Accidental Aesop: It is easy to interpret the play as a cautionary tale about how absolute monarchy is a terrible form of government because there is no way for the system to prevent a tyrant (like Richard III) from coming to power. Even if the king is benevolent the country isn't safe, because an aspiring tyrant would have no reason not to kill everyone closer in line to the throne than he, no matter how many heirs and spares there are. Between his nephews and his brothers there were four people standing between Richard and the throne, and he was able to eliminate all of them. Naturally, Shakespeare's monarchical audience didn't take this away or he'd be hanged, but in contemporary democracies, this reading is pretty standard. In the more turbulent period of The New '10s, this has further evolved into a general indictment of ambitious, media-manipulative and flat-out uncompromising politicians—perhaps even more so than another Shakespeare work (that being Julius Caesar).
Adaptation Displacement: The play firmly established the popular image of Richard III as a crookbacked tyrant. To the extent where he's the only king of England to have his own fan club aimed at exposing this as a case of Artistic License – History (spoofed in the first series of Blackadder, in which he really is a pleasant king who utters inverted versions of Shakespearean lines). Even the the discovery of Richard III's remains, which proved he did not have a hunchback but did have scoliosis, has prompted a discussion of how this disability allowed Richard's enemies to portray him as evil and cursed by God after his defeat. However, it is unlikely that anyone but those closest to Richard would have known of his disability during his lifetime.
Some productions like to depict Anne as being rather crooked and ambitious in her own right, and imply that she marries Richard not thanks to the power of his words and personality but because he puts her that much closer to getting a tiara again. This interpretation makes her own death rather karmic.
It is possible to get laughs into the scene where Richard seduces Anne. Watch.
"I am determined to prove a villain" - is Richard saying Then Let Me Be Evil, that he is choosing to be a murderous bastard out of pure spite; or, is he claiming he is Forced into Evil by fate and circumstance, that due to his condition he is unable to enjoy the "idle pleasures of these days" the way his contemporaries can, and that murdering his way to the top and wreaking havoc is the only pleasure he has left?
The play's most famous line, "Now is the winter of our discontent", is not delivered during a time of great hardship or suffering. It's actually the opposite: the full line is "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York". Richard says it while celebrating the House of York's victory over the House of Lancaster. The fact that a period of inclement weather and labor unrest in the UK became known as the "Winter of Discontent" has probably contributed to the misconception.
The way people talk about Richard's Historical Villain Upgrade you'd think he was some sort of paragon of virtue. While a lot of his crimes in the play are pure fiction — such as arranging the death of Clarence — quite a lot of them are historical fact. Not only is Richard still widely considered the prime suspect for killing his nephews, but he also unquestionably usurped them using the flimsy pretext of their illegitimacy.
Complete Monster: Richardhimself informs us early on that he is determined to prove a villain and ruin the day for everyone else. To that end, he seduces Anne Neville, whose noble husband he himself murdered, with every intent of discarding her later. He has his brother George, Duke of Clarence, sent to the Tower of London and murdered, drives his older brother King Edward IV into an early grave, and has Edward's two young sons imprisoned in the Tower of London, before having them murdered. He poisons Anne herself, and begins having his allies killed. On the night before his battle with Henry Tudor, he is visited by the spirits of his victims, who tell him to despair and die. Richard is left alone, deserted by all, and at the end, he admits that even he has nothing but hatred for himself.
Despite the negative intent of the play, a lot of fans and even Ricardians actually enjoy the play for Richard's sheer rambunctious energy.
Richard's seduction scene of Anne might or might not be a Relationship Writing Fumble because if the actors have chemistry, it can come off as kind of sexy.
Harold Bloom even holds that Shakespeare's intent is that of an over-the-top parody of the official Tudor propaganda.
Evil Is Cool: Richard. Sure, he might be a bastard, but he owns it in such a way that he veers here and has style while doing it.
While plotting Clarence's murder, Richard declares "I do love thee so that I will shortly send thy soul to heaven, if heaven will take the present at our hands."
