I feel that Richard gains our sympathy when he resigns the crown, refuses to read the paper that highlights his crimes, and smashes the mirror, which represents his vanity. In terms of kingship, I interpret the play as an exploration between the contrast with aristocratic pride in the law and the king's omnipotent powers. It also shows the chain reaction on kingship as past events in history determine present
"Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race,” as quoted by William E. Gladstone, supports my thought that selfishness is what causes most of our problems in the modern world. Currently, we are living in an era that is filled with much gluttony and selfishness. However, selfishness is a trait that all of us possess, but the amount of selfishness that we have can determine the type of person we are. For instance, parents should always put their children’s needs before their own. Selfish parents would rather buy materialistic items for themselves than anything useful for their children. In Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex,” the protagonist is literally blinded by his own arrogance. This attitude begins before he even travels to Thebes, and that is apparent due to the circumstances of his father’s death. Oedipus seals his own fate with his egotistical attitude and he cannot change his destiny after everything is set into motion. During his journey on the road to enlightenment, Oedipus’s selfishness causes him to transcend from being completely ignorant of his fate to holding on to the last shreds of denial to having an overwhelming sense of realization.
In the first scene of the play, Richard announces in a narration, his plan to become king. Richard plainly states that he is "Deformed, Unfinished, and sent before his time" and "since he cannot prove to be a lover; he is determined to prove a villain." As a villain Richard must be heartless, he cannot let his emotions interfere with his actions. He must also be intelligent and organized; a villain must know exactly what he has to do, when he has to do it and how he is going to do it. A villain must also be manipulative and persuasive so that if he is accused of a crime or if he finds himself between a rock and a hard place he is able to talk his way out or convince people that he did not commit the crimes in question. A villain must also have scapegoats to use if he is discovered or if he is in a dangerous situation. Richard devised a brutal stratagem to ascend the English throne. Brilliantly, he executed his plan. Heartlessly, he executed family, friends, and subjects. Richard did indeed display these characteristics and therefore fulfilled his goal to ascend the throne, as you will see in the paragraphs below.
While reading the play Oedipus the King, my response to the work became more and more clear as the play continued. When I finished the play, my reaction to the work and to two particular characters was startling and very different from my response while I was still reading. My initial response was to the text, and it was mostly an intellectual one. I felt cheated by the play because the challenge of solving the mystery of the plot was spoiled for me by the obvious clues laid out in the work. My second response was not as intellectual; instead, it came more from a feeling that the play evoked in me. I felt a strong disappointment in the drastic actions that Oedipus and Jocasta took at the end of the play. My two different responses to Oedipus the King, one intellectual and one not, now seem to feed off and to amplify each other as if they were one collective response.
Gifted with the darkest attributes intertwined in his imperfect characteristics, Shakespeare’s Richard III displays his anti-hero traits afflicted with thorns of villains: “Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous / By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams” (I.i.32-33). Richard possesses the idealism and ambition of a heroic figure that is destined to great achievements and power; however, as one who believes that “the end justifies the means”, Richard rejects moral value and tradition as he is willing to do anything to accomplish his goal to the crown. The society, even his family and closest friends, repudiate him as a deformed outcast. Nevertheless, he cheers for himself as the champion and irredeemable villain by turning entirely to revenge of taking self-served power. By distinguishing virtue ethics to take revenge on the human society that alienates him and centering his life on self-advancement towards kingship, Richard is the literary archetype of an anti-hero.
The undeniable pursuit for power is Richard’s flaw as a Vice character. This aspect is demonstrated in Shakespeare’s play King Richard III through the actions Richard portrays in an attempt to take the throne, allowing the audience to perceive this as an abhorrent transgression against the divine order. The deformity of Richards arm and back also symbolically imply a sense of villainy through Shakespeare’s context. In one of Richard’s soliloquies, he states how ‘thus like the formal Vice Iniquity/ I moralize two meanings in one word’. Through the use of immoral jargons, Shakespeare emphasises Richard’s tenacity to attain a sense of power. However, Richard’s personal struggle with power causes him to become paranoid and demanding, as demonstrated through the use of modality ‘I wish’ in ‘I wish the bastards dead’. This act thus becomes heavily discordant to the accepted great chain of being and conveys Richard’s consumption by power.
