What happens in Richard III

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, walks out alone and tells the audience exactly what he is. He is hunchbacked, unloved, and bored by peacetime, so he has decided to be a villain. His brother Edward sits on the throne, sick and fading. Between Richard and the crown stand his other brother, Clarence, and Edward’s two young sons. Richard sets to work. He has Clarence arrested on a faked prophecy, then sends two murderers to drown him in a barrel of wine. To prove his own daring, he woos Lady Anne over the corpse of the king she once loved, and against all sense, she yields.

When King Edward dies, Richard moves fast. With the smooth-talking Duke of Buckingham at his side, he intercepts the young princes on their way to London and steers them into the Tower “for their safety.” He arrests and executes the Queen’s relatives — Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan — picking off the family that might protect the boys. Old Queen Margaret, widow of a king Richard’s house destroyed, haunts the court with curses, naming each victim before the blade falls.

Lord Hastings stands in the way because he is loyal to the princes. Richard handles him in a single morning. At a council meeting he suddenly bares his arm, claims witchcraft has withered it, and orders Hastings beheaded on the spot. Then he and Buckingham stage a piece of theater for the Lord Mayor: a fake emergency, broken armor, a speech calling the princes illegitimate, and a show of false reluctance before Richard “accepts” the crown the people supposedly beg him to take.

Crowned at last, Richard cannot rest. He asks Buckingham to murder the boys in the Tower, and when Buckingham hesitates, the partnership cracks. Richard hires a hungry man named Tyrrel instead, who reports back that the princes are dead, smothered in their beds. Richard now schemes to marry their sister, young Elizabeth, to shore up his claim. But the bodies and the lies pile up, and across the channel the Earl of Richmond is gathering an army. Buckingham, abandoned, is captured and led to execution, admitting too late that he helped make a tyrant.

The women of the play — Margaret, Queen Elizabeth, and Richard’s own mother the Duchess of York — gather to mourn and to curse him. Richard tries to talk Elizabeth into the marriage, and she fends him off. News arrives from every side: Richmond has landed, lords are deserting, the rebellion is real. Richard marches to Bosworth Field, his nerves fraying.

On the eve of battle the two camps make ready. Richmond sleeps soundly; Richard cannot. The ghosts of everyone he has killed file past his tent, cursing him toward despair and blessing his enemy. He wakes shaking, his conscience finally awake and finding no friend, not even himself. At dawn both men rouse their soldiers. In the fighting Richard’s horse is killed, and he stumbles the field on foot, roaring for a horse and a chance at Richmond. The two meet at last, and Richmond cuts him down. Lord Stanley lifts the crown from Richard’s body and sets it on Richmond’s head. The new king, Henry VII, pardons the survivors and announces he will marry Elizabeth, joining the houses of York and Lancaster and ending the long civil wars.