King Richard I Essay

While Richard left England to oversee the progress of his foreign war, Henry and the other nobles began plans to take Richard's kingdom. This was a crucial mistake on Richard's part. By not taking care of issues on the domestic front, Richard's followers and soldiers grew increasingly weary of his ability to lead and be an effective king, eventually siding with Henry. Henry proceeded to capture Bristol Castle, a stronghold of Richard's and began his plans on being ordained future king.

It is only during his deposition and his imprisonment that Richard shows his greatest strength as a dramatic figure. Although occasionally he seems to demonstrate self-pity, he also reveals himself to have an acute awareness of the ironies and absurdities in the structure of power of his kingdom. He still compels the court to reconsider his initial claim that the crown is divinely appointed: “Not all the water… can wash the balm of an anointed king (3.2.55)”. Although he keeps reminding those present of his God-given mandate to rule, he seems also to take pleasure in passing on the trails of kingship to his successor. As a King, He does have a God-given position of being the king. But as a king one should know the difference between moral values and ethics values. Just because Richard is King and is appointed by God doesn’t give him any rights to be an awful ruler. He can’t always fight a problem by saying that he is

William Shakespeare’s Richard III is a historical play that focuses on one of his most famous and complex villainous characters. Richard III or The Duke of Gloucester, who eventually becomes king, is ambitious, bitter, ugly and deformed. He manipulates and murders his way to the throne and sets the tone for the whole play with his very first speech, which is the opening of the play.

Through his time at war as well as some other major events that happened during his life, Richard came to be known as the “Lionheart.” One of these events would be the revolt against his father in 1173. It is believed that Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard’s mother, manipulated her sons (Richard, Geoffrey, and Henry III) to revolt against their father. Seeking protection from Louis VII, Henry III abandoned his father and left for the French court, shortly followed by his two brothers. After a short amount of time, the brothers had attracted the support of many barons through bribing them with money and land. After a successful beginning to the revolt, Henry II marched his army of over twenty thousand soldiers to face the rebellion and recaptured Dol and subdued Brittany. Henry II attempted to make peace with his sons at this point, but as they had promised Louis VII, they declined. Henry II continued to capture more cities and returned to England with five hundred soldiers and his prisoners, including Eleanor and his sons’ wives and fiancées. After Henry II defeated Louis VII, a treaty was made and Richard was specifically excluded. This rebellion against his father resulted in less generous terms, where Richard was given control of two castles in Pitou, instead of four castles in Aquitaine, and half the income of Aquitaine, instead of half of the income of the duchy. Eleanor was also to remain a

Ambition is an earnest desire for achievement. Both texts are self reflexive and emphasise Richard’s obsessive ambition, desire and longing for the throne. Each Richard strives towards capturing the throne regardless of consequences and bloodshed. Richard is depicted in both texts as an ambitious character who strives to gain power and independence through deception and self confessed villainy. ‘Since I cannot prove a lover. . . I am determined to prove a villain’ This obsession which drives Richard to commit horrific evils to gain and then protect his claim to the throne. His ambition, power and evil blinds him and inevitably is responsible for his downfall in both of the texts. A connection is formed between Looking for Richard and King Richard III in the final scenes Al Pacino’s interpretation and ‘Hollywood’ background influences an ending which can be interpreted as portraying Richmond as a coward. Elizabethan audiences

Richard is speaking about how he came into this world an unfinished person and for that he hates God and his creations. Even though he hates God, he still uses him to gain leverage on people like the Mayor and the Citizens. He fakes praying and has Buckingham tell the people he is:

Richard the Lionhearted was not do much of anything for the people of England or for England in general. When he became king of England he devoted his life to the Third Crusade which was started because Saladin, the leader of the Muslim armies, captured and took over Jerusalem. He did not care about the future of England, and used all the money he could to buy things for the Crusade. He was also competing with French, German, and English powers for the title of getting Jerusalem back. People think that Richard the Lionhearted plotted Conrad’s, the German who was trying to get Jerusalem,

