And he lived looking at his images; Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay But now two mirrors of his princely form are broken asunder by evil death, and I have for comfort but a false glass that grieves me when I see my shame in him. Thus the Duchess of York laments the birth of her son, Richard III, perhaps Shakespeare's most wicked creation. A Machiavellian who delights in ruling by fear and strength, his wickedness is offset only by his quick and cunning wit. As his talent drives others to self-destruction, the audience also succumbs to Richard's wit and selfishness until ultimately his cruelty appears repugnant and destructive. Yet Shakespeare provides a counterpoint, a stark contrast, to Richard's wickedness. The women of Richard III function as voices of protest and morality. They often see through Richard's intrigues and foresee the terrible consequences of his actions. Shakespeare uses women to highlight moral truths and emphasize the general principles of the Elizabethan worldview of “moral and political order” (Tillyard 108). While Shakespeare's Richard III pursues his malevolent intentions with a disarming wit and a bloody, conscienceless sword, the women of the play draw their power from sincere verbal venom and raw, unbridled feeling. Lady Anne, the Duchess of York, Margaret and Elizabeth, subverted in their roles as queens, mothers and wives, each contribute to the promotion of Shakespeare's moral themes in different ways: through their role as victims expressed in their intense laments, in their cries for vengeance through divine punishment, and in “allusion to a higher moral order that transcends the actions of men” (Tillyard 107). In each of these ways, the women of Richard III help illustrate how destruction occurs when order, both political and moral, is violated, either by the weakness of a reigning king, or through the machinations of those who provoke civil war wanting to take the king's place. Such instability and chaos devastate the individual, family, and nation, resulting in moral decay, betrayal, anarchy, and a profound level of human suffering. “The world that Shakespeare portrays in Richard III is a man's world” (Asimov 313). Women are presented as marginal characters who function only to cry, lament, or bury the dead. Richard himself sees women as tools, as evidenced by his various digressions to the audience when announcing his plots, in which Anne's marriage or Elizabeth's marriage are merely moves in his elaborate games of intrigue and power. Shakespeare further emphasizes the inferior role of women as Richard invariably “places his own guilt along sexual lines so that women are the root of his evil” (Tillyard 111). She declares to her doomed brother Clarence that "this is when men are ruled by women", implying that it was Queen Elizabeth who "tempted" her husband to the "hard extremity" of executing her brother, thus deflecting blame from himself, the true author of the conspiracy. “Just plain Clarence,” laughs Richard. I love you so much that I will soon send your soul to heaven." Overwhelmingly, women are victims of such political machinations and, although their vulnerability allows for their manipulation, the eloquent expressions of their pain show not only that the plans of Richard are enacted on people whose agony of body and spirit may be intensely real, but it also shows that the state of civil turmoil, disorder and betrayal that has prevailed since the beginning of the Wars of the Roses leaves nono one is immune from suffering. Anne, the first woman we are introduced to, is grieved by the death of her husband Edward and her father King Henry VI, both killed at the hands of Richard "Poor cold figure of a holy king, / Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster ,” he shouts. “Let it be lawful for me to call upon thy ghost / To hear poor Anne's laments.” In describing this genuine heartbreak, Shakespeare gives the audience their first glimpse of the desperation brought on by his hero-villain's work. At the same time, "blame attribution" is further evident. When Anne accuses him of the bloody murders of her loved ones, Richard initially searches for a surrogate, blaming Edward IV and Margaret) before coming across a much more effective line, blaming Anne as the main "cause" of the deaths (Tillyard 111). "Thy beauty was the cause of that effect! / Thy beauty that haunted me in sleep! / To undertake the death of the whole world, / So might I live an hour in thy sweet bosom. Shakespeare widens the scope of sorrow in second scene of Act II, in which both Elizabeth and the Duchess lament and enumerate similar losses of loved ones. The Duchess cries out in agony: "Never mother had so dear a loss. / Alas! I am the mother of these pains! / ... Alas! You three upon me, thrice