Richard III - Act 1 Quotes

Question 1

Yorkist fortunes have been transformed from a…

Answer 1

‘winter of discontent’ to ‘summer’

Question 2

Richard is unhappy

Answer 2

‘This weak piping time of peace’

Question 3

Break of iambic metre emphasises Richard’s self-obsession

Answer 3

‘But I…I…I…’

Question 4

Richard feels bitter and excluded

Answer 4

‘But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks.’

Question 5

Richard has established his intention

Answer 5

‘I am determined to prove a villain’

Question 6

Richard is the solicitous brother to Clarence

Answer 6

‘This deep disgrace in brotherhood touches me deeper than you can imagine’

Question 7

Richard blames Clarence’s imprisonment on Queen Elizabeth

Answer 7

‘Why, this is it, when men are ruled by women’

Question 8

Richard’s misogyny

Answer 8

‘mighty gossips’

Question 9

Bitterness towards Elizabeth’s position of power

Answer 9

‘We are the Queen’s abjects and must obey’

Question 10

Richard sympathises with Hastings over the power that the Woodeville family in court

Answer 10

‘More pity that eagles should be mewed, when kites and buzzards play at liberty

Question 11

Richard dismisses his brother as….

Answer 11

‘Simple, plain Clarence’

Question 12

Richard tells the audience that this is…

Answer 12

‘Not so much love as for another secret close intent’

Question 13

Richard emphasises that he has set himself a huge challenge through the rhetorical question

Answer 13

‘What though I killed her husband and her father?’

Question 14

Earthy style of language

Answer 14

‘Leave the world for me to bustle in’

Question 15

Anne grieving for her father-in-law

Answer 15

‘poor key-cold figure of a holy king’

Question 16

Anne grieving for the demise of the House of Lancaster

Answer 16

‘pale ashes of the house of Lancaster’

Question 17

Anne blaming Richard for the death of Henry VI and Prince Edward

Answer 17

‘O cursed be the hand that made these holes; Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it; Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence’

Question 18

Richard threatening Anne

Answer 18

‘stay … set down … I command’

Question 19

Anne’s long speech of insults towards Richard

Answer 19

‘foul lump … lump of foul deformity … inhuman and unnatural’

Question 20

Richard’s use of tropes of Petrarchan courtly lover

Answer 20

‘it is my day, my life’

Question 21

Richard leaving the audience under no allusion that he is courting Anne for her own selfish ends

Answer 21

‘i’ll have her but i’ll not keep her long’

Question 22

Elizabeth is shown to be fully aware of how precarious her position will be after Edward’s death

Answer 22

‘the loss of a lord includes all harms’

Question 23

Reflection of Richard as protector

Answer 23

‘Richard Gloucester, a man that loves not me, nor none of you’

Question 24

Elizabeth is presented as more astute than her sons and brother

Answer 24

‘i fear our happiness is at the height’

Question 25

Buckingham and Stanley give news of King Edward’s desire to make peace between the rival factions before his death

Answer 25

‘he desires to make atonement between the Duke of Gloucester and your brothers and between them and my Lord Chamberlain’

Question 26

Richard sees Elizabeth and her family as having undeserved power and influence

Answer 26

‘I was a packhorse in his great affairs … to royalise his blood, i spent mine own. In all which time, you and your husband Greg were factious in the house of Lancaster’

Question 27

Richard congratulated himself in a soliloquy

Answer 27

‘the mischiefs that i set abroach’

Question 28

Richard has an irreverent attitude towards religion

Answer 28

‘and thus i clothe my naked villainy with odd old ends, stol’n forth of Holy Writ’

Question 29

Clarence’s dream foreshadowing his own death at the hands of Richard

Answer 29

‘methought that Gloucester stumbled, and in falling struck me overboard’

Question 30

Clarence feels remorse for his involvement in the deaths of the wars of the roses

Answer 30

‘i have done these things that now give evidence against my soul’

Question 31

Clarence understands Richard is behind his murder

Answer 31

‘it cannot be, for he bewent my fortune and hugged me in his arms, and swore with sobs that he would labour my delivery’