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Richard III

headscratcher4

Philosopher
headscratcher4
Joined
Apr 14, 2002
Messages
7,776
Misunderstood, true king of England wronged by Tudor slander...

Or, deformed, plotting, child-murdering usurper?

Been doing some reading lately, Richard seems to be getting a pretty raw deal from hisotry (Thomas Moore and Shakespear as Tudor propogandists)...

Opinions?
 
Not an area I've specifically read about but read a lot around it and it does seem he was far from the Shakespearian portrayal.

Imagine that Shakespeare showing that popular media had no integrity 400 years ago!
 
He had numerous faults, but he was not the monster (physically or morally) Shakespeare made him out to be.
 
We studied this in school as part of an exercise in evaluating evidence/critical thinking (in history lessons)!

I seem to remember that the painting that shows him hunchbacked was in fact painted over at a later date to accentuate this effect.
 
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Uh! Oh! I had a huge Richard III phase a couple of years ago, after reading Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time. I read the Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir then, as well as anything I could find over the internet. It is a fascinating subject to read about, and I guess we cannot really have the final answer unless a time machine is invented...
And, in any case, in most conflicts, one side's heroes are another side's war criminals and monsters. I guess it was the same 500 years ago.
 
And, of course, Thomas More's account can hardly be considered contemporary. He was seven or eight years old when Richard died, and didn't write it until about thirty years later.
 
Mojo said:
And, of course, Thomas More's account can hardly be considered contemporary. He was seven or eight years old when Richard died
Click to expand...

And that's why you rule him out as a suspect? Please. I've met some seven-year-olds who were more than capable of murdering a handicapable monarch.
 
I only know the story through Shakespeare, it's my second favorite play.

Maybe some research on the internet would be interesting....
 
I've read about ten books on the subject over the last dozen years or so. I too was set off by Josephine Tey. I wouldn't go with the Alison Weir one. I found errors in it and I'm no great expert.

The best I've read so far is Royal Blood by Bertram Fields, a British entertainment lawyer. It was very readable and presented a balanced point of view.
 
Darat said:
Not an area I've specifically read about but read a lot around it and it does seem he was far from the Shakespearian portrayal.

Imagine that Shakespeare showing that popular media had no integrity 400 years ago!
Click to expand...
The nerve, comparing a "historical play" to "history"!

400 years from now, I want to see how Bush and Blair are portrayed.

...oh, wait, we are left with sitcom writers...


...nevermind....
 
Yeah. It's fiction.


NAOW! Izzz the vinter auf aur discontenttttt!!!
*Hobbles off with large lump on back...*
 
Been reading the Novel: The Sunne in Splendor about the War of the Roses. Not bad for historical fiction, good discription of the reasons for the "war" if a little melodramatic. Richard is the Hero. Interesting.
 
He was the 'hero' in the first season of Black Adder, as well :p
 
Absolutely not possible that he was a hunchback. He was a formitable fighter, and we still have his armour, which is clearly designed for a man of 'normal' build. History has been unkind to Richard, though corrective revisionism can go too far - he probably did kill the princes in the tower.
 
For another take on Richard, you might try The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. Tey was a very good mystery writer, and though this is a novel, and still speculative, it's apparently based on a good bit of research. It's been a long time since I read it, but I recall it was quite readable, and put Richard in a very different perspective from Shakespeare, also explaining the political and historical context of Shakespeare's portrayal.
 
Maybe the princes attacked him, and he had to defend himself? Or maybe they were horribly ill, and it was a mercy killing. Or maybe they had both died in childbirth, but been replaced with imposters? Or maybe they weren't killed, but taken away and two corpses of the same ages subsituted? Or perhaps they never existed at all, but were a shared hallucination brought on by a fashionable craze for psychotropic mushrooms in the mutton? I guess we'll never know for sure, but I'm pretty sure that Oswald was just a patsy in the whole affair.
 
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