ENG 395: Monarchs, Mothers and Murders in Shakespeare and Adaptations
Richard III
First Tetralogy: Henry VI I; II; III & Richard III
This sequence takes place historically after the second tetralogy but written before the other plays (sometimes called the Henriad). These plays use the historical backdrop of the War of the Roses: the second tetralogy began with Richard II’s reign and continued through to the reign of Henry V; the first tetralogy continues this historical lineage with Henry VI and then Richard III.
Brief History review: Henry VI was the son of Henry V, he became king when he was just 9 months old. A regency council was appointed on his behalf until he came of age. He married Margaret of Anjou. His rule was interrupted by bouts of (mental) illness and Edward (Duke of York) ruled as Edward IV (the first Yorkist king) for two periods of Henry VI’s reign (1461-79; 1471-83). His son Edward V became king at 12 years old when Edward IV died but he only reigned for 2 months before he mysteriously disappeared with his younger brother (the famous princes in the tower), who were declared bastards and prohibited from inheriting the throne. Edward’s uncle Richard, duke of York, was declared king Richard III in 1483. Richard was both the last Yorkist and the last Plantagenet king and died on the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1585 when Henry Tudor claimed the English throne (a claim he made through his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. Beaufort was a descendant of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, third son of Edward III, and his third wife Katherine Swynford). Henry’s father, Edmund Tudor was a half-brother to Henry VI through his mother, Catherine of Valois, who had married Owen Tudor after Henry VI died. Owen Tudor was named Earl of Richmond. Henry Tudor became Henry VIIth, the first Tudor king.
Seminar Questions:
Look at the opening monologue. What are your first thoughts of Richard III?
Is the wooing of Lady Anne believable (in scene two)?
In act 3 we are witness to Richard’s most Machiavellian characteristics but we are also presented with a Providentialist view of retribution and history. How can this act be translated into a modern setting? Can this act be appropriated to a contemporary world view?
What is the purpose of the 4th act? How does this act fit with the rest of the drama? Why do you think Buckingham behaves this way?
In the final act Shakespeare presents us with Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond. Does this act challenge ideas of history ? Do you think the comparison between Richard and Richmond is exaggerated?
What at is the purpose of telling the rise and fall of Richard III? How is Richard portrayed?
Possible Essay Topic:
How does Shakespeare’s play shape the source materials? You may use the sections below as a starting point.
a) Polydore Vergil
Accounts of Richard III developed during the reign of the first Tudor king and continued right up until the time of Elizabeth. Polydore Vergil began his long chronicles of English history during the reign of Henry VII but it was not completed until 1534, when Henry VIII was king. Vergil’s history suggested that the period of the Wars of the Roses could be placed within a grand historical narrative that saw history as a chain of cause and effect incidents that provided the present with examples from the past. In the history of Richard III, Vergil found examples of treason, rebellion, civil war, and good and bad government, which he felt demonstrated the most useful political lessons from the past for his audience (Campbell Histories, 61). Vergil included an account of Richard’s prophetic dream on the night before the battle at Bosworth and comments, “it was no dream but a consience guilty of heinous offences” (61). He does not elaborate on the details of Richard’s dream or suggest that the tyrant envisioned the ghosts of his victims.
b) Thomas More’s The History of King Richard III (c. 1513)
Thomas More’s history of Richard III was by far the most influential account in shaping the tradition of the extraordinarily wicked and usurping tyrant and his fiendish end. [1] More’s history goes beyond historical analysis and personal moralising; he extends the history to include a philosophical element and dramatises the account with set speeches. He also exaggerated the facts about Richard III in order to highlight his evil nature. Like Polydore Vergil before him and Edward Halle later, More’s history is informed by a political moral where the most important lesson was to show the consequences of rebellion and disobedience.
Thomas More began his account by detailing how the English people loved and respected King Edward and how the kingdom was peaceful and prosperous during his reign:
In whyche tyme of [Edward’s] latter daies thys Realm was in quyet and prosperous estate: no feare of outewarde enemyes, no warre in hande, nor none towarde, but such as no manne looked for; the people towarde the Prince, not in a constrayned feare, but in a wyllynge and louynge obedeyence: amonge them selfe, the commons in good peace (More, 3). +
He continues to say that Edward’s death was untimely, “So deceased this noble Kynge, in that tyme in whiche hys life was most desyred”+ (More, 4).[2] The emphasis on Edward’s love for his people and the reciprocal sentiments the people feel for their king, serves to highlight an immediate contrast between King Edward and Richard.