anguished, / Pour out all your tears! I am your nurse of sorrow, / And I will pamper it with moans." The Duchess here complains that Richard, her "false glass" of comfort, "has torn my two crutches from my feeble hands," being the crutches her sons Clarence and Edward. She asks former Queen Margaret, who lost her husband and son, Queen Elizabeth who lost her husband, and Clarence's orphaned children, to pour out their collective grief on her, for she is the mother of the demon. who has caused this avalanche of anguish. Act IV contains some of the most touching lines of the play as Elizabeth looks back at the Tower, suspecting that she may never see her imprisoned children again my, poor princes! / If still your gentle souls fly in the air, flutter around me with your aerial wings / And listen to your mother's lament." It is at this moment, as Richard condemns the young and innocent princes to death, that the public she finally finds Richard's cruelty repugnant, and therefore turns her sympathy towards the victims of his wickedness. In the same scene, the Duchess sums up the state of desperation in which all women find themselves when she says: "I to my grave, where peace. and rest lie with me! / Eighty-odd years of pain I have seen, and every hour is joy destroyed by a week as a teenager." While one might call the duchess and former Queen Margaret's monotonous complaint, the point is that this individual devastation is the result of disaster that has affected the nation as a whole. Everyone is tainted, even women are not entirely innocent in the struggle between the warring houses. Through their passive acceptance, as in Anne's acceptance of Richard's proposal, of the Margaret's very active part as a soldier on the battlefield, the blood and barbarism of the Civil War have reduced everyone, but especially women, to defenseless creatures who can only recite psalms of prayer, guilt and sadness. in the fourth scene of Act IV, "the weeping queens" Margaret, the Duchess, and Elizabeth join in their mourning. Once again, Shakespeare uses women to highlight the painful state of the nation. Elizabeth asks Margaret to teach her to curse, the curse being the only outlet for these women, powerful in title but powerless in reality, unable to stem the wave of pain and suffering that the disorder of the times has caused.“Forbear to sleep the nights and fast the days / Compare dead happiness with living suffering… / Wagering that your loss makes the evil cause worse; / Turning to this will teach you how to curse,” Margaret responds to Elizabeth's plea. As the women mourn their loss, the audience is once again made aware of how destructive Richard's vengeful crimes against the world have been. Shakespeare uses their pain to finally shine a light on Richard as the villain he is. In view of how women use women as scapegoats and currency, younger women have received the most attention (Succio 51). However, if we consider how Richard uses women as ciphers, three older women: Queen Elizabeth, Margaret and the Duchess of York reluctantly come into the foreground. All of these women suffer, on some level, from a loss of definition at Richard's hands. “Richard not only subverts the role of queen, but also undermines the roles of mother and wife” (Tillyard 117). For example, while Edward's death deprives Elizabeth of a husband, it deprives the Duchess of York of a son. Her "shares" now depleted by two-thirds, the Duchess addresses Elizabeth by commenting that, unlike her, "You are a widow, yet you are a mother / And you have left the comfort of your children." In addressing Elizabeth's still current claim to motherhood, the Duchess appears to abjure her own; it is as if she no longer wants to assume the title of mother if Richard is the son who grants her this right, accepting "motherhood" means accepting responsibility for "all these pains", for the losses suffered by Elizabeth and Clarence's children. It is not enough for a mother to abandon her claim to the title of mother. Richard pursues a course of action that ultimately forces even Elizabeth to give up her claim. the "Protector" refuses to grant Elizabeth her status as a mother, refusing to admit her to the Tower to see her children. Elizabeth cries out in protest, "Has he set boundaries between their love and me? / I am their mother; who will exclude me from them?" However, after the deaths of young Edward and Richard, Elizabeth is forced to make an about-face to protect her remaining son. Due to Richard's manipulations, "a mother's name is a bad omen for children"; therefore, she must deny her title as a mother to express her genuine identity as a mother concerned about the well-being of her children. He sends his son Dorset to France --- "O Dorset, speak not to me, go away!" -and expresses his willingness to