Cultural depictions of Richard III of England

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Late 16C portrait of Richard III (National Portrait Gallery, London), copied from an early 16C one in the Royal Collections. This version features in Josephine Tey's novel The Daughter of Time. King Richard III from NPG.jpg
Late 16C portrait of Richard III (National Portrait Gallery, London), copied from an early 16C one in the Royal Collections. This version features in Josephine Tey's novel The Daughter of Time .

Richard III of England has been depicted in literature and popular culture many times. In the Tudor period he was invariably portrayed as a villain, most famously in Shakespeare's play Richard III , but also in other literature of the period. Richard's life was not much depicted again until the 20th century when the "Ricardian" movement sought to restore his reputation. Much of more recent creative literature has portrayed him in a positive light. [1] However his reputation as a hunchbacked villain has remained a familiar historical cliché within popular culture.

Contents

Literature

Tudor period

Cover of the 1594 quarto of The True Tragedy of Richard III, which was "printed by Thomas Creede and ... to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market". The True Tragedy of Richard the Third.jpg
Cover of the 1594 quarto of The True Tragedy of Richard III, which was "printed by Thomas Creede and ... to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market".

The foremost work of literature featuring Richard III is William Shakespeare's Richard III , which is believed to have been written in 1591, a century after the King's death. It was the final part of a tetralogy of plays about the Wars of the Roses. Richard also appears in the two plays preceding it, Henry VI, Part 2 and Henry VI, Part 3 . Shakespeare depicts Richard as a deformed and malevolent individual who takes out his bitterness over his own twisted body on the world, serving only his own ambition. His self-serving amorality is the culmination of the social and moral chaos caused by power struggles between the great magnates of the era. In Henry VI part 3 (Act III, Scene 2, lines 1645–50) Richard describes himself as follows:

Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb:
And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,
She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe,
To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub;
To make an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To shape my legs of an unequal size.

Two other plays of the Elizabethan era predated Shakespeare's work. The Latin-language drama Richardus Tertius (1579) by Thomas Legge is believed to be the first history play written in England. [2] The anonymous play The True Tragedy of Richard III (c.1590), performed in the same decade as Shakespeare's work, was probably an influence on Shakespeare. [2] Neither of the two plays places any emphasis on Richard's physical appearance, though the True Tragedy briefly mentions that he is "A man ill shaped, crooked backed, lame armed" adding that he is "valiantly minded, but tyrannous in authority." Both portray him as a man motivated by personal ambition, who uses everyone around him to get his way.

In 1602, in the last days of Tudor England, Ben Jonson wrote a play about Richard entitled Richard Crookback. His portrayal of the king is unknown, as it was never published. [3] However, it is unlikely to have departed from the negative portrayal of Richard, and probably followed the same pattern as Jonson's only other tragedies, written at the same period, Catiline His Conspiracy and Sejanus His Fall , both of which are about ruthless usurpers who finally receive just retribution.

Several ballads about the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485) also survive from this period, some of which may date back to the immediate aftermath of the battle.

18th century

Garrick as Richard III (1745) by William Hogarth. The scene is Shakespeare's Richard III Act V, Sc. 3. David Garrick plays Richard III just before the Battle of Bosworth, his sleep having been haunted by the ghosts of those he has murdered. He wakes to the realization that he is alone in the world and death is imminent. William Hogarth - David Garrick as Richard III - Google Art Project.jpg
Garrick as Richard III (1745) by William Hogarth. The scene is Shakespeare's Richard III Act V, Sc. 3. David Garrick plays Richard III just before the Battle of Bosworth, his sleep having been haunted by the ghosts of those he has murdered. He wakes to the realization that he is alone in the world and death is imminent.

19th century

20th century

The villainous image of Richard III. An 1860 portrayal of Richard (left) taking Richard, Duke of York from his mother's arms in church sanctuary Stilke Richard III.jpg
The villainous image of Richard III. An 1860 portrayal of Richard (left) taking Richard, Duke of York from his mother's arms in church sanctuary

21st century

Richard III book display Richard III books, Yorkshire Museum.jpg
Richard III book display

Screen adaptations

Perhaps the best-known film adaptation of Shakespeare's play Richard III is the 1955 version directed and produced by Sir Laurence Olivier, who also played the lead role. [5] Also notable are the 1995 film version starring Sir Ian McKellen, set in a fictional 1930s fascist England, [6] and Looking for Richard , a 1996 documentary film directed by Al Pacino, who plays the title character as well as himself. [7] In the 1960 BBC series based on Shakespeare's history plays, An Age of Kings , Paul Daneman played Richard. [8] Ron Cook played Richard III in the 1983 BBC Shakespeare production of the play. [9] Away from the Shakespearean tradition, Aneurin Barnard played Richard in the 2013 BBC-Starz joint production TV series The White Queen [10] based on Philippa Gregory’s novels, and in September 2014 BBC started filming a new TV version of the Shakespearean play for the second part of The Hollow Crown [11] with Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role.

