinnacle of success and
must scramble to keep his prize in the face of all his opponents. Instead
of using his skills at deception and manipulation to achieve clearly
defined, difficult-to-achieve goals, he has started killing everyone
in sight. As he notes, his goal is to “stop all hopes
whose growth may damage me”—which amounts to killing everybody who
could possibly be a threat (IV.ii.61). This
new campaign of blood makes it much harder to find Richard attractive—even
in the morbid, slightly perverse way in which we may be attracted to
him earlier in the play.
This shift in Richard’s personality—from self-assured
confidence into paranoia—causes him to alienate Buckingham. Although Buckingham
is the loyal right-hand man who has been with Richard since nearly
the beginning of Richard’s rise to power, Richard’s wish to kill
the children in the tower is something that repels even Buckingham.
Whether Buckingham would have agreed to help Richard in the end,
we cannot know, since Richard privately decides to drop Buckingham
the moment he first hears him hesitate. This crack in the unity
of his men is a turning point in the play—the start of a downward
slide for Richard’s fortunes. It seems that Margaret’s earlier curses
upon Richard (“[t]hy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,
/ And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends” [I.iii.220–221])
are starting to come true.
Richard is determined not to let anything sway him from
the course he is set on. As he ponders the idea of trying to coerce
Elizabeth’s young daughter into a marriage that will help secure
his -tenuous hold on the crown, he says to himself, “Murder her
brothers, and then marry her? / Uncertain way of gain, but I am
in / So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin. / Tear-falling
pity dwells not in this eye” (IV.ii.64–67).
These words contrast intriguingly with the Tyrrell’s speech in Act
IV, scene iii, which demonstrates that even a hardened murderer
can have pangs of conscience. Richard’s understanding of himself,
however, leaves no room for such pangs—he sees himself as an embodiment
of absolute evil and amorality.
Richard’s complicated maneuverings accelerate in pace
during the first part of Act IV, as he works to get rid of anyone
with a legitimate claim to the throne. He has engineered the deaths
of young Prince Edward and the young duke of York, the princes in
the tower, since they are the sons of the late King Edward IV and
thus the true heirs to the throne. He has already had his brother
Clarence killed. Now, he has disposed of Clarence’s two children
by locking up the dim-witted boy and marrying off the girl to a
lower-class man, to keep her from marrying a nobleman who might
be able to use his wife’s lineage to justify an attempt to seize
the throne. Similar reasoning drives Richard to want to marry Elizabeth’s
daughter, young Elizabeth. Since she is the daughter of Edward IV,
the last king, Richard intends to use her lineage to cement his
own claims to power. (For similar reasons, it should be noted, young
Elizabeth might also be a desirable bride for Richmond, the challenger
from overseas and a relative of Henry VI who claims the throne by
virtue of that relationship.) Richard muses that “I must be married
to my brother’s daughter, / Or else my kingdom stands on brittle
glass” (IV.ii.62–63). Perverse as it may
seem for him to marry his niece, prevailing Renaissance ideas about
lineage and royalty validate such an action.