'Distortum vultum sequitur distortion morum.'Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay [Distortion of character follows a distorted face.] --Thomas MoreShakespeare's Richard III of the play so titled shares the unsettling characteristic of being expressly "determined to prove that he was a villain" (Ii30) with other Shakespeare creations, including Othello's Iago and Titus Andronicus' Aaron the Moor, who, like Richard, is obviously a physical alien. Richard's statement, which Shakespeare includes in the first scene, has an ambiguous and double-edged meaning. First, Richard is saying that he is determined to "prove" that he is "a bad guy." This interpretation requires the reader to grant Richard free will. The OED’s definition of “resolution” as the act of “making one’s decision” shows why. If life is predetermined, then a man can never make his own decision, only fate can. Being resolved is the demonstration of the subject's free will. The second possible interpretation directly contradicts the first. In other words, Richard could say that he is “determined,” as if by fate (or perhaps by its author, Shakespeare) to “prove himself a villain.” In this case, he has no choice, nor freedom. When we look at the most obvious question raised by Richard III: "What motivates Richard to be evil?" " -- we must remember that the question, as revealed in Richard's opening monologue, might not be applicable. In a world of destiny, personal motivation does not exist. That said, Richard's dense line only half suggests that the tragedy takes place in a universe controlled by fate. And there are interesting methods of trying to understand Richard without immediately resorting to his description, as Granville Barker reductively described Richard's descendant Iago as "only a poisonous and venomous ganglion of evil desires" (Spivack 3 ). First, and very easily, Richard himself gives a reason from the start for acting as he does. He characterizes himself as “deformed,” “unfinished,” “old-fashioned,” and this ugliness, he asserts, prevents him from being a “lover,” prevents him from “wanting to love majesty.” Thus, he justifies, “to entertain these well-spoken good days”, he is “determined to show himself to be a villain” (II20-30). On the surface this makes sense until, in the next scene, he succeeds in seducing the single woman, Lady Anne, who is (or, at least, should be) the hardest woman to get. If her last match counts for anything, she's probably very pretty, but, more importantly, she's the widow and stepdaughter of two men that Richard himself murdered. If this doesn't yet prove that, although his physique leaves something to be desired, his charisma is overwhelming and makes it potentially easy for him to be a "lover", we see him sexually attracting the only other woman who should be as difficult as Anne . so he can participate in a later scene. This is the “Queen”, the widow of his deceased brother, whose sons, brothers and brother-in-law Richard himself killed. After a witty banter between the two, Richard and the Queen, during which he convinces her to marry her own daughter to him, he grants her a "true love's kiss" (IV.iv.349). She too succumbs to him as a lover, despite his known ill-feeling and physical deformity. Furthermore, when Lady Anne has the opportunity to deplore her marital conditions, she complains that "never an hour in his bed have I enjoyed the golden dew of sleep...Besides, he hates me"(IV.ii.78-81). ). She specifically does not complain about his prowess in bed when she is awake, and does not even say that she has fallen in love with him, rather she notes that he is not in love with her. It would seem that Richard is a fantastic lover (in that it classically requires no real emotion). Through these two examples of almost impossible and yet successful achievements, seductions, Shakespeare's audience sees that the tragic and evil star of Richard III is not reliable in the motivations he attributes to himself. He can, if he wants, be in love. Having ruled out the possibility that Richard himself will provide us with an answer, let's return to where we started. Either Richard has no motivations as such, or they are not so obvious that they can be defined directly by him or anyone else. The latter of these two options leaves us open to a more intriguing answer to the question of Richard's motivation than Richard's. It's a paradox - plausible in a piece of literature that employs such paradoxical lines as "Cursed be the heart that had the heart to do it" (I.ii.15). Richard, being ugly, is classically equated with evil Thomas More, in his History of King Richard III, the text on which Shakespeare primarily based his play, makes clear the connection between appearance and reality, when More describes Richard as having "badly shaped limbs, with a crooked back." , the left shoulder very visible' higher than the right.' or crooked can mean "to deviate from straightness", and the left side of the body, here dominant, was associated with evil (Jowett 32)."Shakespeare's secondary characters make similar equations. Margaret, the old queen, curses Richard by dreaming of "a hell of evil devils" and goes on to cry: "You, marked by the elves... You who were sealed in your nativity, the slave of nature and the son of hell” (I.iii.224-7). Not only does she describe her devils as ugly, implying a connection between ugliness and betrayal, but she makes a more direct connection in the phrase "marked by elves" which, as Jowett cites in his footnote relating to the phrase, "refers to a belief that physical defects were left by malignant elves to steer a child toward evil deeds." Margaret adamantly regards Richard's physical body as a testimony to the sin of his soul, and she tells him so. Likewise, Richard's own mother makes a connection by saying, "He [Richard] was the most miserable thing when he was young" (II.iv.18). Rather than using a less powerful word than “miserable” which could refer only to her physical being, the Duchess uses this strong word with many negative connotations. Finally, in Richmond's final speech, he closes the play by calling England a "just country" (V.vii.39, emphasis mine). Like More, Richmond uses a word that signifies both something moral and something superficial. In this case, the unique adjective combines justice and attractiveness. Knowing, as Richard does, that the nature of a person's true self generally derives from their outward appearance, and knowing, as Richard does, that she is ugly, it makes sense that he should want to undermine the equation . This conjecture would explain his desire to deceive. If he succeeds in deceiving people, he will effectively demonstrate that appearance does not reveal reality, quite the contrary. Logically, this would show that his ugliness does not make him evil. One of Richard's shining moments comes when he gives advice to his nephew: "Your Grace has, 1964.