When More finally introduces Richard the distinction between the two regents is made prominently clear:
For Richarde the Duke of Gloucester, by nature [the prince’s] uncle, by office theire protectoure, to theire father beholden, to them selfe by othe and allegyaunce bownden, al the bandes broken that binden manne and manne together, withoute anye respecte of Godde or the worlde, unnaturallye contrived to bereve them, not onelye their dignitie, but also their lives” (More, 4). +
This description of Gloucester’s nature with evidence that he had a legitimate claim to the throne is important in the context of civil disobedience and rebellion that More uses to paint Richard as a divine instrument appointed to purge the English nobility.
More then launches into a description of Richard Duke of York, Gloucester’s father and distinguishes between the characters of Richard duke of Gloucester, and from his father and brothers. He claims that Richard Duke of York (hereafter called York) was “a noble manne and a mightie [manne]” and he is most distinguished from Gloucester in the way he put his claim to the throne through Parliament (More, 4). By legitimising York’s kingship More places Gloucester as a legitimate heir, rather than a usurper, and therefore Richard III can be identified as a divine instrument. This necessarily means that resistance to him is forbidden and that his end will be brought about by God.
More recalls that York, “beganne not by warre, but by lawe, to challenge the crowne, puttying his claime into the parliamente” (More 4). The result of York’s petition was that parliament granted him rights to the throne: “the crowne was by authoritye of parliament entaylled unto the Duke of York and his issue male in remainder immediatelye after the death of Kinge Henrye” (More, 4).[3] This works to legitimise the Plantagenet claim to the throne. Since York was slain in battle before King Henry died, the throne would rightfully pass to York’s eldest son, Edward.
More does not elaborate on any dispute about the throne after York died, but mentions that Edward took the crown from King Henry before the appointed time out of revenge for his father’s death (4). Richard then killed the former king while he was imprisoned in the Tower:
[Richard] slewe with his owne handes king Henry the sixt, being prisoner in the Tower, as menne constantly saye, and that without commaundemente or knowledge of the king (More, 9).
The consequence is that Edward’s reign is still legitimate and he is excused of any blame for Henry’s death. In this example however, there is a slight ambiguity concerning the king’s legitimacy because he took the crown before Parliament decreed, but nothing more is made of this issue.
Up to this point in the history, More has provided evidence that the Plantagenet claim to the throne was a legitimate claim because it was done through Parliament. Now he turns his attention to the details of Richard’s particular villainy by making him out to be a usurper:
the duke of Gloucester hadde of olde foreminded this conclusion, or was nowe at erste thereunto moved, and putte in hope by the occasion of the tender age of the younge Princes his Nephues (as opportunitye and lyklelyhoode of spede putteth a manne in courage of that hee never entended) certayn is it that hee contrived theyr destruccion, with the usurpacion of the regal dignitye upon hymselfe (More 10). +
Although Edward gained the crown before Henry died he is not considered a usurper, so by law, Edward Plantagenet had a legitimate claim to the throne. This serves to place Richard’s usurpation of the throne within a divine framework and only demonise one Plantagenet king.
More’s history participated in the shaping of his character for the Elizabethans in the way it provided an account of the severity of Richard’s evil nature in contrast to the nobility. He is characterised as excessive in his desire and his evil: the history moves from one account of Richard’s treachery against his friends and the nobility to another until all of his allies and enemies are killed and eventually he is also killed. Even from the time of his birth Richard was “malicious, wrathfull, envious and, [. . .] ever frowarde” (More, 5). More’s emphasis on these aspects of Richard’s behaviour provided the foundation of his sketch as a scourge that climaxed in the 1590s.
c) Mirror for Magistrates;
The early Tudor chronicles and history plays contributed most of the background information for the historical examples discussed in the first two editions of A Mirror for Magistrates (1559, 1563). In the prose links and in the histories the authors frequently acknowledge the English chronicles; at the beginning of the work Baldwin recognises the contributor’s debt, “we opened such bookes of Cronicles as we had there present, and maister Ferrers, after he had founde where Bochas left, whiche was about the ende of king Edwarde the thirdes raigne, to begin the matter, sayde thus” (69). The first editions of the Mirror provided Elizabethans with a modern analysis of the figures in the English ruling classes between Richard II and Richard III.
