King Richard III

In THE TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD III, Shakespeare brilliantly dramatizes the terrible rise of Richard of Gloucester to the throne of England, and the subsequent downfall of his bloody reign. Unrepentant, deformed in body and spirit, willfully evil, and blessed with a serpent's tongue, the hunchbacked King Richard III sits aside Milton's Satan as one of the greatest villains of English literature. The play opens with Richard's brother Edward IV as King and England at peace, but Richard, "determined to prove a villain," sets about a series of heinous acts to pave his way to the throne: he has his older brother imprisoned and murdered, beheads nobles opposed to him on false charges, locks away his young nephews in the tower where they are later killed, and even does away with his wife to make way for a more politically advantageous marriage to his own niece. Finally, feared and despised in all quarters, and with his closest ally, Lord Buckingham, turned against him, Richard III loses his crown and his life in the battlefield, leading to the rise Henry VII, and the end of the War of the Roses between the York and Lancaster families.