Fun Trivia : King Richard III

Structure Sub-topic of: Shakespeare Quizzes Interesting Questions, Facts and Information There are a total of 20 general entries.

Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information

King Richard III

In Act V, scene III, Richard is cursed by his many victims. These include Prince Edward, son of Henry VI. Which other character in the play dreamed of Edward before his death?

King Richard III


Clarence. Imprisoned in the Tower in Act I, Clarence related to his jailer his terrifying dream about being drowned. His dream ended with the appearance of Edward, who cried. "Clarence is come- false, fleeting, perjur'd Clarence that stabb'd me in the field by Tewkesbury. Seize on him, furies, take him unto torment!" Clarence found himself surrounded by tormenting fiends, upon which he woke.



Act V begins with the execution of Buckingham; what highly significant feast day does Buckingham's execution fall on?

King Richard III


All Soul's Day. All Soul's Day is celebrated on November 2 (the day after All Saint's Day) and commemorates the souls in Purgatory. According to tradition, the dead were able to communicate with the living on this day. Upon verifying the date with the sheriff, Buckingham reflects: "Why then All Soul's Day is my body's doomsday. This is the day which in King Edward's time I wished might fall on me when I was found false to his children and to his wife's allies. This is the day wherein I wished to fall by the false faith of him whom most I trusted. This, this All Soul's Day to my fearful soul is the determin'd respite of my wrongs. That All-seer which I dallied with hath turned my feigned prayer on my head and given in earnest what I begged in jest."



Act IV, scene IV also contains a quite lengthy scene between Richard and Queen Elizabeth. What proposition does he make to Elizabeth during this scene?

King Richard III


That she give him her daughter in marriage.. At his coronation, when he begins hatching his plot to marry the young Elizabeth to secure his position, Richard realizes the degree of sheer gall this will take: "Murder her brothers and then marry her- Uncertain way of gain! But I am in so far in blood that sin will pluck on sin." When Richard, fresh from being cursed by his mother, first mentions Elizabeth to the Queen, she believes that he is threatening to remove her as yet another threat to his security (as Edward's offspring, she had some claim to the throne) and promises to disavow her daughter's legitimacy in order to save her life. When Richard reveals his true intentions, however, the Queen is even more appalled and can barely conceal her disgust when Richard suggests that the grandchildren she will reap from this union will take the place of her dead sons. Though the Queen leaves Richard on a non-committal note, she clearly has no desire to entertain Richard's proposal.



By whom is Richard memorably cursed in the middle of Act IV, scene IV?

King Richard III


His mother, the Duchess of York. The Duchess of York has suffered much on Richard's account, including the loss of her son Clarence (which may have hastened the death of her other son, King Edward) and of her two grandsons, the princes. Actually, her troubles with Richard (as she reminds him in this scene) began with his birth; Richard was born by Caesarean section and, according to legend (as recounted by Henry VI in the penultimate scene of "Henry VI, Part III"), came out feet first and with a full set of teeth (which cannot have made breast-feeding easy). To put it in the Duchess' own words: "Thou cam'st on earth to make the earth my hell. A greivous burden was thy birth to me; Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy; thy schooldays frightful, wild, and furious; Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous; Thy age confirmed, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody, more mild, but yet more harmful- kind in hatred." She gives him her curse to take into battle, and prophesies: "Bloody thou art, bloody will be thine end."



Act IV, scene IV begins with Queen Margaret, Queen Elizabeth, and the Duchess of York reciting a litany of the various children and loved ones they have lost. In this scene, what favor does Queen Elizabeth ask of Queen Margaret?

King Richard III


To teach her how to curse her enemies.. Elizabeth, no doubt, has noted that of the various people Margaret has cursed, all have either died or come to grief (except, thus far, for Buckingham, who will come to grief shortly). She asks Margaret to teach her to curse her enemies; Margaret replies, with remarkable self-perception: "Forbear to sleep the nights and fast the days; Compare dead happiness with living woe; Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were, and he that slew them fouler than he is. Bett'ring thy loss makes the bad causer worse; revolving this will teach thee how to curse."



In Act IV, scene II, Richard ascends the throne. No sooner does he take the seat of power than he obliquely, but unmistakeably, orders the deaths of his two nephews. He also intimates to Catesby that another victim will soon fall; who is it?

