Character Map
Worth reading straight through once, then keeping open beside the script as a reference. Everyone is described as they stand at the start of the play, with a note of what becomes of them by the end.
Note: Every spelling in the script works. Searching Riuers or Rivers leads to the entry for Lord Rivers. Searching Gloster, Glouster, and Glocester all lead to Richard, Duke of Gloucester.
For about thirty years before this play begins, England's royal family has been at war with itself. Two branches of the same family both claimed the right to the throne, and each is remembered by a rose emblem:
These civil wars are known as the Wars of the Roses. Shortly before the play opens, York won them outright. The Lancastrian king Henry VI was pushed off the throne and then murdered; his only son was killed in the final battle. The eldest of the York brothers took the crown and reigns as King Edward IV.
So the play opens on a country suddenly at peace, ruled by the winning family. The story is about what the king's youngest brother decides to do with that peace.
| Richard, Duke of Gloucester | The main character. The king's youngest brother. When the play's title says Richard III, it means him: the third King Richard England ever had, which tells you where he ends up. |
| Richard, Duke of York (the younger) | The king's second son, a boy of nine. He holds the "York" title now. |
| Richard, Duke of York (the elder) | The king's father, who started the York claim. Killed in the wars years ago. He is talked about but never appears. |
| Sir Richard Ratcliffe | A minor character, a soldier who serves Gloucester. No relation. |
| King Edward | The reigning king as the play opens, eldest of the three York brothers. Edward IV to historians; the play just calls him the King. |
| Young Prince Edward | His twelve-year-old son and heir, the elder of the two princes in the Tower. |
| Edward of Lancaster | The son of the deposed Henry the Sixth, killed before the play begins. Lady Anne's first husband. |
| Little Ned Plantagenet | Clarence's small son, named in a single line and never seen. He stands in the succession ahead of Gloucester, which is why Richard reports having penned him up. |
| Duke of York | Held by Gloucester's dead father, and now by his nine-year-old nephew. Both are named Richard. It is also the name of the whole royal house. |
| Queen | Three women hold the title. The Queen is King Edward’s wife and the reigning queen; old Queen Margaret is the widow of the king York deposed; and Lady Anne is crowned in the fourth act. One entrance direction also calls the reigning queen "the Queen Mother" while her husband still lives. |
| Grey | The Queen's son Lord Grey, and "Lady Grey," Richard's mocking name for the Queen herself, from her first marriage. |
| Stanley | Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby, who is also called Derby and Darby; and his son George Stanley, held hostage and never seen. |
| Lovell | Richard's man Lovell, spelled Louell; and a Sir Thomas Lovell reported in arms against Richard late in the play. Different men, same surname. |
| Woodville | The Queen's family name, spelled Woodeulle and Wooduill. One entrance direction brings a "Wooduill" on stage who is Rivers himself. |
A note for anyone comparing texts: Mistress Shore, the late king's mistress, is a constant presence in the full play and is cut entirely from this version. If someone mentions her at rehearsal, that is why you cannot find her.
On this page, "Gloucester" always means the main character; "Young York," the Folio's own name for him, always means the boy; and "Stanley" always means the Earl of Derby, the man serving two houses at once.
The coloured buttons highlight one group at a time; press again to release. A card whose left edge shows two colours belongs to two groups at once.
One thing stands between him and the throne: He is only the king's youngest brother. Several relatives outrank his claim. Keep that in mind as you meet the family; there is a scorecard at the end of this page.
The winners of the war: the York family, Gloucester's own. Their late father had four sons. One, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, was killed as a boy during the wars; the dialogue calls him only "Rutland," and his blood is the family's rawest wound: Queen Margaret, whom you will meet with the defeated side below, taunted his captive father with a cloth dipped in the boy's blood, and the Yorks fling that deed back at her whenever she dares accuse them. (In one late exchange the Duchess tells Margaret "I had a Rutland too, thou hop'st to kill him." The Folio reads holp'st, meaning you helped kill him, which is the accusation she is actually making.) The three who survive to the start of this play are King Edward, Clarence, and Gloucester, whom you have already met.
The House of Lancaster lost the war before the play began, but the play keeps its survivors close, because Shakespeare wants the cost of the wars standing on stage. Four people carry the red rose's memory, and a fifth carries its future.
The Queen’s kin and the men attached to them, resented at court as newcomers. Their power rests on the Queen's marriage rather than on old blood, which is exactly what the established nobles resent. What makes them vulnerable is that everybody else, Gloucester included, wants them broken the moment the king stops breathing.
The old nobility and senior officials. At the opening, their quarrel is with the queen's relatives, not with Gloucester, and he makes constant use of that. Three of these figures deserve special attention, for three different reasons: One is loyal to a mistake, one is secretly connected to the exile abroad, and one is about to become Gloucester's indispensable partner.
Not an army, and at the opening not even a conspiracy: a few household servants of a royal duke. A mocking rhyme of the period ran, "the Cat, the Rat, and Lovell our dog / rule all England under a Hog," the Hog being Gloucester's boar badge, and the other three being the first three men below. Shakespeare kept the whole kennel.
Now that you know everyone, here is the arithmetic Gloucester lays out in his opening speech, the list the whole play works through. The crown passes by blood in a fixed order, and when the play begins he is fifth in it.
Daughters could carry the claim too, which is why Young Elizabeth matters so much later, but in practice the men above are the obstacles Gloucester counts.
The night before the final battle, the dead return in a single extraordinary scene. It is the play keeping its own accounts, and it doubles as a summary of everything that has happened.
On the night before Bosworth, the ghosts of Richard's victims file through his tent in the order he made them, each cursing him to despair and die, and each turning to bless the sleeping Richmond in the opposite camp. It is the whole play, recited by its casualties. In this cutting nine ghosts walk; the full text has two more, Henry the Sixth and the Lancastrian Prince Edward, who are cut here along with the pre-play murders they represent.