Abhorson
Money Lender
A stroke of the brush does not guarantee art from the bristles
Posts: 14
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Post by Abhorson on May 1, 2002 2:02:00 GMT -5
Whilst at university studying History last year we briefly touched upon Richard III but that was enough to display the wide spectrum of opinion that this much maligned King provokes.
I found it particularly interesting that one of the professors stated that it was solely due to Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard that had resulted in History judging Richard guilty of the crimes ascribed to him. Since it was something we only touched upon I wondered if my peers at this board might enlighten me further on this matter.
Thanks
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Post by nolablue on May 1, 2002 8:39:50 GMT -5
This seems an extraordinarily narrow interpretation. Shakespeare's depiction of Richard III was a distillation of all the demonizing and bad press Richard had been dealt in previous generations; Shakespeare's Richard was nothing new except that he was Shakespearean.
Shakespeare's sources were Edward Hall's Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York and Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, both of which depict Richard III as a tyrant. Both works were influenced by Sir Thomas More's The History of King Richard the Third, which deliberately set out to make Richard appear evil. In short, Shakespeare did not invent the evil King Richard.
However, was Richard as terrible as he was portrayed? Certainly he did some horrible things (most historians accept that he ordered the deaths of the princes in the tower), yet current historical thought tends to see such actions as common for rulers of the time who were trying to hold power despite instability and unrest. From that perspective, he came down through history as a devil because he lost--and moreover he lost to the Tudors, who knew a thing or two about myth-making.
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Post by Bardolph on May 1, 2002 11:12:44 GMT -5
I think it highly unlikely that someone other than Richard could have managed a conspiracy against the young princes. It would have been either very difficult or impossible to project such a venture through the walls of the Tower grounds. I also believe that a great power would be necessary to clamp down on leakage of the conspiracy.
History makes it clear that when a young prince with a pathway to the throne is killed, and a regent is in power, that the regent is the prime suspect. It is always amazing to me that a generation that accepts the reasoning of Oliver Stone for JFK so handily rejects that reasoning for Richard. "Who benefited."
This makes Richard a child killer and usurper for me. He is justly convicted of his crimes. And the injustices done to his memory are actually injustices to others. The dramatic use of deformity as an outward sign of an evil nature is an injustice not to Richard, but to all those suffering from physical deformity.
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Post by nolablue on May 1, 2002 11:47:57 GMT -5
I'm not quite sure if you're agreeing with me or disagreeing with me, Bardolph--or perhaps neither? I wouldn't exhonerate Richard for what he did, but I was merely trying to put his deeds in perspective. One would be hard-pressed to find a monarch of his age or later that didn't have some innocent blood on his hands, or at the very least worked hard to make life miserable for any potential challengers, however young or unambitious.
Did he do it? Certainly. Did he usurp the throne? Of course. Then again, so did Henry IV and many others. Was he hideous and did he taint everyone's lives with evil wherever he went? Unlikely. We can appreciate the stories that emerged in his wake with a grain of salt, without pretending he was either the embodiement of evil or poor and misunderstood.
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Post by Bardolph on May 1, 2002 15:09:39 GMT -5
It was neither. I was just posting my personal assesssment of R3's character. I didn't intend my post as a resonse to yours.
This one I do. Your point about WS not inventing the evil R3 is correct and also very important. R3 had long before been placed on the trash pile of English monarchs. WS echoes the sentiment of his time. If WS writes him into a deeper and hotter place in hell it is because he does so with all usurpers, historical or fictional. His villification of R3 is the thematic opposite of his rendering of Julius Ceasar as a lamentable figure. Ceasar was indeed ambitious. WS chose not to write his ambition into the play because he needed to be a cheer leader for the monarchical status quo.
But I see a big difference between R3 and H4. There is a difference between a monarch who comes to the throne by secret conspiracy and one who takes the thone in an act of open revolt. It is a huge difference for WS. One is a forgiveable sin and the other is not. H4's fault in encompassing the crown follows him throughout his troubled reign. It is only finally put to rest by H5's pleas, answered with God's assistance at Agincourt. The new troubles to follow H5's heir are assigned to new circumstances which are not related to the original usurpation by H4. This is part of the purpose of The Henriad. This fits into the overall theme of WS's support of the Lancastrian claim.
But R3 relates more to Iago, Antonio and Claudius. He is a vile usurper, unredeemable. Only Antonio is left alive after his usurpation, but he is held in check by extraordinarily powerful dramatic forces.
