e third scene displays the passionate
quarrelling of the Court factions. The Queen, her brothers and
Richard's party, are cursed by Margaret of Anjou. In the fourth
scene Clarence is murdered in the Tower.

Act II. King Edward IV dies, having patched up a seeming truce
between the factions. His son is to succeed him. Before this can
happen, Richard strikes down the leaders of the Queen's party, and
lays a deep scheme to secure the crown for himself.

Act III. There is a deeply tragical scene in which the unsuspecting
Hastings, who is faithful to Edward's memory, is hurried out of
life. Afterwards, through the management of Buckingham, Richard is
proclaimed King.

Act IV. Richard makes himself sure by casting off Buckingham and
causing the murder of Edward's sons in the Tower. He plots to marry
Edward's daughter. But by this time the land is in upheaval against
him. Buckingham and Richmond lead forces against him.

Act V. Buckingham is taken and put to death; but Richmond's forces
gather head. Richard leads his army to oppose them. The armies
front each other at Bosworth Field near Leicester. The night before
the battle the ghosts of the many slain during the progress of the
Wars of the Roses menace Richard and promise victory to Richmond.
In the battle that follows Richard is slain. Richmond takes oath to
end the Wars of the Roses by marrying Edward's daughter, so that
the two royal houses may at last be joined.

_Richard III_ is the last of the great historical plays about the Wars
of the Roses. The subject of the wars had occupied Shakespeare's mind
for many months. He had traced them from their beginning in the long ago
to their end among the dead at Bosworth. All that bloodiness of misery
was due to a forgotten marriage and the chance that Edward III had seven
sons, the eldest of whom died before his father. In this great tragic
vision Shakespeare saw the wheel come full circle, with that giving of
justice which life renders at last, though it may be to the dead, or the
mad, or the broken.

Largely, this play deals with the coming of that justice. Much that is
most wonderful in the play comes from the faith that blood cruelly or
unjustly spilt cries from the ground, and that the human soul, wrought
to an ecstasy, has power, as the blood has power, to draw God's hand
upon the guilty. But Shakespear