Character Analysis (OCR A-Level English Literature): Revision Notes
Character analysis
Understanding Richard as a character
Richard III stands as the dominant figure in Shakespeare's play, serving as both the protagonist who drives the story forward and the villain whose evil actions create the tragedy. This duality makes him one of Shakespeare's most complex and fascinating characters.
The play offers an intense exploration of evil psychology, focusing closely on Richard's mind and motivations. Some critics compare Richard to Vice, a medieval character who represented flat, one-dimensional evil. However, particularly in the later scenes, Richard reveals himself to be highly self-reflective and complicated, which makes his terrible actions even more disturbing.
Vice Character Context
Vice was a stock character in medieval morality plays who embodied pure evil without psychological depth. Shakespeare's Richard begins with echoes of this tradition but transcends it through his complex inner life and self-awareness.
The audience's changing relationship with Richard
Shakespeare creates an unusually complex relationship between Richard and the audience. From his very first speech, Richard openly declares his villainous intentions, making no secret of his evil designs. Yet despite this transparency, his charisma and fascinating personality often make us sympathise with him, or at least admire his cleverness.
This mirrors how other characters respond to Richard within the play, conveying the powerful force of his personality. Even Lady Anne, who knows full well that Richard murdered her husband, allows herself to be seduced by his brilliant wordplay, skilful arguments, and relentless pursuit of what he wants.
Richard's Manipulation Strategy
Richard's ability to manipulate extends beyond the characters in the play to the audience itself. By confiding in us through soliloquies, he creates a false sense of intimacy and complicity, making us unwilling accomplices to his schemes. This theatrical technique demonstrates how charisma and rhetoric can override moral judgment.
Richard's use of monologues
Richard's long, captivating monologues form a central part of how we experience the play. In these speeches, he outlines his plans and gleefully confesses his evil thoughts. Shakespeare uses these monologues brilliantly to control how we perceive Richard, allowing this manipulative character to work his charms directly on us.
In Act 1, Scene 1, Richard claims that his malice stems from being unloved, and that he is unloved because of his physical deformity. This argument casts other characters as villains for judging him by his appearance, making it easy to sympathise with him early in the play.
However, it quickly becomes clear that Richard simply uses his deformity as a tool to gain sympathy from others, including the audience. His evil runs much deeper than bitterness about his appearance. After he becomes king and Richmond begins his rebellion, Richard's monologues stop. Once he stops charming the audience directly, his true monstrous nature becomes fully apparent.
The Deformity Excuse
Richard's claim that his deformity caused his evil is a deliberate manipulation, not a genuine psychological explanation. He weaponises society's prejudice against physical difference to excuse his moral corruption. The cessation of his monologues after becoming king reveals that his confessional intimacy with the audience was itself another form of manipulation.
Richard III (Duke of Gloucester)
Richard dominates the play as a deformed schemer who weaponises both his physical 'hunchback' and his bitterness to create charismatic villainy.
Key characteristics:
- His opening soliloquy reveals Machiavellian ambition: 'Plots have I laid... inductions dangerous', blending self-aware humour with ruthless plotting
- He seduces Lady Anne over her husband's corpse, demonstrating his manipulative powers
- He uses Buckingham as his instrument before discarding him
- He orders the murder of the innocent princes in the Tower
- Before the Battle of Bosworth, he cracks under pressure, haunted by ghosts and crying 'There are no souls', exposing fleeting conscience amid his tyranny
OCR Exam Angle
Richard functions as an anti-hero whose verbal brilliance fascinates the audience, but whose hubris (excessive pride) ensures his downfall. Whilst Tudor propaganda vilifies him as a monster, Shakespeare humanises his evil by showing his psychological complexity.
Buckingham
Buckingham serves as Richard's eager accomplice before becoming one of his victims. He represents a pragmatic politician who orchestrates Richard's coronation, claiming 'Say that I did all this for you', but draws a moral line at murdering the princes.
Key characteristics:
- His loyalty stems from ambition rather than morality
- He echoes Richard's rhetoric and methods
- When Richard discards him, he flees crying 'May such a discontented lord / Close up his eyes'
- Executed after his failed rebellion, he mirrors Richard's pattern of betrayal, showing how even allies become expendable
OCR Exam Angle
Buckingham represents corrupt realpolitik (practical politics without ethical considerations). His fall offers a critique of blind allegiance to tyrants.
King Edward IV
Edward IV appears as the dying Yorkist king who seeks family reconciliation but unwittingly enables Richard by ordering Clarence's death and failing to secure proper succession for his sons.
Key characteristics:
- Weakened by illness and guilt over family divisions
- Curses his house's division: 'O God! that one could read the book of fate'
- Dies just as Richard's path to power clears
- His flawed piety contrasts sharply with Richard's cynicism, highlighting the monarchy's instability
OCR Exam Angle
Edward symbolises a failing patriarchal order. His death accelerates the chaos that Richard exploits for his own advancement.
Queen Elizabeth (Woodville)
Edward's queen fiercely protects her sons' inheritance, initially defiant ('Thou hadst but power, not right') but ultimately broken by her losses.
