Supernatural+and+Spiritual+elements

 =Supernatural and Spiritual Elements  = = By Saya Shimoyama  =   In the play Richard III by Shakespeare, extraordinary numbers of supernatural and spiritual elements has been used. In the 15th century, Europeans truly believed in superstitions and supernatural, people thought that ghosts existed and that they can curse each other. The play Richard III did not necessarily needed supernatural and spiritual elements, but by including them, it created an atmosphere of intense evilness of the inner side of Richard.  Some of the elements those were used in the play were the prophetic cursing of Margaret, prophetical dreams about the fate of Clarence and Stanley, and ghosts visiting Richmond and Richard in their dream to tell messages the night before the battle.  Margaret curses the other royal characters, especially Richard, because of the rage towards him as a widow of Henry VI since Richard killed Henry in the Tower of London. In Act 1, Scene 3, Queen Margaret curses Richard by saying,       "On thee, the troubler of the poor world's peace. The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul. Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st, And thake deep traitors for thy dearest friends. No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine, Unless it be while some tormenting dream Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils. Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog, Thou that wast sealed in thy nativity The slave of nature and the son of hell, Thou slander of thy heavy mother's womb. Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins, Thou rag of honor, thou detested." Margaret wants Richard to commit the maximum amount of sins so that he would get a greater punishment in hell. This line by her forshadows the the event in the play, that there would be more sins committed by Richard. There has been many prophetic dreams in this play, for example Clarence had a nightmare of him being persuaded by his own brother, Richard and getting killed in Act 1, Scence 4. That was a prophetic dream. Later in the scene, he was killed by the murderer that was sent by Richard. Clarence thought that it was just a dream and that Richard would never persuade him, but the dream became true although he was not directly killed by Richard, unlike his dream. Later in the play, another prophetic dream happens with Stanley. Stanley saw a dream where Hastings, one of Richard's right hand, was beheaded by Richard. Stanley tells Hastings about his dream, Hastings didn't believe him but he ends up being killed by Richard for making mistakes and trusted him. The other prophetic dream in the play which was more important than the one of Clarence and Stanley was the dream that Richard and Richmond had the night before the battle. In their dream, the ghosts of the characters which has died in the play already visits Richmond and Richad. Both of the characters dreamed the same dream although the ghosts are cheering Richmond up and cursing Richard. All the ghosts tells Richard to "Despair, and die". In the beginig of Act5, scene 5, Richard gets killed by Richmond soon after they started to fight, this prophetic dream of the ghosts became true.

These spiritual and supernatual effects that can be found in the play Richard III makes the story flow easier and be interesting. The prophetis dreams and the curses foreshadows the events that would happen later in the book.