Abstract:
William Shakespeare's Richard III has been the victim of a gross crime: For four hundred years, he has been condemned as a dastardly villain. Scholars and performers alike have declared that Richard is obviously evil, but little do they realize that they have been deceived. Richard's villainy is not as apparent as it would seem, but instead is a construction that comes from within the play itself. Ultimately, this construction is Shakespeare's, and, like a magnifying glass, it is meant to direct our attention to the fallacy of conflating deformity and villainy. We are not meant to believe the relationship presented in the text; instead, we are meant to question it. By critically examining how Richard's identity shifts from a valorous war hero in the Henry VI plays to the destructive Machiavel of Richard III, a more nuanced and dynamic representation of Renaissance monstrosity emerges. Shakespeare's text functions as an exploratory space that challenges his audience to consider the nature of internal discourse and the role of deformity in shaping a man's nature. In doing so, it can be shown that deformity did not equate to evil; instead, the only true course to villainy was through a person's actions.