Once Lady Anne leaves the stage after she's agreed to marry Richard, he muses "Was ever woman in this humor wooed? Was ever woman in this humor won?" as if even he can't believe he actually pulled that off.
When plotting how to declare the Princes illegitimate, Richard tells Buckingham to have it put about that Edward IV was a bastard due to their mother having an affair...but asks Buckingham to "Touch this sparingly, as 'twere far off, because you know, my lord, my mother lives." It would seem that Richard's happy to murder, including his own family, but he draws the line at (openly) calling his mother a whore.
Moral Event Horizon: Richard's murder of the Little Princes catapults him over the line and causes many of his allies to rebel against him.
Not only that, but the play itself rebels against him. Before the murder of the princes, Richard is dazzlingly evil and full of vitality. After their murder, he loses his vitality and his way with words. Taken from him just like *that!*.
Narm: The scene where various messengers are rushing in to give Richard information on Buckingham and Richmond can look quite ridiculous when played, especially as it looks like in a few lines Buckingham goes from being a credible threat to suddenly being dispelled and executed.
Richard's attitude towards his family is chilling; he chats jovially with his brother or his nephews, and then as soon as they're out of earshot he starts plotting their deaths.
Clarence's death; he's confronted by assassins and begs for his life, thinking that his loving brother will aid him — only to be told that Richard hates him and actually paid his killers, and he's first stabbed and then drowned. If the latter is shown on stage, it's especially terrible for the audience.
Even though he deserves it, seeing the ghosts of all of Richard's victims coming to taunt and curse him is very scary.
In Laurence Olivier's adaptation, when little Prince Richard foolishly compares his uncle to an ape and says that he should bear him on his shoulder, Richard stops and turns to glare at him, his jovial mask falling away to show pure fury and hate; if there weren't any witnesses, you get the sense he might just have killed his nephew then and there.
Rooting for the Empire: As evil as Richard is, he's such a competent, charismatic Manipulative Bastard that it's hard not to root for him at least a little, especially in the climax of the play where his opposition can easily come off as dull. It helps that the real Richard was a pretty good king, even if he did some ruthless things to get there.
Sequel Displacement: A fairly egregious example. The fact that this is a sequel / finale to Henry VI has been lost on both audiences and producers throughout history. Almost all of the characters in this play are originally introduced in that one, and watching Richard III by itself can actually result in some rather different interpretations of what's going on vs when the plays are watched in order as intended:
Richard himself seems more like a straight-up sociopath if one takes the play as a stand-alone, but as a sequel we see that he probably sees himself as the Only Sane Man in his family with both of his brothers being giant screw-ups in their own respective ways, endangering the dynasty while he was the one actually running the country properly, and growing increasingly frustrated with this state of affairs. Taken as a sequel character, he's practically a Jerkass Woobie who undergoes Motive Decay from a loyal, faithful hardworking Yorkist to an embittered asshole who thinks that neither Edward, nor Clarence, nor Elizabeth deserves or respects the throne as much as he does, so he might as well just take it for himself no matter how selfish his motivations have become.
It puts into perspective why Edward was so quick to believe that his brother Clarence was prophesied to betray him- it's because it wouldn't be the first time Clarence had done something like that (having switched sides several times during the previous play, turning against Edward, then rejoining him).
Queen Elizabeth knowing that Richard "loves me not" and fearing what he'll do to her and her children makes more sense coming from Henry VI- Edward wasn't supposed to marry her in the first place, but to wed the sister-in-law of the King of France as a political marriage and as part of a peace treaty. He married Elizabeth solely because she caught his eye and she brought almost no political advantage whatsoever as she was just a regular aristocrat with limited standing. France even goes to war with England over this and attempts to put the Lancasters back in power. Richard saw their marriage as a huge disaster and frankly as an insult to their whole family for Edward endangering their hard-fought, newly-formed dynasty over some woman he just met.
