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We love to hate Richard the III. Rarely is an audience served such a perfect villain, a self-aware villain who molds himself to ever greater treacheries, all within the sight of his confidants, the audience itself. It is rare to find a villain so villainous that he proclaims himself so, "Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, /Have no delight to pass away the time, /Unless to spy my shadow in the sun, /And descant on my own deformity.

/And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover /To entertain these fair, well-spoken days, /I am determined to prove a villain, /And hate the idle pleasures of these days. Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, /By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams /To set my brother Clarence and the King /In deadly hate the one against the other; /And if King Edward be as true and just /As I am subtle, false and treacherous/ This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up- "

This sentiment, spoken in the opening speech of Shakespeare's King Richard the Third, cleverly draws the audience in from the start. As a person of feeling, you immediately have some sympathies for the deformed and rejected Richard, and in this sympathetic frame of mind open to listen and ready to justify on his behalf, you learn that he is molding himself to be a villain. He lays it right out on the table that he is "subtle, false and treacherous." Psychologically the audience is doing some back-pedaling by that point, and with no further ado Shakespeare has incorporated his audience into the dualistic nature of his tale.

I can not read Richard the III without being reminded by imagery throughout the story of Charles Dickens' 'Tale of Two Cities'. Though I find no scholarly articles to back up this comparison, I believe Dickens must have been reading Richard the III near to the writing of this famous novel. Dicken's Tale of Two Cities is the most Shakespearian of his works; the guilt, the drama, the intrigue, even his opening line seems reminiscent of the opening to Richard the III.

Dickens- "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that

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