Francis Seagar’s account of Richard III was included in the 1563 edition of A Mirror for Magistrates. Seagar focused on Richard’s malicious character by stressing his murder of the two innocent princes. He even links Richard with the tyrant Herod: “Alas that ever Prince should thus his honour stayne / Witht the bloud of Innocentes most shameful to be tolde” (361: 29-30).
The first seven stanzas of Seagar’s account simply discuss Richard’s motives for killing his nephews. Richard admits that his actions were unnatural and against God:
Both God, nature, dutie, allegiaunce al forgott,
This vile and haynous acte unnaturally I conspyred:
Which horrible deede done, alas, alas, god wot
Such terrors me tormented, and so my spyrytes fyred
As unto such a murder and shameful deede requyred,
Such broyle dayly felt I breeding in my brest,
Wherby more and more, increased myne unrest (361: 36-42). +
Once Richard committed his evil deeds he says his soul was tormented daily. This kind of punishment on earth for Richard’s sins signifies his impending doom in hell, where this terror will pale in comparison.
Even though Richard Niccols discarded Seagar’s contribution when he reprinted the Mirror in 1609/10, Shakespeare thought it had enough merit to echo in both Richard III and Macbeth. Seagar’s Richard, at one point, comments on how deeply entangled he was in the blood of the English nobility:
But what thing may suffise unto the bloudy man,
The more he bathes in bloud, the bloodier he is alway:
By proofe I do this speake, whych best declare it can,
Which only was the cause of this prynces decaye.
The wolfe was never greedier than I was of my pray,
But who so useth murder ful wel affirme I dare,
Wyth murder shal be quyt, ere he therof be ware (364:120-6).
And in the penultimate act of Shakespeare’s earlier tragedy, Richard tells Stanley that he is so steeped in sin that he cannot feel pity:
But I am in
So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin.
Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye (IV.ii.64-6).
And again in Shakespeare’s later tragedy, when Macbeth is overcome by furor when he spies the ghost of Banquo, he tells Lady Macbeth, “I am in blood / Steeped in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er” (III.iv.135-7).
When Queen Elizabeth laments the fate of the young princes in Shakespeare’s tragedy of Richard III, she too recalls one of Seagar’s conceits: Seagar’s Richard tells how easy it was for his henchmen to slaughter the young princes, “The Wolves at hand were ready to devoure / The silly lambes in bed where as they laye” (363:99-100). And Queen Elizabeth cries out to God, “Wilt thou, O God, fly from such gentle lambs / And throw them in the entrails of the wolf?” (IV.iv.22-3).
But it was not only Seagar’s account which influenced Shakespeare’s conception of Richard, or indeed the shaping of Richard’s character for the Elizabethans. The complaints of Clarence, Rivers, Hasting and Buckingham also contributed to the development of Richard III as an archenemy and villainous tyrant in English dramatic writings. Many of the historical figures included in the Mirror place themselves within a divine plan according to the fall of the last Plantagenet king.
King Henry VI, for example, is identified in one of Baldwin’s prose links as the cause of ruin for many princes and nobility (211) and yet also a “vertuous prince” (212). Henry understands his role in history as part of a grand historical narrative leading towards Richard’s usurpation and tyranny in England:
This al my frendes have found and I have felt it so.
Ordayned to be the touche of wretchednes and woe,
For ere I had a yeare possest my seat agayne,
I lost both it and liberty, my helpers all were slayne (217: 136-40).
Henry says that he was ordained to be the cause of the wretchedness and woe and also accepts that his prosperity came at a price. The troubles that his reign brought to England were justified by his fall, but also paved the way for events leading up to Richard III and later Henry Tudor (Halle).
