Attitude towards Women

Question 1

Hastings - Alignment with Richard

Answer 1

Hastings says ‘More Pity that the eagles should be mewed while kites and buzzards play at liberty.’ (page 13).

Question 2

Richard - Sadistic and Audacity

Answer 2

Calls Anne a ‘wench,’ and then says he will ‘become her father and her husband.’ - He has just murdered her father-in-law (Henry VI) and intends to kill her husband (Edward IV).

Question 3

Richard relationship with Elizabeth

Answer 3

‘Since every jack became a gentleman, There’s many a gentle person made a jack.’ (page 35)

Question 4

Response to Margaret

Answer 4

When Margaret appears and verbally attacks Elizabeth, Hastings, Rivers, Dorset and Richard - they challenge her. Hastings says it was the ‘foulest deed to slay that babe,’ meaning Rutland (Yorks Brother). (page 41)

Question 5

Margaret and Elizabeth

Answer 5

Margaret calls Elizabeth a ‘Poor painted queen.’

Question 6

Duchess and Elizabeth
(Obscure grief competition)

Answer 6

The Duchess tells Elizabeth that ‘a moiety of my [Duchess’] mean to overgo thy [Elizabeth’s] woes and drown thy [Elizabeth’s] cries.’

Question 7

Elizabeth - Powerless

Answer 7

Margaret uses a series of antithetical statements to emphasise Elizabeth’s losses (in accordance with her curses). E.g., ‘For happy wife, a most distressed widow.’ (page 169).

Question 8

Women - Powerless - AO5

Answer 8

Margaret says that Elizabeth’s ‘woes will make them [her curses] sharp, and pierce,’ like hers (page 171).