SOURCE: “‘The Form of Law’: Ritual and Succession in Richard III,” in True Rites and Maimed Rites: Ritual and Anti-Ritual in Shakespeare and His Age, edited by Linda Woodbridge and Edward Berry, University of Illinois Press, 1992, pp. 203-19.

In the following essay, Carroll states that the way in which Richard III explores the failure of ritual reflects the political concerns of the 1590s related to the succession issue. Carroll concludes that the play demonstrates Shakespeare's skeptical attitude toward the “logic of succession.”

Deformed persons are commonly even with nature, for as nature hath done ill by them, so do they by nature … Therefore it is good to consider of deformity, not as a sign, … but as a cause, which seldom faileth of the effect. 

—Bacon, “Of Deformity”

In her study of rites of passage and other ritual actions in Shakespearean drama, Marjorie Garber describes Richard III (along with...