This image of Richard that is brought to the readers attention is somewhat exaggerated. Since this play was written during the rule of Queen Elizabeth I, who is from the house of Lancaster, Shakespeare had to make the play portray the York house as villainous. The exaggeration of Richard's true character seems to be more believable than most of the character's actions in the play. Richard is responsible for the following deaths: young prince Edward, Henry VI, Clarence, Rivers, Grey, Vaughan, Hastings, the two young princes, lady Anne, and Buckingham. After viewing this laundry list of corpses there are only two possible answers to the obvious question of how is all of this possible. Either Shakespeare created his own history of England for the play or Richard's skill of language is even better than what was first thought.

Richard was the third son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and he was given the duchy of Aquitaine, his mother’s inheritance, at the age of 11 and was enthroned as duke at Poitiers in 1172. Richard possessed precocious political and military ability, he won fame for his knightly prowess, and quickly learned how to control the

Richard is a victim of bullying throughout the play, and this causes him to do harmful things to others. His deformity is something that he is very insecure about, and when characters in the play insult him, it leads to him getting revenge on them. Anne, when Richard is talking to her as a potential love interest, insults him, “Blush, blush, thou lump of deformity” (1.2.58). As Richard is trying to be charming, Anne strikes his insecurity, which upsets him, and causes him to hurt her later. Queen Margaret calls Richard names as well, “Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog” (1.3.228). This is especially hurtful to Richard, because he is trying to be especially desirable to win over her daughter, yet he is still called rude names. Later in the play, Richard implies that he is going to kill Anne, “Come hither; Catesby. Rumor it abroad / That Anne my wife is very grievous sick; / I will take order for keeping close”(4.2.50-52). This is awfully suspicious and implying that he is going to kill her, which is his revenge for her calling him a lump of deformity, as well as allowing him to proceed in his plans to take the throne. He is insecure about the insults, but he still tries his best to be kind to the women in the play.

He was born in Bordeaux France on January 6, 1367. He was the son of Edward the Black Prince and the grandson of King Edward III. Richard succeeded to his grandfather's throne on June 22, 1377, at the young age of ten. Due to his young age the government continued to be run by nobles of the kingdom, in the same fashion it had been in the last years of his grandfather's reign. These nobles were dominated by his Uncle John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

Richard II is an authoritative and greedy king of England, and he is living in a period of transition that medieval knights who are swearing total loyalty to a king has been disappearing and an aristocracy starts to gain a power for their own good. However, Richard II keeps believing the power of kingship, and he also is too confident himself. He overestimates his authority and power; furthermore, he ignores the periodical change. Therefore, he speaks confidently how firm his position as king is to the people in Wales, but his attitude changes when he suffers a defeat by Henry Bolingbroke that he

It is in this scene that we witness the weakness of a king but the strength of a man. Richard stops the fight from happening, again with great ceremony. "Withdraw with us; and let the trumpets sound" (I.iii.130).

This, of course, was not the first of John’s scheming, but Richard was always “liberal to the extent of folly” with his younger brother. The last straw for many regarding the reign of Richard was his capture by the Holy Roman Emperor upon his return from the crusade, in which his ransom was greater than what the English crown made in one year. Immediately, taxes were increased and collected to pay this ransom.

A general finish of most pundits is that Richard II is a play about the affidavit of a "frail and feminine" ruler. That he was a feeble ruler, will be yielded. That he was a mediocre individual, won't. The understanding to Richard's character and inspiration is to see him as a man reliably acting his way through life. Richard was a man who held extraordinary love for show and function. This peculiarity positively drove him to settle on choices as lord that were poor, and in actuality a maladroit ruler. Notwithstanding this imperfection in character, Richard could be seen as a clever, wise individual, yet illsuited for his acquired occupation.