In the play’s well-known opening lines, Richard refers to events that Shakespeare chronicles in his earlier plays Henry VI, Parts One, Two, and Three, and with which he would have expected his viewers to be familiar. The Henry VI plays detail an exhausting civil war for the throne of England, which boiled down to a contest between two families: the House of York and the House of Lancaster. This civil war is known as the Wars of the Roses, because of the white and red roses that symbolized the houses of York and of Lancaster, respectively. Richard’s side, the House of York, eventually wins, and Richard’s oldest brother, Edward, is now King Edward IV.
This knowledge of the recent civil war helps us make sense of the opening lines, spoken by Richard: “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York; / And all the clouds that loured upon our homes / In the deep bosom of the ocean buried” (I.i.1–4). Richard’s brother Edward is the “son of York” who has brought “glorious summer” to the kingdom, and Richard’s “winter of our discontent” is the recently ended civil war. The “house” is the House of York, to which Richard and his brothers Edward and Clarence belong, and which now rules the kingdom.
Richard’s opening speech explains important elements of his character. He says that because he cannot be happy—in part because he feels that he cannot be sexually successful with women—he has decided to ruin these prosperous times and make everybody else miserable: “[T]herefore since I cannot prove a lover / To entertain these fair well-spoken days, / I am determined to prove a villain / And hate the idle pleasures of these days” (I.i.28–31). He goes on to tell us how he has begun to spread rumors that should cause King Edward to suspect Clarence (Richard, and Edward’s brother), and to punish and imprison him—plans whose results become visible when Clarence walks onstage under guard.
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