Richard is an actor, a fully evil actor, who through his mastery of the stage has come to appreciate his skill. Richard Moulton, in his Shakespeare as a Dramatic Thinker, proclaims Richard's wonder at his own command of the stage: "Richard has become an artist in evil: the natural emotions attending crime-whether of passionate longing, or horror and remorse-have given place to artistic appreciation of masterpieces" (40). And Robert Weimann, comparing Richard Gloucester to a character in Shakespeare's King John states: "Both characters exemplify a strenuous need to perform, 'toiling desperately' to play a role, 'to find out,' and, for better or worse, to take up arms against a thorny world" (130). Richard Gloucester begins taking up arms against his world in the opening scene as he finds himself shunned in the manners of friendship and love, being "cheated of feature by dissembling nature" (1.1.19), and he decides to take on the role of scoundrel: "And therefore since I cannot prove a lover / To entertain these fair well-spoken days, / I am determined to prove a villain / And hate the idle pleasures of these days" (1.1.28-31).
Shakespeare constructs King Richard III to perform his contextual agenda, or to perpetrate political propaganda in the light of a historical power struggle, mirroring the political concerns of his era through his adaptation and selection of source material. Shakespeare’s influences include Thomas More’s The History of King Richard the Third, both constructing a certain historical perspective of the play. The negative perspective of Richard III’s character is a perpetuation of established Tudor history, where Vergil constructed a history intermixed with Tudor history, and More’s connection to John Morton affected the villainous image of the tyrannous king. This negative image is accentuated through the antithesis of Richards treachery in juxtaposition of Richmond’s devotion, exemplified in the parallelism of ‘God and Saint George! Richmond and victory.’ The need to legitimize Elizabeth’s reign influenced Shakespeare’s portra...
"The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror./ It grasps nothing. It regrets nothing./ It receives but does not keep."- Chuang Tzu. For the majority of this play, Richard the Third is the embodiment of this quote. He has no regrets and does not show any remorse for the terrible things he does. Yet he is revered and becomes king. How? Richard is capable of presenting different faces to the outside world. He shows people what they want to see. He is able to reflect people back onto themselves; he is a mirror. This is the charm that allows him to manipulate the people and the situations he is around.
When examining Hamlet through the lens of the Oedipus complex, it is critical to first define and thoroughly explain the Oedipus complex, then to apply it to Hamlet's relationships, before a final conclusion is reached. The Complexities of the Complex Before one can understand the Oedipus complex, one must understand Sigmund Freud's theory on infantile sexuality. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out that the roots of Freud's theory can be found in the work of an older colleague of Freud's, Josef Breuer. Breuer discovered that traumatic events in childhood could have destructive repercussions in adulthood. Freud generalized Breuer's discoveries and added that sexual experiences in early childhood were the most important factors in shaping adult personality.
Richard not only desires the throne and to rise to power, but also to have the unlimited ability to cause harm that comes with processing the power of being king. He wants to be able to “bustle in” the world as he
Oedipus is guilty because, despite knowing the prophecy that he will commit parricide and incest, he yet kills an elderly gentleman and sleeps with an elderly women. The choice was his, and this accounts for his guilt.
Shakespeare's Richard III is a play pervasive in figurative language, one of the most notable being the symbolic image of the sun and the shadow it casts. In an examination of a short passage from the text, it will be argued that Richard is compared to a shadow in relation to the sun, which has traditionally been held as a symbol of the king. The passage is significant not only because it speaks volumes about the plots of Richard, but also because it is relevant in understanding the overall plot of the play, which in the first few acts is almost indistinguishable from the plot of the scheming Duke of Gloucester.
The Oedipus complex originates from the classical era and was seen as pejorative due to the afflictions of hatred, jealously and a desire to kill the father. It is where a boy unconsciously develops a desire and lust for his mother considering the father as his ultimate rival whom he must eradicate. The death of Hamlet's father to his envious adversaries hand, stimulates Hamlet's deep affections for his mother from his childhood. Hamlet's Oedipal desire leads him to procrastinate in killing Claudius: in doing so, it would be an obvious admittance to his Oedipal lusts: his enemy has already fulfilled his Oedipal desires in murdering Old Hamlet and sleeping with Gertrude.
The second play shows Richard's lying and manipulation as a Machiavel figure. The audience clearly sees all of the lies that Richard tells throughout the play. Richard is able to manipul...
Hamlet and the Oedipus Complex William Shakespeare's play Hamlet contains very similar elements to Sophocles' Greek Myth, Oedipus Rex. In the late 1800s through early 1900s, a Doctor based out of Vienna, named Sigmund Freud, developed a theory based on the events of the play Oedipus Rex, which has since been coined the "Oedipus Complex." Ernest Jones also applied his knowledge of Freudian psychology and wrote a persuasive paper suggesting that Hamlet cannot kill his uncle Claudius because of his repressed feelings for his mother. In the story of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus fulfills a prophecy given to him, by killing his father Laius and by sleeping with his mother Jocasta. When Oedipus realizes he has fulfilled the prophecy, he gouges his eyes out, causing blindness.