We talked in class about women’s roles in Richard III as perhaps the viewpoints from the margins presenting a “feminine” alternative to history, and a way of mourning and recognizing suffering that King Richard III caused (and causes in the play). Queen Margaret and the Duchess of York are major examplesof characters who are able to recognize, call attention to, and, in ways, overcome the awfulness that Richard brings to the table. Lady Anne and Queen Elizabeth, however, are more in the center of things and tend to give in to Richard. Something that bothers me about the play (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing) is that Lady Anne disappears and is presumably somehow murdered by Richard, but there’s barely any mention of her death.

In 4.1 she’s summoned to be crowned, supposedly, and comments that Richard “will, no doubt, shortly be rid of me” (81). She anticipates Richard’s plan to discard her in some fashion, expecting and commenting on her own death, but follows his command anyway. The next mention of Anne is in 4.2. when Richard is himself crowned and tells Catesby: “Rumor it abroad / That Anne my wife is sick and like to die; / I will take order for her keeping close” (48-50). I think it’s safe to assume that Anne is not sick, but Richard is concerned with having people “abroad” think that she is. He also wants her to be kept close, which the footnotes in the Norton translate to “I will arrange to have her kept out of sight,” which, if she needs to be “kept out of sight,” indicates that she’s not as much on her deathbed as he’s claiming her to be. I also think it’s interesting that he repeats himself in the same stretch of mini-monologue: “Look how thou dream’st! I say again, give out / That Anne my wife is sick and like to die” (54-55). Then he has an aside where he says he must marry Elizabeth of York. The “Look how thou dream’st!” comment makes it seem like Catesby seems either shocked or to not be paying attention, warranting repetition. If he’s shocked, it’s for good reason, because it’s a very strange request that makes it clear that Anne is in danger of Richard. Also, the direct repetition of the line (which I feel like has happened a lot in Richard III and hasn’t happened in most of the other plays we’ve read, so I can see why people think that the first tetralogy might not have been written by Shakespeare) about Anne does something in terms of emphasis that I think ironizes, in a way, what he’s saying. It makes me think of the line from Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” meaning his insistence that she’s ill and dying makes it very clear that she’s definitely not ill or dying.

It’s also barely apparent that she’s died. In 4.3., Richard is going through everyone he’s gotten rid of: “The son of Clarence have I pent up close. / His daughter meanly have I matched in marriage. / The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham’s bosom, / And Anne my wife hath bid the world goodnight.” (36-39). The context of the others that he’s basically disposed of makes it clear that he had something to do with Anne’s death, even though it doesn’t fully acknowledge that she’s been killed because he says it so casually. He doesn’t even take responsibility for Anne’s death—she’s the one doing the action in the line, bidding the world goodnight, similarly to the way he talks about Edward’s sons and how they “sleep.” I think it’s interesting that he’s using sleep to minimize the severity of deaths that he’s caused here.

Part of what bothers me about the situation with Anne, I think, and by extension about the situation with Elizabeth of York, is that we see Richard earlier in the play apparently convincing Anne of his love for her, claiming that he killed her husband and father in law because of her beauty and his love for her. For starters, it’s extremely clear that he doesn’t actually love her since he was so eager to dispose of her, so the fact that she “believed” him for that argument (even if it was her own notion of self-preservation and not some kind of gullibility that made her agree to marry him) is bothersome. He also makes the exact same argument of “love” to Queen Elizabeth about her daughter: “I mean that with my soul I love thy daughter / And mean to make her queen of England” (4.4.236-237). It almost makes the two—Anne and Elizabeth—seem weak for falling for his tricks (even though I don’ t think they’ve truly fallen for anything), especially because Elizabeth is aware of what happened to Anne (Elizabeth says in the argument that Richard “Mad’st quick conveyance with her good aunt Anne” (4.4.256), which is translated to “Got rid of”). I wonder how Shakespeare’s original audience might have taken these characters’ actions (and how they was intended to be taken).

(Other things that I think are worth mentioning but have already gone overboard talking about are the repeated lines that liken death to sleep—Catesby “dream’st”, Edward’s sons “sleep”, and Anne “hath bid the world goodnight”—and the possible significance of that; as well as Queen Margaret and the Duchess of York’s roles in the whole situation in relation/comparison to Anne and Elizabeth.)