SOURCE: “‘Foul Wrinkled Witch’: Superstition, Skepticism, and Margaret of Anjou in Shakespeare's Richard III,” in Cahiers Élisabéthains, Vol. 52, October, 1997, pp. 25-37.

In the essay below, Mason challenges critics who suggest that the female characters in Richard III are only powerful as a group. Mason explores the power exerted by the women in the play, noting the ways in which they individually, as well as collectively, serve as Richard's antagonists.

‘Foul wrinkled witch’ is Richard of Gloucester's greeting to Margaret of Anjou in Richard III I.3.¹ By calling Margaret ‘witch’, Richard endows her role with an implied power, a power that as we shall see, has impressed many later commentators. But the endowment is complex and possesses profoundly contradictory elements which this essay will explore.² At the same time Margaret is sharply differentiated from Queen Elizabeth, Lady Anne, and the Duchess of York, though all are queens, or...