Richard's career is the subject of the 1939 film Tower of London, in which he is played by Basil Rathbone. The film was later remade by Roger Corman in 1962, starring Vincent Price as Richard (Price had played Clarence in the earlier version). Richard is a thorough-paced villain in both versions. Neither film owes much to the Shakespeare play, but the 1962 Corman version has similarities to Macbeth , complete with paradoxical prophesies, and visions of bloodied ghosts. Unusually, Richard's wife Anne is portrayed, like Lady Macbeth, as an ally, egging him on in his evil plans. [12]

Despite his having died at the age of 32, Richard is often depicted as being considerably older: Laurence Olivier was 47 (in his 1955 film), Vincent Price was 51, Ian McKellen was 56 as was Pacino in his 1996 film (although Pacino was 39 when he played him on Broadway in 1979, and Olivier was 37 when he played him on stage in 1944). [13] Ron Cook was 35 when he played Richard III in the 1983 BBC Shakespeare production of the play. Aneurin Barnard was 25 at the time of filming, and Cumberbatch 38.

Films

Richard has been portrayed by the following actors on film, mostly in versions of the Shakespeare play:

Television

Richard has been portrayed on television by:

Other

The King by Alexander de Cadenet, based on an x-ray of King Richard III (photographic print on aluminium, 2016) RichardIII bandwversion7small.jpg
The King by Alexander de Cadenet, based on an x-ray of King Richard III (photographic print on aluminium, 2016)

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References

  1. ↑ According to R. Gordon Kelly "Popular culture remains overwhelmingly pro-Ricardian". R. Gordon Kelly, "Josephine Tey and Others: The Case of Richard III", in Ray B. Browne, Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr, et al (eds) The Detective As Historian: History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction, Volume 1, Popular Press, 2000, p.134.
  2. 1 2 Churchill, George B., Richard the third up to Shakespeare, Alan Sutton, Rowman & Littlefield, 1976
  3. ↑ McEvoy, Sean, Ben Jonson, Renaissance Dramatist, Edinburgh University Press, 2008, p.4.
  4. ↑ Brown, Morton A. “Two-and-a-Half Secrets about Richard the Third.” The Georgia Review , vol. 27, no. 3, 1973, (pp. 367–392).
  5. ↑ "BFI Screenonline: Richard III (1955)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  6. ↑ "Notes". Archived from the original on 30 April 2009. Retrieved 15 June 2009.
  7. ↑ "Festival de Cannes - from 15 to 26 may 2013". Archived from the original on 6 October 2012. Retrieved 20 September 2009.
  8. ↑ Quoted in Smith, Emma (2007). "Shakespeare Serialized: An Age of Kings". In Shaughnessy, Robert. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 140. ISBN   9780521605809
  9. ↑ "Title Details". www.bbcactivevideoforlearning.com. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  10. ↑ http://www.starz.com/originals/thewhitequeen last accessed 25 November 2014
  11. ↑ "Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III - first look". www.telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 29 June 2023.
  12. ↑ Saskia Kossak (2005) "Frame my face to all occasions": Shakespeare's Richard III on screen, Braumüller, pp. 157–8, ISBN   3700314922.
  13. ↑ "The Official Web Site of Sir Laurence Olivier :: About Olivier :: FILMS". laurenceolivier.com. Archived from the original on 17 August 2002. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  14. ↑ "CBBC". BBC. 1 January 1970. Retrieved 20 August 2012.
  15. ↑ "New skull artwork of King Richard III to go on display". Itv. 14 April 2016.
  16. ↑ "Striking skull portraits of King Richard III". Science Daily.
  17. ↑ E. Commins, Lessons from Mother Goose (Lack Worth, Fl: Humanics, 1988), ISBN   0-89334-110-X, p. 23.
  18. ↑ Iona and Peter Opie, ed. (1997) [1951]. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 213–215. ISBN   978-0-19-860088-6.
  19. ↑ J. T. Shipley, The Origins of English Words: A Discursive Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (JHU Press, 2001), ISBN   0-8018-6784-3, p. 127.
  20. ↑ Vesania (24 March 2013), Sparklehorse - Homecoming Queen, archived from the original on 21 December 2021, retrieved 21 November 2017

Further reading

Sue Parrill and William B. Robison, The Tudors on Film and Television (McFarland, 2013). ISBN   978-0786458912.

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