deny the legitimacy of young Elizabeth's birth to save her marriage from Richard "I will corrupt her ways, I will stain her beauty, / I will slander myself as false before Edward's bed... / I will confess that I do not she was. Edward's daughter." It is a mother's love for her daughter that drives Elizabeth's offering; she willingly renounces her titles as both wife and legitimate mother (Tillyard 118). In these examples, Richard's general policy is to encourage women to abandon traditional titles, to de-identify. Both the women's resistance and passivity to this desire render them before the audience as undeserving victims of Richard's seemingly interminable malice. When women are not grieving, they often vent their hatred. The expressions of Margaret's thirst for revenge are her curses, and she generously directs them at all those who contributed to her personal losses: while also evoking the mechanical aspect of justice when she prophesies their destruction. “Can curses pierce the clouds and enter the sky?” she cries. "Well, give way, opaque clouds, to my rapid imprecations." After predicting the fate of all the "lords, ladies, queens,princes and kings" who according to her perpetrated her fall, turns her anger on Riccardo (Succio42). "To you, who disturb the peace of the poor world! / The worm of conscience still eats away at your soul! / Your friends suspected of traitors as long as you live, / And take deep traitors for your closest friends! / Do not sleep, close that deadly eye of yours, / Unless it happens in some tormenting dream." Here the audience glimpses for the first time the extent of the destruction that vengeful hatred will cause. The already damned ex-queen will observe with moderate satisfaction as all her curses come true with startling clarity Each of the women joins Margaret in cursing Richard, the most concentrated representation of the evil and disease that pervades the land, but it is interesting to note how often the curse is reversed on whom. he cursed. Anne recognizes this, thus admitting her own duplicity in the mess everyone finds themselves in. As she stands before the corpse of her murdered father-in-law, she unconsciously condemns herself "If he ever has a wife, let her be made / More miserable by his death / Than I am from my young lord and thee!” Of course, as she succumbs to Richard's softening words and accepts his offer of marriage, the curse he cast falls upon her. “In so short a time, my woman's ear / has become grossly captive to her honeyed words / and has proved itself the object of my soul's curse.” Richard loses every ounce of sympathy or support when his mother curses herself for harboring a "cockatrice" whose "inevitable eye is murderous." Thus, Shakespeare demonstrates once again that, even for the perpetrator, revenge is ultimately destructive by its very nature. This theme is constantly evident, as at the end of the play the description "alive, but neither mother, nor wife, nor queen of England" applies to Margaret, Elizabeth, and the Duchess. All the scenes of female lament are peppered with curses, "calling for justice when all are guilty" (Succio 45). Shakespeare uses women to illustrate how England itself is under the curse of “civil dissent and moral evil” (Tillyard 113). The sound of curses and cries for justice directly reflect how deep the quagmire of blood, betrayal and disorder has become, and how urgently necessary it is to restore right order. But does vengeance belong to man or to God? Shakespeare uses the tension created by Margaret's curses and cries of personal vengeance to answer this question in the person of Richmond. Throughout the play a "moral order that transcends the actions of men" is elided but is never fully expressed until the last act. It is to this moral order, this “immutable form of divine justice,” that all the women appeal when they cry out to heaven for their wrongs to be righted, especially poignant in the scene of the “weeping queens” (Tillyard 113). In this scene, Margaret points out to Elizabeth what temporal life is like: "For a happy wife, a much distressed widow;; / For a joyful mother, she who mourns the name; .../ Thus has the course of justice turned / And left you alone in the throes of time." However, although Margaret uses this allusion to temporality to emphasize the maxim "what goes around comes around," she confuses the fulfillment of her desires with divine justice. “Her curses come true because they were supposed to, not because she wants them to” (Succio 45). She, like the other women, tends to be morally shortsighted in their demands for justice, unable or unwilling to acknowledge their own guilt. Shakespeare makes Margaret the embodiment of the wrong kind of justice, derived from the Old Testament style of retributive justice, but, 1971.