In the Mirror, George Plantagenet also details his birth and family history, admitting Fortune frowned on the Plantagenets, but his account emphasises that Richard was the cause of most of the family’s troubles: “I George am third of Clarence duke by right. / The fowerth borne to the mischief of us all, / Was duke of Glocester, whom men Richard call” (54-56). In this account the ghost is resigned to accept his fate as the way things were destined to turn out; i.e. that he was “born”, to fulfil a specific role in relation to his brother Richard.
In a somewhat Stoic manner, George accepts his fate and declares, “what shal be, shal be: there is no choyse, / Thinges nedes must drive as destiny decreeth” (127-8). He is ready to accept his fate because of his faith in Divine Providence: “Yet for our good, god wurketh every thing” (148). George, like Hieronimo, is trapped by the workings of destiny and he understands that he cannot escape his looming fall. But, quite distinctly from Hieronimo, George’s faith leads him to see his fall as participating in something grander: George’s vision is for England’s future.
Thomas Sackville’s effective poems on the journey through Hell and the history of the Duke of Buckingham infiltrates Shakespeare’s imagination of Richard III and his relationship to Hell most recognisably. Sackville’s Buckingham typically bemoans his fate, but in the context of his friendship with Richard and he blames Richard for Buckingham’s fall. Buckingham relates how the people began to fear Richard after the young princes were murdered in the tower: “[Richard’s] frendes amazde at such a murder doen, / In feareful flockes begyn to shrynke away” +(“Buckingham”, 148-9).
Sackville’s account of Buckingham concentrates as much on Richard as he does on Buckingham. Sackville’s Buckingham laments that he worked with the “[t]yrant king” (337) who caused guiltless blood and worked by malice. In Buckingham’s account, emphasis is placed on Richard’s evil nature: Since Buckingham is damned and his fate is not looming between salvation and damnation, it is not necessary for Buckingham to judge Richard’s deeds or ask for forgiveness for himself. But because he does, Buckingham invokes pity and the reader remembers Richard’s treachery more vividly than Buckingham’s insubordination.
d) Thomas Legge
Thomas Legge’s Latin tragedy, Richardus Tertius, was first performed at Cambridge in 1579/80. Legge’s drama draws from the chronicles and recalls the moralising tone of Thomas More and the early chroniclers. Legge begins his drama when Richard has possession of the crown and so he does not have to dramatise Richard’s duplicitous character. Donna J. Oesterich-Hart details the possible parallels between Legge’s reconstruction of Richard’s love life and Shakespeare’s wooing scenes. She ultimately finds that while Shakespeare may have known Legge’s drama, Richard’s wooing of Anne in the first act more vividly imitates three courtly love texts; Ovid’s Ars amatoria and Amores, and Andrews Capellanus’ Tractatus de amore (Oestreich-Hart 241-2).
[1] The History of Richard the Third, first printed in 1543 as an extension by Richard Grafton in John Hardying’s Chronicle. More’s history was printed again in 1548 as part of Edward Halle’s The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancastre and Yorke. Baldwin’s prose links between the histories in A Mirror for Magistrates, confirm the influence of More’s history when he mentions that the accounts are based on the works of Fabyan, Halle and More.
[2] The contributors included John Skelton’s lament for King Edward’s untimely death at the end of the 1559 edition of A Mirror for Magistrates. Skelton wrote: “How king Edward through his surfeting and untemperate life, sodainly dies in the mids of his prosperity” (236). The example of Edward IV is one of the more problematic stories in the collection because he does not fit into a de casibus formula like most of the others.
[3] In contrast, the anonymous play, The True Tragedie of Richard the Third has different aims and objectives since it begins, “Richard Plantagenet of the House of Yorke, / Claim[ed] the Crowne by warres, not by dissent” (True Tragedy, 19-20). Here, the whole history of Gloucester’s claim to the throne is portrayed as illegitimate, not just his actions. If the king is portrayed as a usurper than resistance to his rule, for late-Elizabethans, was justified. Likewise, in More’s account the people are guilty also because they rebel, but in the anonymous tragedy dissent is not a cause for Richard’s tyranny.
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