Richard III: Shakespeare's Humbert
Literature is filled with characters that are designed to be lovable. For instance, Cordelia from Shakespeare's "King Lear" is the good sister: She cares not about Lear's bequest, but rather only focuses on her love and caring for her father. She is veritably sainted against the deep contrast of her mercenary sisters. Then there is Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov's lovable absent-minded and foreign professor of the novel by that name. Pnin is constantly stymied by the insensitive and impersonal nature of American society and we as readers have no choice but to love him and feel for him.
The Nabokov example is selected because of another -- much more famous -- Nabokovian character, Humbert. A pedophile and accused murderer, Humbert is -- on the surface -- on of the least likable characters in literature, and a definite questionable selection as a protagonist.
However, Nabokov wields his magic and the beauty of "Lolita" is that we as readers cannot help but root for Humbert, despite our abhorrence for the acts he has admittedly committed. Nabokov took it as a challenge to allow aesthetics to defeat common social and moral perceptions, and he won the challenge quite handily in constructing what is arguable the most aesthetically pleasing novel in history.
Shakespeare takes on a similar challenge in "Richard III." Richard himself is an extremely violent, abrasive character who uses every opportunity to further himself and his interests. However, through Shakespeare's employment of language -- and the way in which he arms Richard III with powerful monologues and dialog -- we as readers are forced to feel for Richard III's character, despite the atrocities he commits in his life as depicted in the play.
In other words, Richard's verbal skills, his intelligence, his ability to draw the everyman to his leadership, his outsider's understanding of how people's brains and motivations work, and of how the politically tinged world in which he himself operates really functions -- these, indeed, are the very qualities that-make him an attractive and dramatic protagonist, if not a figure that readers or play-going audiences can exactly like or want to emulate.
As for the actual life of Richard III, "Richard's power was immense, and upon the death of Edward IV, he positioned himself to seize the throne from the young Edward V . He feared a continuance of internal feuding should Edward V, under the influence of his mother's Woodville relatives, remain on the throne (most of this feared conflict would have undoubtedly come from Richard)." (Britannia, 2005)
The old nobility, also frightened of a strengthened Woodville clan, assembled and declared the succession of Edward V as illegal, due to poor evidence hinting that Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was bigamous, thereby rendering his sons illegitimate and ineligible as successors to the crown. Edward V and his younger brother, Richard of York, were jailed in the Tower of London, and never escaped those confines alive. Richard of Gloucester was then crowned Richard III on July 6, 1483. (Britannia, 2005)
Also, Richard's 1472 marriage to 16-year-old Anne Neville resulted in disputes with Clarence, husband of Anne's older sister Isabella Neville, over the remnants of the estates of their late father, reminiscent of Lear, of course. (Bookrags, 2005)
Richard was the last Plantagenet potentate. By the time of his last stand against the Lancastrians, he was a widower without a legitimate son as an offspring. After his son's passing, Richard III had initially named his nephew, Edward, Earl of Warwick, Clarence's young son and also the nephew of Queen Anne Neville, as his heir. After Anne's death, however, Richard named John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, as his successor instead. (Biography Channel, 2005)
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