The play opens with startling immediacy. In a shared present tense, established with the opening syllable – ‘now’ – we are confronted by a figure whose body speaks to us before he opens his mouth. No other Shakespeare character – except perhaps Falstaff, or the ‘translated’ Bottom – has such an instantly recognizable physical appearance. As the play goes on, we are invited to read, to puzzle at, this anomalous body. Richard's first speech presents his physical shape in terms of the exclusion it forces on him, and he presents as exclusion from relationships with women.

In this he contrasts himself to his brother King Edward IV, ‘this son of York’ of the second line of the play, as ‘love's majesty’ points up in its reference to kingship. Edward was a notorious womanizer, whose most famous mistress was the city woman Jane Shore. She is alluded to in the play text, and was very much part of the story as the audience would already know it, but she has no lines in the play, and is only present on stage if a director chooses to make her so.

In a psychological reading of the play, Richard's ‘deformity’ – to use a term which a modern reader may prefer to replace with ‘disability’, but which the play, at this early stage, has Richard use of himself – can be invoked as the motivation of his actions.