Richard: Good or Bad... The Verdict

The class discussion veered toward if we ever felt any pity for dear ol’ Richard the other day. Originally, I was thinking, how could you? I mean from the very beginning the man is putting on a show. He actually says, “I am determined to be a villain,” (I.i.30). It is as if Shakespeare wanted to create the outrageously devilish villain and to have the audience hate him. It is so much more entertaining to hate the villain.
Wait, let’s take a step back though. I want to present a different point of view. How did Richard actually get this way. The beginning of the play starts off with him plotting his evil deeds. However, how did he get this way? The audience is presented with the misshapen man who is no where near getting to having any sort of substantial power and whose mother seems to have hated him before the play even began. Does no one feel bad for him? Yes, he does take it a bit far. Killing everyone that attempts to get in the way, not even stopping at killing his own family for gain. He also kills a girl’s father and brother, proceeds to marry her and then kills her when she is of no use anymore.
Why did Richard want to marry Ann anyway? She didn’t seem to do anything to help out his plot really. It seems like he just wants to be able to woe and hurt a beautiful woman to get back at every women who ever rejected him. There is a flaw in Shakespeare’s play though, why would any woman ever want to marry a deformed old man? I guess this falls into the suspension of disbelief.
So he murders his brothers? What if they were really mean to him but we, the audience, never saw this? His one brother, the current King, is on his deathbed. He could have been a real jerk to his brother. And Clarence? Clarence seems kind of dumb in this play. He has no idea what so ever that his brother could be evil, even when the murders tell him that it was Richard who paid them to kill him? Maybe Richard hated that his brother would be given the chance to be king when he was so stupid? Or he just resented him for being born first?
There is no reason he needed to kill the kids though. That is where Richard becomes the true villain. No one can even justify the killing of children, innocents. Children are symbols of all that is good and hopeful. This is the point where Richard takes it too far. And he receives what was coming to him in a sudden death scene where he is stabbed. Poor Richard, maybe I would have taken his side if he didn’t kill off the children…