SOURCE: “‘Unvalued Jewels’: The Religious Perspective in Richard III,” in Bucknell Review, Vol. 26, 1982, pp. 58-73.

In the following essay, Huffman challenges the common allegorical view of Richard as the “villain-king” scourged by God. Huffman maintains that the play offers an alternative to this perspective, one that allows Richard to be seen as a tragic individual rather than as an allegorical figure.

Twentieth-century studies of Shakespeare's Richard III have shown the character of Richard to be that of a Machiavel, a figure closely related to the Vice of the Morality plays and to the Tyrant of Senecan tragedy.¹ The suggestion of the family resemblance to the Vice in turn suggests his association with the moral and even theological dimension which that figure never quite lost on the English Renaissance stage, and a number of critics have tended to supplement these character studies with a rather schematic view of the...