History,
Chronicle and Myth
by Dr Rosemary Horrox
Shakespeare’s Richard III is not history. So much is now a commonplace. It was written within the context of the ‘Tudor myth’ – a reading of the past designed to demonstrate the providential nature of the Tudors’ accession to a throne to which they had no legitimate claim. Initially the myth involved blackening the Yorkists, whom the Tudors succeeded, but from the outset this blackening was partial, targeting Richard III rather than his brother Edward IV. This distinction was, in origin, largely pragmatic. Henry VII had taken the throne with the support of former servants of Edward IV alienated by Richard’s regime. Blackening Edward IV, except in the most general terms, made no political sense, especially as a crucial plank in Henry’s attractiveness to the political community was his promise to marry Edward’s daughter Elizabeth – a promise fulfilled in January 1486. It was after the accession of the child of that marriage, Henry VIII, who was heir of both Lancaster and York, that the myth reached its most elaborate form, with the Tudor victory now presented not simply as divine vengeance on an evil ruler, but as the resolution of almost a century of political conflict flowing from the deposition of Richard II by Henry IV in 1399.
It
is that longer view which Shakespeare’s two historical tetralogies as
a whole embody. From that perspective Richard of Gloucester is the gangrene
in a deep wound in the body politic, and his murder of Henry VI at the
end of Henry I Part 3 signals
that the Yorkist triumph was not, after all, to be the end of the story
begun in 1399. But within Richard
III itself the emphasis is inevitably on the earlier aspect of the
myth: on Richard’s own wickedness as the justification for Henry VII’s
seizure of power. To this end the play piles up the murders: of kings,
of family, of friends – all done without scruple, even with enjoyment.
In
presenting this version of the past Shakespeare was not producing ‘propaganda’.
The reading was a commonplace; far from needing selling, it had already
been sold. Its very familiarity, indeed, allowed Shakespeare to emphasize
the inexorability of events by streamlining the chronology. In historical
time, the play opens in May 1471, with the murder of Henry VI after
the return to London of the victorious Edward IV. Over the dead king’s
corpse, Richard wins Henry’s widowed daughter-in-law Anne Neville, but
before this he has already met his brother Clarence en route for the
Tower (1477). Clarence’s murder (January 1478) hastens the death of
the ailing Edward IV (April 1483). It is a breathtaking telescoping
of events, and although nothing later in the play quite compares with
it, events continue to move far faster than they have done in reality.
The
historical Richard III ruled for twenty-six months. His usurpation in
1483 had evidently taken the political community by surprise and was
accomplished without overt resistance, although a conspiracy to rescue
Edward IV’s sons from captivity was uncovered almost immediately after
his coronation. This demonstration that the princes could still pose
a threat probably triggered their murder in the summer of 1483. Certainly
by the autumn it was assumed that they were dead, and Richard’s opponents
had found another figurehead: Henry Tudor, descended through his mother,
Margaret Beaufort, from the illegitimate Lancastrian line. The rebellion
in his favour in October 1483, which had by now drawn in Richard’s erstwhile
ally the Duke of Buckingham, was however, a failure, and Tudor returned
to Brittany without landing in England. The totality of the rebellion’s
collapse won Richard a breathing space, and although unrest was beginning
to resurface in the second half of 1484, it was not until the following
year that Tudor invaded with French backing and defeated Richard at
Bosworth on 22 August 1485. In the play, Richard’s accession is followed
immediately by the murder of the princes and by the consequent alienation
and rebellion of Buckingham. Tudor’s invasion is represented as the
successful climax of that rebellion, although Buckingham himself is
captured and executed. In effect, Richard is deposed within five or
six months of his accession.
Such
ruthless telescoping inevitably brings distortions. Tudor’s failure
to land in 1483 is mentioned, although we then almost immediately see
him safely ashore. Minor characters crop up without explanation, like
the ‘good captain Blunt’ in Richmond’s company: Richard’s former esquire
of the body James Blount, who had deserted to Tudor in 1484. But on
the roller-coaster of crime and retribution none of this really matters.
Few productions even name Blunt in the cast list. The charge of ahistoricity
levelled at the play generally has less to do with such details than
with the central character of Richard himself.
It
goes without saying that Shakespeare’s cacodemon is not the historical
Richard III, although for a time it came close to being taken as such.
But nor is it pure fiction. When the Tudor myth-makers got to work,
they had a foundation upon which to build, although the very extravagance
of the resulting edifice has rather hidden the fact. Richard’s seizure
of power had generated opposition in his own lifetime – Tudor would
have been a non-starter otherwise. His critics could thus begin by rewriting
rather than composing, and their central piece of rewriting was seductively
simple. In 1483 Richard’s underlying justification for taking the throne
had been that he, rather than a child king, could best ensure the continuation
of the hard-won stability of Edward IV’s closing years; that, in effect,
the end (political order) justified the means (usurpation). He probably
believed it himself. In the event, his failure to deliver the promised
stability damned him out of his own mouth. It also allowed for the easiest,
and most obvious, of political rewritings by his enemies: the claim
that Richard’s actions had not been prompted by the public weal, but
by private ambition. Once that had been accepted, any number of crimes
could plausibly be laid at this door.