King Richard III


His wife, Anne. Richard hints to Buckingham that he wants the two princes out of the way; when Buckingham fails to construe his meaning, he chides him: "Cousin, thou wast not wont to be so dull. Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead, and I would have it suddenly performed," After dismissing Buckingham, he calls Catesby to his side and orders him to spread abroad a rumour that his wife Anne is grievously ill and at the point of death. Privately, he muses that "I must be married to my brother's daughter [Elizabeth], or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass." He clearly intends to do away with Anne (probably by poison) in order to make Princess Elizabeth his wife; this will secure his position since, theoretically, Clarence's son has a better claim on the throne. Though we never hear any details of Anne's death, she has clearly died by Act IV, scene IV, when Richard brazenly asks Queen Elizabeth for her daughter's hand. Elizabeth notes that, in order to free himself to marry her daughter, Richard "...mads't quick conveyance with her good aunt Anne.", an indication that Richard brought about Anne's death. Historically, Anne is believed to have died of tuberculosis.



In Act IV, scene I, Queen Elizabeth, Lady Anne, and the Duchess of York commiserate over the imprisonment of the two Princes in the Tower. At the end of this scene, the Queen makes an extremely moving speech entreating mercy for her children. To whom, or what, is this speech addressed?

King Richard III


The Tower. Queen Elizabeth's speech to the Tower, one of the most moving in Shakespeare, runs thus: "Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes whom envy hath immur'd within your walls- Rough cradle for such little pretty ones! Rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow for tender princes- use my babies well! So foolish sorrow bids your stones farewell."



Lord Hastings is, perhaps, the unluckiest of Richard's many victims; he is sent to his death for uttering a single, monosyllabic word. What is the word?

King Richard III


If. Richard is determined to remove any obstacles to the throne; chief of which, at this point, are the two young Princes; he doubts that Hastings will be unscrupulous enough to support him in his schemes. When Buckingham, in Act III, scene I, asks what shall be done if Hastings appears too soft, Richard bluntly replies "Chop off his head!". Later that night a messenger from Lord Stanley relates to Hastings Stanley's grisly dream that Hastings had been done to death by a boar. In scene V, Richard tells the lords of the Council, including Hastings, that his arm is "...like a blasted sapling, wither'd up" as a result of witchcraft practiced upon him by Queen Elizabeth and Mistress Jane Shore (Shore was the late Edward's mistress, who is now Hasting's lover. Elizabeth Woodville was, historically, rumored to have been a witch and to have used enchantment on Edward to entice him to marry her, against the will of the influential Earl of Warwick, his chief counsellor). Hastings diplomatically begins to respond to this surprising allegation; he gets no further than "If they have done this deed, my noble lord-" before Richard angrily explodes: "If? Thou protector of this damned strumpet, talk'st thou to me of if's? Thou art a traitor. Off with his head!". He orders the stunned Hastings' summary execution. Historically, Hastings' beheading was the first recorded execution in the Tower.



Which fruits does Richard request from the garden of the Bishop of Ely in Act III, scene IV?

King Richard III


Strawberries. Richard, at this point, is disguising his ambition by feigning disinterest in the impending coronation; he arrives a little late, claiming to have overslept, and nonchalantly asks the Bishop of Ely to send for some strawberries from his garden. According to the Ribner-Kittredge edition of Shakespeare's works "In medieval iconography strawberries were conventional symbols of treachery, since they were usually depicted hiding an adder."



In Act III, scene III, Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan are being led to their execution at Pomfret castle, also known as Pontrefract. This castle had previously been the scene of the death of a king of England, also the subject of one of Shakespeare's historical plays; who was it?

King Richard III


Richard II. The murder of Richard II while imprisoned at Pontrefract castle following his enforced abdication was held by Tudor apologists to be the "original sin", as it were, for which the bloody tyranny of Richard III was the final punishment. Rivers, in this scene, recalls that "Richard the Second here was hack'd to death". Earl Rivers is Queen Elizabeth's brother and Lord Grey her son by her previous marriage. The Woodvilles, the kindred of Queen Elizabeth, were greatly resented for their influence at the court of King Edward IV; in the play Richard conducts a whispering campaign holding them responsible for Clarence's murder (for which he is responsible). Following Edward IV's death, Richard has Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan (a chamberlain) imprisoned and executed. Richard's strategy in seizing them is both to crush opposition to himself and to weaken the protective cordon around the young Princes, his chief obstacles to the throne, though he claims to be protecting them from the plotting of their Woodville kin.



This animal is associated with Richard in the play and was, in historical fact, featured on his crest. What animal is it?

