Shakespeare found in the chronicles a full-length portrait of Richard and a
detailed outline of the events of his career, while "The True Tragedy"
supplied a few hints. His most notable omission of matter in the chronicle
is his neglect of the pangs of conscience, dwelt on in More's history and
made salient in "The True Tragedy," and suggesting such a dramatic
presentation of remorse as he later created in "Macbeth." His most notable
addition is the wooing of Anne, the betrothed but not the wife of Prince
Edward, which has no historical foundation and is somewhat extraneous to
the main action, though dramatically one of the most effective scenes in
the play.[16] In dramatizing the chronicle he manifestly followed Marlowe,
making the protagonist the dominating force everywhere in the action, and
the other persons foils to set off the hero's villany. But he adopted only
with skillful and essential modifications the prevailing methods of the
tragedies of blood and revenge. The idea of Nemesis, made clear in Polydore
Virgil's account of Richard, must have suggested a Senecan tragedy, or at
least a ghost overseeing the course of the villain and finally triumphing
in his defeat. Shakespeare, however, personified Nemesis in Margaret, and
gave her the various functions of a supervising ghost and of a
chorus,--curses, laments, and exultations. Moreover, with a tact unique at
that time and not displayed by him in "Titus Andronicus," he perceived that
the presentation of many murders on the stage would detract from rather
than add to the terror and horror centred in Richard, and so removed all
the murders from view excepting that of Clarence. To compensate in a way
for this lack of stage sensation, he developed Richard's dream of ghosts
into the highly spectacular presentation of the spirits of the eleven
victims in their nocturnal appearance between the two opposing camps.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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