Richard III

Originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News, February 2013; written by Lisa Pearson.

Last week the University of Leicester dropped a bombshell by announcing archaeologists had uncovered the body of King Richard III under a municipal car park (which sounds so much classier than ‘parking lot’). Since one of the collaborators in the project was the Richard III society – dedicated to rehabilitating his reputation – many of the news stories speculated that perhaps he had been unfairly vilified after his death by the triumphant Tudors.

Richard’s life and character have been the fodder for many works of fiction. The most famous of these is Shakespeare’s Richard III. In this play, Shakespeare has Richard kill King Henry VI in battle, connive to have his brother sent to the Tower and murdered, seduce and marry the widow of Henry VI, drive his brother King Edward IV to an early grave, murder Edward’s brother-in-law and kill Edward’s two sons so that he can usurp the throne of England. Shakespeare pulled no punches with Richard.

We have two versions of this play at the library. The 1955 film stars Sirs Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson in a Technicolor production that incorporates traditional costumes and setting, but uses sets and exterior shots to avoid staginess. Olivier’s old-school delivery seems a little affected to me, but he did receive an Academy Award nomination for his performance, so what do I know?

The other version was filmed 40 years later, and stars Ian McKellan, Jim Broadbent and Annette Benning. This production sets the play in 1930’s Britain, with Richard III portrayed as a fascist dictator with boar’s heads instead of swastikas on the banners and tanks taking the place of horses. Having the commoner widow of Edward IV played by an American is a nice touch. McKellan is quite creepy, and makes Richard seem less sympathetic than Olivier.

One novelist who felt that history was too harsh with Richard was Josephine Tey. A classic British mystery writer from the 1920’s, Tey treated Richard’s moral character as an unsolved puzzle, especially the question of whether or not he murdered his nephews to clear a path to the throne. In The Daughter of Time, her protagonist, Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant, is laid up in the hospital recovering from being shot by a criminal. Bored out of his mind, a portrait of a sensitive-looking King Richard causes him to wonder if such a face could be capable of so much villainy. We have a wonderful audio version of this story, read by Sir Derek Jacobi, as well as the book.

The latest book by bestselling author Phillippa Gregory also casts Richard III in a more favorable light. The Kingmaker’s Daughter is a novel about Anne Neville, the widow of Henry IV, whom Richard marries in 1472. Told in the first person, the Richard that Anne Neville falls in love with is handsome, kind and passionate. Far from the withered hunchback of Shakespeare’s play, Anne describes Richard as brave, strong and merry. In her afterword, Gregory states that she doesn’t believe that Richard was a hardened murderer, and that in her upcoming book – The White Queen – she will address the mystery of the murdered princes.

If your tastes run more to nonfiction, we do have two books for you. Alison Weir’s The Wars of the Roses relates how the Lancastrian King Henry IV was defeated by the brothers of York: Edward IV and Richard III. Thomas Penn focuses on the defeat of the House of York and the end of the Wars of the Roses in his book Winter King: Henry VII and the dawn of Tudor England. Penn is a much better writer than Weir, but the two books together nicely bookend the fascinating life of Richard III and put his actions – real or fictional – in historical context.

Connecting a colorful performance of Shakespeare’s Richard III with an image of his uncovered skeleton, curved spine and all, brings both history and drama fully to life. It’s also a nice way to spend a rainy afternoon.