Richard III

Richard III opens with a man telling the audience, directly and cheerfully, that he intends to take the throne and does not expect to be liked for it. He then does exactly that, one murder at a time, explaining himself as he goes and making everyone watching complicit by confiding in nobody else.

The civil wars are over and the winners are settling in. Richard is the youngest brother, passed over and resentful, and he begins by turning his two elder brothers against each other. He courts a woman at her father-in-law's funeral and succeeds. He works through the claimants ahead of him methodically. The higher he climbs the fewer people he can talk to, and the play tightens as his audience shrinks.

Shakespeare wrote it around 1592, early in his career, drawing on chronicles written under the dynasty that had replaced Richard's and which therefore had every reason to make him as monstrous as possible. The result is a portrait historians have argued over ever since, and a part actors have wanted for four hundred years.

In performance it is far funnier than its reputation suggests. The first half runs close to a comedy of seduction and manipulation, and the audience is enjoying itself long before it notices what it is enjoying. Then the jokes stop, the confidences dry up, and the last stretch is genuinely frightening.

It suits audiences who like a villain with charm and a play willing to implicate them in it. Live, the direct address is the entire design: Richard is talking to the room, and the room answers whether it intends to or not.