Machiavellian Tactics In Shakespeare s Richard III
In his famed Richard III, William Shakespeare chronicles, albeit with considerable artistic license, the
meteoric rise and similarly swift fall of the work s eponymous tyrant Richard, Duke of Gloucester.
Throughout the tragedy, the playwright portrays Richard, a self proclaimed Machiavellian and the
discontented brother of the newly crowned king, as exactly the sort of cunning and ambitious man
capable of succeeding in his plot, proclaimed earlier in Shakespeare s Henry IV, Part 3, to set the
murderous Machiavel to school (Shakespeare 3.2.193). Yet in actuality, despite such professed
adherence to the infamous work The Prince, Richard tragically and repeatedly deviates from the spirit
of Machiavelli s teaching and, in so doing, all but ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...
In strictly a Machiavellian sense, Richard s downfall is the direct result of his errant implementation of
The Prince s guiding ideals; whereas for Shakespeare, the tragic failure of the Duke of Gloucester,
though in part due to his missteps as a Machiavellian, most notably evidences the effects of
conscience on the actions of men. Throughout the play, Shakespeare demonstrates the manner in
which the Machiavellian desire to acquire (Machiavelli 14) drives characters such as Clarence, his
murderers and, above all, Richard to commit inhuman acts of evil to further their own self interests.
This behavior, Machiavelli would assert, is perfectly natural and inherently good so long as carried out
with prudence. Shakespeare, however, underscores the fundamental falsehood of such thinking with
his repeated illustration of the way in which one s sense of morality, to quote Queen Margaret s curse,
begnaw[s] [the] soul (Shakespeare 1.3.221) of those who do wrong. In the case of the unnamed
Second Murderer, for instance, the conscience that construct so foreign to Machiavellian thought very
nearly prevents the hardened criminal from carrying out the murder of the innocent Clarence by
fill[ing] [him] full of obstacles (Shakespeare 1.4.141). Though temporarily overcome by the promise
of reward, the
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