SOURCE: Hassel, R. Chris, Jr. “The Wooing of Elizabeth.” In Songs of Death: Performance, Interpretation, and the Text of Richard III, pp. 57-73. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Hassel asserts that Queen Elizabeth is smarter and less naive than some of her earlier critics have suggested, especially in her dealings with Richard.

On this dialogue 'tis not necessary to bestow much criticism, part of it is ridiculous, and the whole improbable.—

Samuel Johnson

Dr. Johnson's opinion notwithstanding, its length, its placement, its carefully polished rhetoric and its concentration of ironies suggest that Shakespeare considered Richard's wooing of Elizabeth to be a fairly important scene.¹ It is all the more ironic that when critics have stooped to interpret it, they have disagreed so radically about what finally happens. E. K. Chambers states one view: “In his last bout [Richard] is palpably outwitted. … Elizabeth is the...