“Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York”

(Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Richard III, Act I, Scene I)

It seems that the popular image of Richard III as a historical person is largely based on William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Richard III.  It is a pity that this view is not only widespread among the general public, but it is also uncritically repeated by popular historians like Alison Weir or David Starkey, who are completely blind to any evidence to the contrary.  Not surprisingly many of Shakespeare’s supporters regard any criticism of their hero as sacrilege.  I remember an instance at an annual convention of the then West German Shakespeare Society in the 1980s, when Austrian author and editor of Richard III Hilde Spiel gave a talk about the discrepancies between the real Richard III and Shakespeare’s version, which caused quite a stir among many of the English scholars and those who would like to think so of themselves in the audience.

In the play Richard is portrayed as a grotesquely deformed, evil tyrant, killing anyone who stands in his way, a view that does not stand up to a critical analysis of the sources at all.  It is therefore worth investigating what Shakespeare’s motives were to write his play in this way and whether it is based on fact and if not why not.

Shakespeare developed The Tragedy of Richard III in the early 1590s (1), when he was in his late twenties, and it is thus one of his earliest plays.   He was probably influenced by Christopher Marlowe, who had been very successful with The Jew of Malta, another play where the arch-villain is the protagonist (2).  Plays about the Wars of the Roses were fashionable at that time and in the 1590s nearly every group of actors had to have a play on Richard III in their repertoire, like for instance Ben Jonson’s Richard Crookback (3).  Nor was Shakespeare the last of this trend, as the play by  John Caryll (senior) The English Princess, or the Death of Richard III of 1666 shows (4).

It is often thought that Shakespeare would have known what really happened as he lived much closer to the time portrayed in the play then we do.  True, he was closer, however, he still lived roughly 100 years later.  Could we truthfully say what a person who lived 100 years ago, say Queen Victoria (who died in 1901), was actually like?  Of course not, we have to rely on stories told to us by others.  As did Shakespeare, who based his play on Sir Thomas More’s A History of King Richard III via Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland.  However,  Sir Thomas More himself was a little boy, when the events he describes, unfolded (he was seven when Richard was killed).  He probably heard them in John Morton’s household, where he grew up.  As John Morton was one of Richard’s arch-enemies, you would not expect unbiased information from that source.   We don’t know either why More wrote his story (in approx. 1513),  or why he suddenly put it aside a few years later.  It was found years later, after his death in 1535, and published even later in 1557 by his nephew.  It is possible that he was mislead when he first wrote it, but realised this and therefore stopped, and we don’t know whether he actually intended to write historical fact or fiction (5), not that the distinction was in those days as clear as it is supposedly is today (though with some historians you wonder – and I’m not only talking about those writing about Richard and his times).  So much for Shakespeare’s sources!

Both More and Shakespeare portray Richard as hunchbacked with a withered arm, though there is no contemporary evidence that this was actually the case.  And this is not just absent in English texts, where – if Richard really was the villain portrayed -  it might have been advisable to leave such details out.  But we also have the evidence of Nicolas von Poppelau, a Silesian knight, who met Richard when on a diplomatic mission for the Emperor Friedrich III (6), who definitely had no reason to whitewash Richard’s looks.   Nor is such a disability probable, given Richard’s track record as a fighter, which was very much a hands-on business then.  It is rather that Shakespeare, as well as More before him, see “His hunchback and withered arm …[as] outward and visible proof of villainy” (7).  And if Shakespeare and his sources were so wrong in describing Richard’s appearance, we can hardly rely on them being more accurate in describing his actions and – even less so – his feelings.

While the accuracy of Shakespeare’s source is questionable, he changed things even further.   The events he portrays as taking place within a few months actually occurred over many years and he even has Queen Margaret (wife of Henry VI) take part in some, though in reality she had long been dead by then (8).

In the early to mid 1590s, when the play was written and performed for the first time (9), Shakespeare was an actor, writer as well as part owner of a playing company,  the ‘Lord Chamberlain’s Men’.   The company stood under the patronage of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsden, who was Queen Elizabeth I’s Lord Chamberlain (10).  This Henry Carey was a cousin of the queen, as his mother was Mary Boleyn (that is The Other Boleyn Girl of the novel by Philippa Gregory and the subsequent film with Scarlett Johansson), the sister of Elizabeth’s mother Anne Boleyn.    Rumour has it that he was an illegitimate child of Henry VIII, which would also make him half-brother to the queen.  Whatever their relations, it seems that Elizabeth held him in high regard (11).  It is highly unlikely that he would have supported a group performing a play that deviates from the official Tudor view of history, as his cousin/sister Elizabeth I was the granddaughter of  Henry Tudor/Henry VII.   And the official Tudor line was what More and Shakespeare after him told us.  At the time it was hardly advisable to promote a positive image of the king from whom they conquered the crown.  Instead Shakespeare whitewashes Henry VII’s even further, when in Act V, Henry generously proclaims a “pardon to the soldiers fled/that in submission will return to us” (V, v, 16-17).  In reality the exact opposite happened.  By the rather novel idea of dating his reign from the day BEFORE the battle, he was able to attaint everyone who had fought for the rightful king, ie. Richard.  This allowed him to execute or imprison them and to confiscate their properties (12).  We must not forget that the Tudors were extremely good at political spin, as we would say today.  Immediately after Richard’s defeat at Bosworth, the propaganda machine sprang into action to blacken his reputation.  During Henry VIII’s  reign this propaganda then “crystallized into literary art” (13).

