SOURCE: “Last Words and Last Things: St. John, Apocalypse, and Eschatology in Richard III,” in Shakespeare Studies: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews, Vol. 18, 1986, pp. 25-40.

In the following essay, Hassel studies the allusions in Richard III to St. Paul and St. John's Apocalypse, highlighting the parallels between the “argument” of the play and that of the Book of Revelation.

Although attempts to understand Richard's Pauline allusions have become almost epidemic recently, they have also usually been interesting. John Dover Wilson holds the most traditional view: he sees them as part of Richard's gleeful hypocrisy, specifically his characteristic “mock-Puritan piety.” Geoffrey Carnall thinks that Richard is “positively impersonating, with mischievous exhilaration, the unscrupulous Apostle of the Gentiles.” Other connections are argued by John Harcourt, particularly a parallel to Acts 23:12, when certain Jews swore like Richard with Hastings that they would not eat “till they had killed...