I guess that my main point is that R3 goes beyond usurpation to become a child killer in the eyes of WS. If we take the first performance as 1592 or 93 then WS is a parent. We know the first printing to have been in 1597, the year after Hamnet Shakespeare's death. I think that it is as cold-hearted child killer usurper that R3 is shown to be by WS. I'm not sure how much more evil one can get. WS's treatment may have been influenced by circumstances in his own life.
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Post by shaxper on May 1, 2002 22:58:12 GMT -5
I apologize if this response reiterates something that was already said. I'm under time constraints and have quicky glanced through the responses, thus far.
Though it is obvious that Shakespeare was not the first to demonize Richard, he did take some creative liberties, to be sure. It's important to keep in mind though that this is one play in which Shakespeare was not impacting upon the common opinion, but rather echoing it. This was one of the most dangerous English histories Shakespeare had to tackle because Henry VII (who usurps Richard's throne) was Elizabeth's grandfather. If Richard wasn't treated as a monster, it would cast doubt on the Tudor right to rule (certainly their family lineage wasn't strong). Elizabeth was very careful to control public opinion on many issues concerning her right to rule, and Richard was most certainly one of them. On the one hand, the man was so demonized that it was a story I'd imagine Shakespeare would have hated to miss; on the other, it might have been his head had he been too generous toward the character.
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Post by Harry on May 1, 2002 23:44:28 GMT -5
Although it is true that most historians blame Richard for the deaths of the Princes in the Tower, one who did not was Thomas Costain. Costain is better known as an historical novelist, but his 4 volume history of the Plantagenets is history and not novelized. In The Last Plantagenet, Costain suggests that the one person who really benefitted from the deaths of the Princes was Henry VII. He thinks that the Princes survived Richard's reign and weren't murdered until Henry VII was in power. I don't know that I agree, but the idea is thought provoking. It is in accordance with other suggestions that Richard was not the monster Shakespeare portrayed. And, Shakespeare is responsible for Richard's curent reputation. Shakespeare didn't invent the notion that Richard was a hunch-backed killer, but he made it memorable. Macbeth is siilarly served. He was the great Jacobean villian in the same sense as Richard was the Tudor villian. He certainly wasn't guilty of the murder of Duncan. Richard and Macbeth, Shakespeare's two greatest monsters, are both slandered by Shakespeare.
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Post by Ganymede on May 3, 2002 11:04:28 GMT -5
I'd just like to say that although Richard is portrayed as hideous and demonic in his actions, I don't find him to be a completely irredeemable character. He, along with Shakey's other notorious villains (Iago, Aaron the Moor, etc.), are not one-sided characters. If they were, they would be boring (at least to me). Richard III is so malicious at times that you wonder why? Was he just born evil (his mother talks of his childhood as if he was) or is it something else? Is it because he was born deformed? Perhaps his unpleasant appearance made it difficult for people to love him, so he lashed out, especially at his brother, who not only was born first, but also born handsome. Clarence, too, is a rival for affection. Everyone loves "gentle" Clarence until Richard plants doubt in King Edward's brain. As for murdering the princes, perhaps he remembers his childhood and resents them for having such a happy one, free from deformities.
Of course, this is all speculation, and you can all disagree. I guess I'm just saying that even Shakey's Richard is more than just a villain, although perhaps his "evil" side is ultimately his most memorable characteristic.
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Post by shaxper on May 15, 2002 17:09:49 GMT -5
I think it's nearly impossible to discern much truth about Richard's rule at all, considering that all the historians and playwrights who wrote about him did so under Tudor rule, and therefore had to demonize him or else risk being treasonous.
There is almost indesputable evidence that the princes were killed in the tower. Bones that almost certainly belonged to them have been found burried into stairs. Yet, while we can be almost certain that Richard put them in the tower, we don't know for sure that he had them killed. After all, he was already Lord Protector and probably had a few years before he needed to worry about the princes coming of age. Maybe he honestly did believe that the tower was a safe place for them during a time of treason or, more likely, he was trying to keep them from opposing forces that might manipulate them into announcing they were of age and acting on those corrupting forces' behalfs.
Henry Tudor, on the other hand, blatantly benefitted from the Princes' deaths since he legitamized his conquest by marrying Edward's daughter. This would only work if the princes were dead. Richard may have killed them, but Henry needed their deaths more than Richard did.
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