The tensions and mixed feelings everyone has towards Queen Margaret are explainable as well- in Henry VI, she is an absolutely horrible, downright evil person who abused, cheated on, and bullied the husband she mourns for in this play and killed the York brothers' father and younger brother in particularly nasty, humiliating fashion, and by an attack on their home after a peace treaty was signed no less; at the same time, Richard ruthlessly murdered her young son right in front of her without warning and this horrified the entire Yorkist faction and leads them to spare her life, which disgusts Richard further as he saw both of them as threats to the family and wanted to execute Margaret as well. That Richard topped it off by murdering her otherwise perfectly innocent husband who was beloved by everyone, even his enemies, means that she is given more sympathy than she would otherwise deserve. note Granted, none of them knew how much she bullied him, so they might have sympathised with her less had they known.
1995 film
Advertised Extra: Advertising for the film prominently featured Robert Downey Jr. Downey even appears prominently on the poster and DVD cover for the film, and his name receives one of the highest billings....despite the fact that he plays Rivers. While not necessarily a minor character, the Earl of Rivers is at most a supporting role who dies a little before the halfway point. Ironically, while Downey appears prominently on the posters for the film, Jim Broadbent, despite playing the large role of Buckingham, doesn't physically appear anywhere on the film's poster, and his name is at the same level as Downey's.
Award Snub: Rumor has it Ian McKellen missed out on the Best Actor Oscar nomination by a single vote. Not to mention the film also lost both its Oscar nominations for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.
Richard himself, Duke of Gloucester, is a scheming, self-described villain who is out to make the world around him as miserable as possible in his quest for power. After personally leading the slaughter of King Henry, his son, and their entire cabinet, Richard dedicates himself to seducing the daughter and wife of his victims simply to prove he can. He uses the woman, Anne, as a stepping stone for power that he mistreats before killing her when he grows bored of her. To ensure his personal ascent to the throne, Richard frames his brother Clarence and has him killed in prison, blaming his death on their older brother Edward, which drives Edward to a despair-induced death. Richard uses the assassin James Tyrell to brutally kill multiple other members of his own family—from brother-in-law Earl Rivers to Richard's child nephews—only to later shoot Tyrell in the face during a petty rage. After eliminating all political rivals, Richard takes over England and begins transforming it into a fascist dictatorship, planning to wipe out thousands of rebels against his rule before forcibly marrying his own niece so his bloodline will reign forever.
James Tyrell is a cold-blooded social climber, loyal to Richard only for money and the hope of promotion. Tyrell acts as Richard's pet assassin, murdering Richard's brother, George, and brother-in-law, Rivers, and hanging Lord Hastings on trumped-up charges during Richard's rise to power. Following Richard's ascension to the throne, he has Tyrell—now the head of State Sec—smother his child nephews for good measure, and when Richard's ally, Buckingham, abandons him, it is Tyrell who captures, tortures, and ultimately strangles the duke while Richard looks on. Void of all emotion save self-satisfaction, Tyrell proves himself every bit as monstrous as his tyrannical boss.
Narm: Several serious scenes are pretty hard to take seriously.
For example, the scene where the members of King Edward's family rush to his bedside... followed by Richard of Shrewsbury on his little pedal car.
Richard III's death scene is also narmy, as he falls to his death with a massive smile on his face whilst waving to the camera with silly music playing in the background.
Even the film's fans find that one time someone has a vision of Richard as a literal boar-faced monster ridiculous.
Spiritual Successor: Just like this movie adapted Richard III to a 1930s Britain and made the story a metaphor for the rise of Fascism, the 2010 Macbeth adaptation by Rupert Goold adapts Macbeth to a 1960s-ish Britain and frames the story on the rise of the communists; Patrick Stewart's Macbeth is clearly channeling Nicolae Ceaușescu.
Woolseyism: McKellen modernized some of Shakespeare's dialogue, removing archaisms such as "thy" or "thou" and clarifying passages that relate to the Henry VI trilogy.
.