King Richard III and King Henry V

King Richard III and King Henry V

William Shakespeare is one of the brightest play writers throughout ages. His contribution to the world literature is immense and raises a lot of important questions for the mankind. In his plays Henry V and Richard III Shakespeare tried to analyze the historical role of a king, showing him as an ordinary human being one side and a powerful king on the other. It seems that Shakespeare shows the difference between being a man and being a king and how the personality may influence the ways in ruling the country. At the same time he delightfully shows the inner world of the kings with all its virtues and evils, desires and fears and their reflection on the social and political life of their country.

The main characters of the books, as it has been mentioned before are both kings. Richard III and Henry V are kings who seem to be absolutely different in their life-styles, ideals and priorities. Still, they do have certain things in common. Let us start our analysis with the comparison of their physical appearances. Richard III is a character that is very easy to sympathize with in the beginning due to his physically deformed body. It makes the reader feel astonished how he, a person with such appearance could become a king and rule the country. But his appearance lately becomes the real reflection of his inner world: deformed and ugly. Henry V on the contrary catches the reader eyes with a clear image of being young and beautiful. We first see him as a young king, whose face is the true reflection of his thoughts and intentions. Richard III uses his deformed body as a possibility to manipulate people. Through this he gains people's attention and afterwards sympathy and even admiration. Henry V does also manipulate, as every king does, but he does it in through "healthy manipulation" for he possess an absolute sense of justice and would consider indecent what Richard III considers appropriate. Richard III is selfish, he acquires people's attention in the first place to satisfy his human needs and being a king is only one of the ways to get what he wants. Henry V on the contrary cannot even sleep at night thinking about what he does as a king. It is so obviously revealed that he completely puts his interests and needs of a human being under the interests of his country. They both posse a gift of fascinating the audience by their magnificent speech. Nevertheless they differ in their motives, too. Richard III uses his ability to work his charms on people in order to hide his true evil nature, to make them like him, admire him and sympathize with him. He satisfies his need for attention. Henry V uses his ability to persuade people that what he does is right. He does it with a complete honesty that makes everybody want to follow him: his soldiers, enemies, everybody. He is ready to take responsibility for his own actions and point out the responsibility of other people. Henry V is very focused and fearless, he is not afraid to act. Richard III is using his "evil charm" to make everybody like him therefore not to have enemies.