Free Richard III Essays: The Seduction of Lady Anne :: Richard II Richard III Essays

Richard III and The Seduction of Lady Anne   Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is a great seducer.  However, it is easier when the seducee is rather frail in mind and rawness, as I believe was the case with Lady Anne.  Perhaps Lady Annes ego was as much engaged as her anger was initially.  Gloucester chips off at her resolve masterfully, but lets look at the facts.  She knows that Gloucester defeated her husband and her father-in-law.  This fact is undisputed (within the play).  Gloucester admits both murders to her saying, your beauty was the cause of that effect the murders (I.ii.121).  Her father-in-laws corpse is lying scarcely feet away.  Yet in under two hundred lines, Anne goes from calling him a black magician and foul devil to accepting his ring (I.ii.34 I.ii.50).               This is quite a turnaround.  She could have walked away but she was more intrigued or flattered than angered or humiliated.  Richard uses flattery to woo her.  He repeatedly tells her that he killed her husband and father-in-law to be able-bodied to spend one hour in her sweet bosom (I.ii.124).  Gloucester goes on to tell her that He lives, that loves thee better than he Edward could (I.ii.141), meaning that Gloucester loves her better than her husband did.  later she spits on him, he calls it (the spit), poison from so sweet a place (I.ii.146).  Gloucester is unrelenting in his flatteries and she does not walk away.                The most remarkable portion of this diorama is when Gloucester bares his chest and hands his sword over to Anne to kill him and asks her to end his pain if she wont have him.  She starts for him with the sword, but drops it when he tells her that twas thy heavenly face that set me on to kill her husband (I.ii.182).  He then offers to turn the sword on himself.  Within a few seconds, she goes from raising his own sword to him, to weakly replying, I would I knew thy heart (I.ii.192).  She still questions his motives, but Gloucester has clearly already won her and slips a ring on her finger.               It is little wonder that Gloucester brags to himself of this conquest.  Her father-in-laws corpse is barely cold and she has accepted Gloucester as her next husband.