Shakespeare Blog Post #2

What Wikipedia says about Richard:

• ·         Jealousy

• ·         Ambition to the throne

• ·          Ugly hunchback

• ·         His character constantly changes and shifts

• ·         Amoral

• ·         Becomes less and less involved with the audience throughout the play

• ·         A villan

• ·         Antagonist

What Richard is:

• ·         Protagonist and major villan

• ·         Evil

• ·         Self reflective and complicated in later scenes

• ·         Charismatic

• ·         Feels unloved because of his physical deformities

• ·         Manipulative

After looking at Wikipedia’s review of Richard and using my current knowledge of Richard’s character, the Wikipedia version is pretty accurate. Wikipedia even mentions Richard’s openness with the audience fades throughout the play, but it forgets to mention that once Richmond begins his uprising, he no longer speaks to the audience alone. This shows his lack of confidence in his speech and he seems to have lost his charisma at that point. Wikipedia is accurate in mentioning Richard’s physical deformity but it does not connect it to the emotions the audience and the other characters feel because of it. The deformities let us feel sympathetic for him and he uses his cunning words to take advantage of this in the early stages of the play when he has many monologues. Richard is very charismatic in the way he presents his ideas to the audience which is another thing Wikipedia left out, but overall it was a satisfactory job by the website to describe Richard.