Key characteristics:
- She barters her daughter to Richmond for political survival
- Laments her position: 'I must take my leave... of a slaughtered flock'
- Her grief evolves from anger to pragmatic mourning
- She allies her house with the Lancastrians for survival
OCR Exam Angle
Elizabeth embodies maternal resilience amid powerlessness. Her curses parallel those of Queen Margaret, linking her to a tradition of grieving, vengeful women.
Lady Anne (Neville)
Anne, widow of Edward of Westminster (Henry VI's son), becomes Richard's first conquest. She is seduced despite her hatred, with Richard claiming 'Your beauty was the cause of that effect'.
Key characteristics:
- She accepts Richard's ring despite loathing him
- Foreshadows her own doom: 'I fear I have dispatched my own estate'
- Later poisoned by Richard
- Represents corrupted love and Richard's irresistible manipulation
The Seduction Scene's Significance
Anne's seduction over her husband's corpse serves as a demonstration of Richard's rhetorical power and provides early evidence of how completely he can dominate others through language alone. Her capitulation, despite her legitimate grief and rage, shows the dangerous potency of manipulative eloquence.
OCR Exam Angle
Anne provides a foil (contrast) to characters like Volumnia in Coriolanus. She demonstrates rhetoric's power over both reason and emotion.
Queen Margaret (of Anjou)
Henry VI's widow returns as a vengeful prophet, cursing Richard ('Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him') in ritualistic lament.
Key characteristics:
- Her prophecies come true: 'Bloody thou art, bloody wilt be thy end'
- These fulfilled prophecies frame the tragedy as divine retribution
- Structurally, she bookends the play, voicing Lancastrian grievance against Yorkist triumph
- She functions almost as a chorus figure
OCR Exam Angle
Margaret serves as a chorus figure whose classical allusions (Hecuba, Niobe) elevate her above mere politics. She represents the voice of justice and prophecy.
The Princes (Edward V and York)
The innocent heirs Edward (Prince of Wales) and the young Duke of York charm briefly in their scenes. The witty boy-prince warns 'I hope I need not fear' before his imprisonment in the Tower.
Key characteristics:
- Their offstage murder horrifies, symbolising innocence lost
- The crowd's silence after their deaths underscores tyranny's grip
- They humanise Richard's crimes, evoking universal pity
Dramatic Turning Point
The princes' murder marks the dramatic pivot from Richard's rise to his fall. This act is so heinous that even Buckingham refuses to participate, and it represents the point where Richard's charm can no longer mask his monstrous nature—even Buckingham, his closest ally, draws a moral line here.
OCR Exam Angle
The princes embody the Tudor myth of murdered innocents, which justifies Richmond's claim to the throne. Their deaths mark the dramatic pivot from Richard's rise to his fall.
Clarence (Duke of Gloucester)
Richard's brother, imprisoned on a supposedly prophetic warning ('G of Edward's heirs... R'), drowns in a butt of Malmsey wine.
Key characteristics:
- His guilty dream of drowning foreshadows his betrayal: 'Two buckets... both heads'
- His pious repentance comes too late
- Exposes family fractures that Richard exploits
- His death clears Richard's path to power
OCR Exam Angle
Clarence serves as a victim whose death enables Richard's rise. The irony of his self-aware doom highlights the tragic inevitability of events.
Richmond (Henry Tudor)
Richmond appears as an idealised Tudor saviour, minimally dramatised until his victory at Bosworth ('The bloody dog is dead').
Key characteristics:
- His prayer invokes divine right
- He unites York and Lancaster roses in harmony, contrasting with the division Richard creates
- His minimal lines make him a foil to Richard's verbosity
- Embodies restorative order
OCR Exam Angle
Richmond serves as a mouthpiece for Tudor propaganda. His optimistic conclusion contrasts sharply with the tragic chaos that precedes it.
Exam tips for character analysis
When writing about characters in Richard III for your OCR exam:
- Link character analysis to dramatic techniques such as soliloquy, irony, and curses
- Compare pairs of characters (for example, Richard versus Buckingham on the theme of power)
- Consider how characters function within Tudor propaganda whilst recognising Shakespeare's humanising touches
- Analyse how characters' language reveals their motivations and inner conflicts
- Explore how female characters (Margaret, Elizabeth, Anne) form a pattern of grief and prophecy
- Examine how minor characters like Clarence and the Princes serve structural purposes in Richard's rise and fall
Effective Character Comparison
When comparing characters, focus on how they respond to Richard's manipulation. For instance, contrast Buckingham's initial complicity with his eventual moral boundary, or compare how Anne succumbs to Richard's rhetoric while Elizabeth ultimately resists by aligning with Richmond.
Key Points to Remember:
- Richard dominates as both protagonist and villain, using his charisma and monologues to manipulate both characters and audience
- Physical deformity serves as Richard's tool for gaining sympathy, not the genuine cause of his evil
- The play explores evil psychology through Richard's self-reflective complexity, making him more than a simple Vice figure
- Female characters (Margaret, Elizabeth, Anne) represent powerlessness, prophecy, and the consequences of male ambition
- Richmond embodies Tudor propaganda and divine justice, providing resolution through the union of York and Lancaster
- Character relationships demonstrate the corrupting nature of power and the expendability of even the closest allies