Essay: Morality, Femininity, and Bloodshed in Shakespeare’s Richard III

The storyline of William Shakespeare’s Richard III is steered and dominated by the presence of male figures. As a result, women have taken a seemingly more inferior role in providing plot development and acting as necessary tools for Richard’s rise to power. Although female characters in Shakespeare’s Richard III are depicted as disempowered and lacking political influence, their spiritual diction in lamentation and curses forms a voice of morality and order.
Overwhelmingly in Richard III, women are portrayed as mourning victims of Richard’s political schemes. Their intense expressions of grief emphasize how Richard’s murders resulted in both spiritual and civil turmoil. The first woman that the audience is introduced to is Lady Anne, who is grief-stricken due to the deaths of her father-in-law and husband. She refers to the late Lancaster royal as a “gentle, mild, and virtuous” (1.2.108) “holy king” (1.2.5) in “heaven” (1.2.110). By drawing parallels and comparing the King to the “holy king”, which is a title associated with Jesus, Anne expresses her reverence for the Lancaster royal and the injustice behind his death. In addition to mourning the death of King Henry, Anne laments the fall of the Lancaster family from power. She asserts the right of the Lancaster dynasty rule by grieving for the “Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster, / Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood” (1.2.6-7). By referring to the King’s ashes as the last remains of Lancaster, Anne implies that Henry was the foundation of the Lancaster house, which is doomed to fall from glory without his presence and kingship. By creating such an important and nearly godly air around King Henry, the weight of his death becomes much heavier and holds more moral significance.
In addition to Lady Anne, Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of York also enumerate the losses of their share of loved family members throughout the running of the play. In Act IV Scene I, Queen Elizabeth realizes that she may never see her sons who had been imprisoned in a tower again. The duchess advises Elizabeth to go “to sanctuary, and good thoughts possess thee, / I to my grave, where peace and rest lie with me, / Eighty-odd years of sorrow have I seen, / And each hour’s joy wracked with a week of teen” (4.1.101-104). In searching for peace and sanctuary during a devastating time, the female roles of Richard III join in the communal lamentation and nationwide despair of instability and disorder within the ruling house. The religious word choice of female characters in grief over the deaths of their loved ones provides them with a moral voice to evoke sympathy and emotion from the audience.
In addition to the female voice of morality from lamentation, women in Richard III provide a voice for justice through the curses they place on others out of revenge. Queen Margaret lays out the majority of curses in the play on nearly every character other than herself due to bitterness from family rivalry and Lancaster bloodshed. For example, when Margaret first visits the Yorks who greet her with hostility, she angrily bombards each of them with a curse and turns to a higher power to punish the Yorks, saying “O God, that sees it, do not suffer it! / As it was won with blood, lost be it so” (1.3.283-284). By praying to God for the Yorks to lose the crown through bloodshed, in the same way they took it from the Lancaster family, Queen Margaret asks for a just and fair revenge. Margaret addresses God and alludes to the idea that certain things are just fated to occur. By doing so, the theme of fate and the prophetic core of the play are set up to carry the rest of Richard’s actions until his curse takes shape and leads to his downfall. There are many instances in which curses foreshadows or sets the fate for the rest of the play to follow in Shakespeare’s Richard III. Female characters use curses and pleas to God as retribution for the pain and anger others cause them.
While female characters may not hold the political status that men such as Richard and Buckingham do, they are imperative in the production of Shakespeare’s Richard III because of their addition of morality and justice, and the emotion these virtues add to the play. Without the women of Richard III, the play may just truly be a series of political advancements with no true significance. The women also provide a necessary contrast to Richard’s evil character