King Richard III


A boar. Richard's heraldic emblem was the "blancsanglier", or white boar. Historically, this may have arisen out of his supposed devotion to St. Antony of Egypt, who was said to have been protected in the wilderness by a wild boar; a boar, or large pig, figures in the saint's iconography. Others have speculated that, since the Latin spelling of the name "York" is "Eboracum", it may have been something of a play on words. In the play, of course, the boar is used to far different symbolic effect; it symbolizes both Richard's deformity (as when old Queen Margaret calls him "Thou elvish mark'd, abortive, rooting hog! Thou that was sealed in thy nativity the slave of nature and the son of Hell!") and his ferocious, predatory nature, as foreseen by Lord Stanley's prophetic dream, related to Hastings, in which "the boar had rased off his [Hasting's] helm."



Before his murder, the Duke of Clarence relates to his jailer a vivid nightmare he had had the night before in which he drowned. According to the dream, how did he come to drown?

King Richard III


Richard accidentally knocked him out of a boat.. "Simple, plain Clarence" senses subconsciously that his brother is a danger, but persists in thinking of him as a well-meaning bumbler. In his dream, he escapes from the tower and flees by boat towards Burgundy. Richard appears in the boat with him and tempts him from his cabin onto the deck. As they gaze toward England, Richard stumbles and falls against Clarence, accidentally pushing him overboard. Clarence them describes, in vivid detail, the horror and pain of drowning. In the play, Clarence is stabbed by an assassin, who then vows "If all this will not do, I'll drown you in the malmsey butt within." In historical fact, Clarence was formally executed on King Edward's orders. A persistent tradition has it that he was subsequently "pickled" in a vat of malmsey wine (possibly as the result of a last request?).



Queen Margaret praises this character, but then prophecies an unhappy end for him after he rudely rebuffs her; a prophecy he remembers shortly before his execution. Which character is it?

King Richard III


Buckingham. Margaret curses virtually everyone present in Act I, scene III, but she is fond of the "princely Buckingham" and warns him against Richard ("O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog! Look when he fawns he bites"). When Buckingham shows solidarity with Richard and rebuffs her warning, she is both hurt and angered and makes this doleful prediction: "O, but remember this another day, when he shall split thy very heart with sorrow, and say poor Margaret was a prophetess!" Before his execution in Act V, Buckingham exclaims "Thus Margaret's curse falls heavily on my neck", and quotes her warning to him.



Although there are many historical inaccuracies in the play, the presence of one character in particular is most unhistorical, as he/she had died in 1482 and, prior to that, had been in exile in France. Which character is it?

King Richard III


Queen Margaret. Margaret of Anjou, the French-born consort of Henry VI, was sent into exile in France in 1475, four years after the Battle of Tewkesbury, and never returned to England. Devastated and thoroughly demoralized by the death of her son Edward, as well as the subsequent assassination of her husband, she spent her remaining years in poverty and misery and died in 1482, the year before Richard ascended the throne. In the play, she acts as a sort of sybil, taking grim pleasure in the sufferings of her enemies and prophesying doom for many of Richard's victims, many of whom mistakenly put their trust in him or underestimate his villainy. Her first appearance among the bickering Woodvilles and Plantagenets in Act I, scene III astonishes them. Richard reminds her that she had been banished upon pain of death, to which she replies "I was; but I do find more pain in banishment than death can yield me here by my abode." The two film versions of "Richard III" (Olivier's and Ian Mc Kellan's) eliminated Queen Margaret; Ian Mc Kellan's version divides some of her more memorable lines between the Duchess of York (Richard's mother, played by Maggie Smith) and Queen Elizabeth.



The first of Richard's many victims in this play is his own brother, the Duke of Clarence. Richard has exploited King Edward's concern about a prophecy stating that his issue shall be disinherited by a mysterious entity known only as "G". What is Clarence's first name?

King Richard III


George. Richard had actually begun plotting the demise of his brother Clarence, who "...keep'st me from the light", in the penultimate scene of "King Henry IV Part III" "For I will buzz abroad such prophecies that Edward shall be fearful of his life; and then, to purge his fear, I'll be thy death." Shortly after "King Richard III" begins, we learn that King Edward has been told by a "wizard" that his issue would be disinherited by someone with the initial G. Since Clarence's first name is George, and he stands next in line to inherit the throne after Edward's sons, he is the obvious prime suspect (Edward fails to note that G could also stand for Gloucester, of which Richard is duke).