SOURCE: “Discourse and Decorum in the First Act of Richard III,” in Shakespeare Studies: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews, Vol. 14, 1981, pp. 55-84.

In the following essay, Burton examines Richard's language in the first act of Richard III, and asserts that the variations in Richard's rhetorical style help to emphasize the power he has over people and events.

For sustained invention the first act of Richard III has no equal among those that follow in this play. Whereas strong hints from More and other historians inspire such later brilliant scenes as the death of Hastings and Buckingham's address to Gloucester at Bayard's Castle, the four scenes of this first act seem to be cut from whole cloth. In fact, it is not until the death of King Edward IV in the second act that Shakespeare follows the traditional sequence of events as he found it in...