This mostly applied to the ‘de casibus’- tragedy. One still had the rise-and-fall pattern inspired by Senecan tragedy but ambition no longer automatically led to the protagonist’s doom. The focus of attention now lay in his motivation. In this context ambition no longer had to be bad from the start. Instead, everything came down to the motivation of the protagonist and the lawfulness of the means which he applied. As far as the Elizabethans were concerned Richard similar to Machiavelli was far removed from any conventional notion of morality or virtue (Keeton, 1967:328) The character of Richard shows Shakespeare's bond to creative and self-confident individualism. However the selfishness of this character shows the terror and destruction …show more content…
Each of his moves was precisely structured and as a reader, viewer or listener one understands the idea that he operates on top of his game and is in total control of each situation. Richard acts convincingly, deceits and murders to fulfill his plans. Machiavelli himself would not have approved of everything Richard did. Although Richard had the courage of a lion, the cunning of a fox and was decisive in his actions to realize is personal ambitions. As Machiavelli (1532: 103) states A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot de¬fend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves. He succeeded in becoming king but he neither won the support of the nobles or his countrymen nor were his actions in their interest. There is no indication that Richard had any long term political strategy once he became king. On the contrary, he destabilized a fragile peace and plunged his country back into civil war. As a result, he not only met his own he also caused the fall of the House of