SOURCE: “Conflicting Paradigms and the Progress of Persuasion in Richard III,” in Cahiers Élizabéthains, No. 37, April, 1990, pp. 59-66.

In the following essay, Schellenberg asserts that in Richard III's rise and fall, Shakespeare is demonstrating the “dangers of persuasive rhetoric” when it is misused.

Shakespeare's Richard III bustles through a stage world of highly formal rhetoric, setting in motion a near-successful bid for control not only of the stage and its other actors, but also of the masterplot of history. He delights in his Richard loves Richard text, glossing his verbal manipulations at every stage of their planning and execution, while other characters provide a conservative countertext of choric commentary, historical summary, and prophecy. These two broad linguistic groups represent the opposing forces in a power struggle between Richard's efforts to persuade history into his mold and the paradigm of an-eye-for-an-eye justice expressed by an ever-swelling chorus of...