Queen Elizabeth (Richard III)
Play
Summary
Elizabeth Woodville, widow of Edward IV, is the mother of the murdered princes in the Tower and a prime target of Richard's manipulations. Her grief is fierce and eloquent, and in the great rhetorical duel of Act 4 Richard attempts to court her daughter through her — a scene that parallels his earlier wooing of Anne but where Elizabeth appears to resist or at least dissemble. She represents the maternal cost of Richard's tyranny.
Notable Quotations
"What were I best to say? her father's brother / Would be her lord? Or shall I say her uncle? / Or he that slew her brothers and her uncles?" *(4.4)*
"Hid'st thou that forehead with a golden crown, / Where should be branded, if that right were right, / The slaughter of the prince that owed that crown?" *(4.4)*
"I have no more sons of the royal blood / For thee to slaughter." *(4.4)*
Cross-references
- Richard III — the play
- Richard III — the man who murders her sons
- Clarence — her husband's brother, murdered
- Hastings (Richard III) — a former ally
- Queen Margaret — fellow sufferer and prophet
- Histories