SOURCE: Jowett, John. Introduction to The Tragedy of King Richard III, by William Shakespeare, edited by John Jowett, pp. 1-142. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

In the following excerpt, Jowett presents a thematic overview of Richard III, highlighting such motifs as prophecy, curses, dreams, and conscience.

Prophecy of Revenge. It is a distinctive quality of Shakespeare's representation of reality that, though the physical and social world is tangible and real, it is at the same time subject to intrusion and redefinition from something the plays' characters experience as beyond the material. For all its immediacy and solidity, the world's epistemological foundations are shifting and insecure. When Richard declares that he is ‘determined to prove a villain’ (1.1.30) he seems to speak of his autonomy of will, but the words might mean that his villainy is predetermined, an effect of destiny. The individual events in Richard III are not simply events...