Richard III.

Richard is hideous. Born prematurely, he is a deformed, hobbling, hunchbacked cripple who, on the battlefields of the Wars of the Roses – which flared up after the death of Henry V – served his family and above all his brother, Edward, well. Now Edward is king, thanks to a number of murders carried out on his crippled brother’s own initiative. But the end of war brings Richard no peace. His hatred for the rest of the world, to which he will never belong, lies too deep. And so he does what he does best and kills some more, clearing away every obstacle that lies in his path to becoming king. If fate prevents him from being part of a society of those blessed by good fortune, he will at least lord over them. He plays off his rivals against each other with political cunning, unscrupulously exploits the ambitions of others for his own ends and strides spotless through an immense bloodbath until there is no one left above him and the crown is his. But even this triumph, purchased with the death of enemies, allies and relatives alike, still fails to heal the great insult nature has visited upon him. Alone at the apex of the English kingdom, deprived of all his adversaries, he now turns his rage on his true nemesis – himself.

Richard III is one of Shakespeare’s earliest works, first performed around 1593. But until this day the title character has lost none of his fascination. His allure lies first and foremost in his unbridled, single-minded, gleefully exhibited amorality. Richard is the first in a line of Shakespearean villains whose moral autonomy and virtuoso art of manipulation appear to be schooled by Machiavelli’s The Prince: Iago in Othello, Edmund in King Lear and the Lady in Macbeth. But the play does not just restrict itself to the demonization of a psychopathic spree-killer. It is also the portrait of a power elite torn asunder by internal strife, out of whose midst a perverse dictator emerges.