SOURCE: Hassel, R. Chris, Jr. “Military Oratory in Richard III.” Shakespeare Quarterly 35, no. 1 (spring 1984): 53-61.

In the following essay, Hassel compares the rhetorical power and effectiveness of Richard's and Richmond's addresses to their forces before the crucial battle at Bosworth Field in Richard III. Citing sixteenth-century military manuals, the critic evaluates the two leaders' abilities to establish the justice of their cause and inspire their troops.

Though Richmond's victory over Richard Hunchback at Bosworth Field was memorialized in chronicle and verse throughout the sixteenth century, the question of the aesthetic victory in Shakespeare's Richard III remains alive. Are Richmond's orations to his troops as aesthetically unsatisfying as some of his most vocal critics claim? Are they “flat,” “stiff,” “pious,” and “platitudinous?” Or are they instead ringing assertions of what is right and just, powerful enough to circumscribe even Richard's dramatic and rhetorical power? Does the “artist in evil...