Queen Elizabeth is speaking with Lord Rivers, Lord Grey, Buckingham and Stanley about the King's condition and Elizabeth's fear of Richard, who is antagonistic toward her and her family, looking over her son if the King dies, for her son if too young to run it on his own, but they tell the her to have faith that the King will make a full recovery. Buckingham also informs the Queen that King Edward would like that everyone got along.
Richard enters the room enraged because he believes that someone is telling the King wrong about him, he asks if he cannot live in peace without people harassing him. The Queen tells him about how he treats her brothers, children and her and that the King called him there on his own accord in a rebuttal to what Richard has said about Lord Grey ill-treating him. Richard accuses Elizabeth of sending Clarence to the tower but she deny's having anything to do with it and in fact, was on Clarence's side. She says that she will inform the Kind of the way Richard is treating her and adds that she rather but a country servant than a Queen under such conditions.
Margaret enters and during the conversation or argument be Richard and herself, Richard reveals Margaret's wicked past (the people she killed and boastful nature about it) and Margaret is presented as a more daring character than Richard. Margaret accuses Elizabeth of stealing the thrown from her and wishes that she lives to see someone take her place just as she has, Margaret says that Richard killed her husband and son, telling him that he was and always will be a murderous villain after Richard tells Elizabeth that she was once fighting for the Lancastrians before she married his brother Edward and even before Edward was king so she must remember where she came from. Margaret wishes evil on everyone in the room except Buckingham because he is not a part of the royal family but he disregards what she says and at that point it is clear that no one in the room had no sort of respect toward Margaret.
In Richards aside as the others leave in response to what Lord Rivers says about praying for the people who do them wrong Richard mentions that of course he prays for them because it is he who commits such acts and if he were to curse the wrongdoers then he would be cursing himself. He explains that he does wrong and is the first to start a quarrel, he does evil in secret and blame it on others and that he cry's about what he's done to Clarence and lastly he quotes scripture to make himself look like a saint but this is a contradiction to the real Richard.
The dramatic significance of this argument is to build the suspense in the play, to make the reader hold on to see if Richard's plan is really going to work now that he's proven his cunning attributes to the reader. It also shocks the reader as women in Shakespeare's time were obedient and almost invisible, but Margaret is the exact opposite as she did so many evil acts in her past and she curses both man and woman in the room with no remorse at all blaming everyone but herself.
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