Help on Richard The Third Characters?

Question

We are reading Richard the third and i can't understand who all the characters are, and their relations.

If you could explain who the people are and their relationships are, that would be nice.

Some of the people in the play are;

King Henry

Queen Margret

Prince Edward

Lady Anne

Queen Elizabeth

King Edward

George Duke of Clarence

Mistress Shore

Hastings

Buckingham

Also, i would like more info on richard

Thanks

Answer 1

-- There is a family tree in the source that shows the royal relationships. This tree is very important since most of the characters are on the tree somewhere. I don't have room on this blog to explain every single character. NOTE: King Henry VII appears on the chart in two different places, once under his father, and once in relation to his wife, Elizabeth. The plans for their marriage ends the play. {Marriage took place January 18, 1486}.

-- There is also an Open Source Shakespeare website that allows you to pull out all of the lines from one character (with or without cues). You must pull up the character of Duke of Gloucester for the 1st half of the play, and then Richard III for the 2nd half of the play [even though they are the same person]

- It takes a chart to understand the characters since so many of them have the same names. Even Shakespeare is making fun of the confusion of names in the following speech

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Thy Edward he is dead, that stabbed my Edward:

Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward;

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The two older men who are important are:

(1) Henry VI became king of England & France as a baby in 1422. He is thrown out of France by Joan of Arc when he is still a child. He only appears in the play as a corpse and as a ghost near the end. His funeral starts the play (he died on 21 May 1471).  He was temporarily deposed from 1461 to 1470, when he is re-instated as King for a little over a year. After that he is allowed to starve to death in prison. His only son (Edward, Prince of Wales, age 17) may have died in battle or been murdered a few weeks before the father. The son had been married to Anne Neville for about 6 months.

- Richard's opening speech is about how his older brother has no competition for the kingship now that the old king and the son are dead. He should be celebrating, but he is too ugly for peace and he remains a schemer. He starts by wooing Anne Neville.

(2) Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York (21 September 1411 – 30 December 1460)  is the older protaganist in history. He never becomes King, but two of his sons & one grandson becomes King for a short period of time. He is dead by the time the play starts.

- Richard's four sons are:

* Edward IV (father of the two princes in the tower)

* Edmund (died in 1460 before the play begins)

* George, Duke of Clarence (murdered in the tower)

* Richard the 3rd

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To make it more confusing Shakespeare compresses some of the historic time-line for dramatic effect.

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Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham is not on the chart since he was not a royal. He is a co-conspirator with Richard through much of the play. When Richard goes back on his promises after he becomes king, Buckingham launches a revolt against him.

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There is a mother daughter pair named Elizabeth. This is the great-grandmother and grandmother of Queen Elizabeth I.

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Finally there is a link in the sources to the Richard III society that is dedicated to restoring the reputation of RIII after he was permanently slandered by Shakespeare's play. Shakespeare ultimately blamed nearly every death that had any mystery attached to it on Richard.