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 vast seducer.  However, it is easier when the seducee is rather frail in mind and heart, as I bank was the case with Lady Anne.  Perhaps Lady Annes ego was as much engaged as her anger was initially.  Gloucester chips away at her resolve masterfully, but lets look at the facts.  She knows that Gloucester despatched her husband and her father-in-law.  This fact is undisputed (within the play).  Gloucester admits both murders to her saying, your spectator was the cause of that effect the murders (I.ii.121).  Her father-in-laws corpse is lying just feet away.  Yet in under two hundred lines, Anne goes from calling him a black sensation and foul devil to accepting his ring (I.ii.34 I.ii.50).               This is quite a turnaround.  She could make water walked away but she was more intrigued or flattered than angered or humiliated.  Richard uses panegyric to woo her.  He repeatedly tells her that he killed her husband and father-in-law to be qualified 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.  After 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 noteworthy portion of this scene is when Gloucester bares his chest and hands his steel over to Anne to kill him and asks her to end his pain if she wont have him.  She starts for him with the mark, but drops it when he tells her that twas thy heavenly memorial tablet that set me on to kill her husband (I.ii.182).  He then offers to turn the sword on himself.& nbsp 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 understandably already won her and slips a ring on her finger.               It is little curiosity 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.