So what was then Shakespeare’s motivation in writing his play the way he did?  It would be too simple to classify the play as Tudor propaganda and nothing else.  Though he used historical characters, Shakespeare’s aim was not to give a history lesson. There might also be a more contemporary reason for Shakespeare’s character.  It has been suggested is that his Richard character illustrates another hunchback of his own time:  Robert Cecil.  Robert Cecil was the leading minister both to the later Elizabeth I and then James I.   Cecil was seen as power hungry and the association between him and Richard III was wide-spread at the time (14).

However, the main thing to remember is that Shakespeare  wrote for the theatre and – as part owner to the company -  his aim was to get “bums on seats” by writing something that the audience enjoyed.   I doubt that he was greatly concerned whether there was much factual truth in his sources or not (irrespective of whether he actually knew or not).  He wanted to create an interesting character and he certainly succeeded in this. That is why this play is called The Tragedy of Richard III.   Audiences have always found nasty characters much more entertaining than virtuous ones.  Just think of  the success of The Sopranos nowadays, and the theatre in Shakespeare’s time very much fulfilled the same role as TV does today, it was entertainment for everyone.   Shakespeare’s play seems to have been extremely successful straight away, with the First Quarto edition being published in 1597, running to five more Quarto editions before the First Folio in 1623 (15) (pictured left).

However, even his Richard is not without charm, but whether this comes across on a stage depends on the production.  I remember seeing it performed by a British student group.  Here Richard was a very attractive young man and we all found it impossible not to be on his side.  However, this effect does not just rely on the actor’s good looks, but is fully intended.  As Ian McKellen, who played Richard to great effect, pointed out:

It is certainly appealing when a leading character like King Richard … talks directly to the audience in soliloquy. In these monologues, however deceitful and scheming a character may be within the play, he never lies to the audience. Richard opens the play with a disarmingly honest confession. He invites your sympathy and also makes you smile. (16)

Shakespeare’s play is so successful because of the contradiction between Richard’s “real” character and how he wants to appear to the other characters.  “Although the spectator does not identify himself with Richard, …, he does give Richard the tribute of his undivided attention because of the very symmetry and perfection of his villainy.  Richard may horrify us, but he never bores us” (17).   Very much the same device Ian Richardson, who had played Richard III before, used for his Francis Urquhart in The House of Card series, as indeed he intended (18).    Most of us will know Laurence Olivier’s brilliant performance from the 1955 film, who sums the role up as “It has everything – the baddie, the hero and the comic” (19).

Unfortunately  The Tragedy of Richard III has probably done more harm to Richard’s reputation than anything else.  To again quote Ian McKellen:  “Shakespeare’s stage version of Richard has erased the history of the real king, who was, by comparison, a model of probity. ” (20)  This sentiment is also echoed by  Philippa Gregory’s statement  (21) that “ Each time a production [of Shakespeare’s  Richard III] gets staged, we’re repeating the lesson that Richard was nothing but a hunchback villain. That’s the tragedy”.

However, as a play a well-produced Richard III is a delight – and yes also Ricardians do enjoy it, but they know that it has nothing to do with what actually happened.  Our ambivalence, foreshadowed in the first words of the play,  is brilliantly expressed by Jeremy Potter when he says, “Shakespeare made the worst of Richard III, and Richard III brought out the best in Shakespeare” (22).

Some  excellent articles in this regard are:

Katherine Blakeney, Perceptions of Heroes and Villains in in European Literature

Katherine Blakeney, William Shakespeare’s Richard III:  Brilliant Schemer, Entertaining Villain

NOTES:

(1)  “Richard III (play)”, Wikipedia.  Retrieved 19 November 2009.

(2) Louis B Wright & Viginia A LaMar, “Melodrama with an Arch-Villain”.  Introduction to The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare.  The Folger Library General Reader’s Shakespeare, Washington Square Press Inc., New York, 1960.  p. ix

(3) Wright & LaMar, p. Xxviii

(4)  “John Caryll (senior)”. Wikipedia. Retrieved 27 November 2009.

(5) Bertram Fields, Royal Blood.  Regan Books, 1998. ISBN 0-06-098738-3 (pbk.), p. 15-18

(6) Fields, p. 280

(7) Jeremy Potter, “Richard III’s Historians:  Adverse and Favorable Views”. Richard III Society, American Branch.

(8) Fields, p. 18

(9) Potter

(10) “Lord Chamberlain’s Men”. Wikipedia.  Retrieved 24 November 2009.

(11)  “Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon”. Wikipedia.  Retrieved 24 November 2009.

(12)  Judy R. Weinsoft, “Strutting and Fretting His Hour Upon the Stage – An Analysis of the Characterization of Richard in Shakespeare’s Richard III and Daviot’s Dickon”.  Richard III Society, American Branch.  Retrieved 24 November 2009.

(13)  Wright & LaMar, p. xiii

(14) Michael Delahoyde, “Richard III”. Retrieved 30 November 2009.

(15)  Wright & LaMar, p. xxvii

(16) Ian McKellen, “Acting Richard III”. Ian McKellen Official Home Page:  Writings. Retrieved 17 Dcember 2009.  (His “Introduction Part II” to the screenplay also gives a very good overview of the differences between play and reality.)

(17)  Wright & LaMar, p. vii

(18)  Ian Youngs, “Richardson’s rule in House of Cards”. BBC News, 9 February 2007.  Retrieved 12 February 2007.

(19)  Laurence Olivier, On Acting.  Orion Publishing, 1986.  ISBN 0297788647

(20) Ian McKellen

(21)   Nick Owchar, “Philippa Gregory on a Tudor smear campaign”. Los Angeles Times, 6 October 2009.  Retrieved 25 October 2009.

(22)  Potter