Character Map
Worth reading straight through once, then keeping open beside the script: Tap any name in the list below to jump to that character. Everyone is described as they stand at the start of the play, with a note of what becomes of them by the end.
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. |
One more name to expect: Mistress Shore, the late king's mistress, is talked about repeatedly and never appears. Richard uses her as a weapon, and the charge that Hastings protects her helps send him to the block.
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.
Queen Elizabeth's family, collectively resented at court as jumped-up newcomers. What makes them powerful is not their titles but their custody: They hold and raise the twelve-year-old heir. 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 Elizabeth of York 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.