Richard III is the play where the concept of the residual is demonstrated at its strongest in the cycle . It is in this play that the sins of the fathers and forefathers are visited upon their sons and the nation as a whole , and bloodletting and expiation is supposed to draw a new , clean slate . In order to make that slate , Shakespeare makes a scapegoat of the person of Richard in this play . To Richard is attributed any possible abhorrence : he is a murderer , a regicide , a fratricide , a murderous and incestuous uncle , and so on and so forth . The self-seeking Richard of Gloucester , as Lord Protector , also stands in stark contrast to his dead namesake in the previous trilogy , the Good Humphrey of Gloucester , who fell exactly because he was a selfless man in an age of rampant selfseeking .
As a matter of fact , Shakespeare seems to be needing this crooked and deformed – both inward and outward – monster as the sum total of all anti-Lancastrian fears in order to justify Richmond ’ s cause and takeover of England . As such , I believe King Richard in this play is very much the incarnation of that archetypal “ scapegoat king ” upon which James George Frazer has elaborated in his monumental classic study in comparative anthropology , The Golden Bough ( see Chapter 1 , “ The King of the Wood ”).
According to Frazer , in short , an aged , worn-out and fruitless king in olden times , when cults of fertility thrived and worship of nature was common , was supposed to be sacrificed every once in a while so that the land would prosper again . Richard definitely plays the part of that scapegoat , although with apparent political twists and implications . However , I must say that King Richard ’ s placement as scapegoat is an extension and culmination
165