ABSTRACT
The play Richard III opens with a long soliloquy of the Duke of Gloucester, King Richard III, explaining how he decided to become a villain. William Shakespeare’s interest in creating villains was stimulated by the dramatic success of Christopher Marlowe’s villain in The Jew of Malta. To conquer Anne, Richard used his supposed Oedipus complex as an excuse. Clinically Richard III probably does not exist but as an argument between the Oedipus complex and narcissism the play is an amazing document. From a psychoanalytic point of view there is something amazing about this play because Richard III not only articulates the sides of the Oedipus complex but also uses this superior knowledge to win a widow whose husband and father-in-law he has just murdered. In language Richard III has an “inferiority complex” and a powerful sense of narcissistic entitlement, which will transpose him into a villain.
