Discuss the extent to which moral or political concerns are successfully dramatised in Shakespeare's play Richard III in relation to the context of...

Shakespeare’s play Richard III
concerns a time in English history when the roles of the monarch, the monarch’s family,
and the aristocracy were far more important than they are today.  The monarch was
expected (ideally) to be both morally and politically virtuous – to set a good ethical
example and to be a worthy political model. Indeed, all members of the powerful
aristocracy were expected (ideally) to live up to high ethical and political standards.
However, everyone realized that because (according to Christian teachings) all people
are sinners, neither moral nor political perfection was ever likely to
exist.

Shakespeare almost immediately raises important
moral and political issues in the very first scene of the play.  Thus Richard, the Duke
of Gloucester, quickly reveals to the audience that he has been plotting against his
brother George, the Duke of Clarence, by helping to make another brother, King Edward
IV, suspicious of Clarence. Right after line 41, Clarence enters the stage, under guard,
on his way to the Tower of London, where the king plans to confine him. The ensuing
discussion between Gloucester and Clarence highlights many moral and political issues,
including the following:

• Gloucester tells
  Clarence that “the fault is none of yours” (47) when Clarence is being led to the tower
  – an immoral, deceptive statement, since Gloucester has, just a few lines earlier,
  revealed to the audience that the fault largely results from Gloucester’s own plotting.
  A lying, hypocritical member of the royal family would have been a cause for great
  concern in the middle ages and Renaissance.


• Gloucester
  pretends not to “know” (51) why Clarence is being confined – another
  lie.


• Clarence alludes to the fact that the king has a
  mistress even though the king is married (73) – another example of immoral behavior by
  the standards of the day.


• Gloucester also alludes to this
  example of royal immorality (99).


• After Clarence is taken
  away to the Tower, Gloucester says,

readability="8">

Simple plain Clarence, I do love thee
so

That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven . . .
(118-19)

This, of course, is
just one more piece of evidence of Richard’s immorality: not only is he plotting the
death of another person, but that other person is his own
brother!

Political matters are equally emphasized in this
scene, as the following examples (among others)
suggest:

• Gloucester tells Clarence that in the
  current political climate “we are not safe” (70), although it is Gloucester, of course,
  who most immediately threatens Clarence’s
  safety.


• Gloucester claims that recently the “Lord
  Chamberlain [got] his liberty” (77; emphasis added) by appealing to
  the king’s mistress.


• Gloucester asserts that the queen
  and the king’s mistress have both become “mighty gossips in our monarchy” (83), thus
  referring to the reigning political system of the
  time.


• Gloucester denies (to a third person) that he and
  his brother are guilty of speaking “treason” (90) – a serious political
  offense.


• Gloucester pretends political loyalty: “We are
  the Queen’s abjects, and must obey” (106).

Thus
the opening scene of the play, like the rest of the work, successfully dramatizes many
important political and moral issues – issues especially important in the contexts of
the historical eras in which the play is set and in which it was
written.