Shakespeare's Kings

by John Julius Norwich

  Where Henry himself deserves censure is in the treatment of Richard's body. According to the author of The Great Chronicle of London,

  Richard late King, as gloriously as he was by the morning departed from town, so irreverently was he that afternoon brought into that town, for, his body despoiled to the skin and nought being left about him so much as would cover his privy member, he was trussed behind a pursuivant... as an hog or other vile beast. And so, all too bestrung with mire and filth, was brought to a church in Leicester for all men to wonder upon. And there lastly indifferently buried.

  Much later, Henry VII ordered a tombstone for the hitherto unmarked grave in the church of the Grey Friars in Leicester. It cost him just a shilling over ten pounds.

  King Richard III

  [1471-1485]

  K. RICH.

  I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,

  Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,

  Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time

  Into this breathing world scarce half made up –

  And that so lamely and unfashionable

  That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them

  -Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

  Have no delight to pass away the time,

  Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,

  And descant on mine own deformity.

  And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover

  To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

  I am determined to prove a villain . . .

  KING RICHARD III

  King Richard III, the only English ruler since the Norman Conquest to have been killed in battle, is also the only one to have become a legend. That legend, due first to Sir Thomas More and then to Shakespeare, is of the lame and twisted hunchback whose misshapen body reflects the evil heart within it. To satisfy his own all-consuming ambition, he murders the royal saint King Henry VI and the latter's son Edward Prince of Wales, seduces Edward's Lady Anne while her husband's body is still warm, engineers the death of his own brother Clarence and finally disposes of his two child nephews — one of them the rightful King of England - in the Tower of London. He quite probably poisons his wife, and would almost certainly have married his niece had he not been persuaded that public opinion would never stand for it. He acts, in short, more like one of those ogres of the Italian Renaissance, of whom his contemporary Cesare Borgia was perhaps the most obvious

  example and another contemporary, Niccolo Machiavelli, the most characteristic voice. For all of them, ends invariably justified means: to ensure the proper maintenance of the ruler's authority, no crime was too unspeakable, no treachery too abhorrent.

  More recently, however, there has grown up another legend, which has come a long way towards supplanting the first. This is the legend of the great and good man of perfectly normal physique, the fine administrator and far-sighted law-giver who, had he been allowed the time and the opportunity, would have restored peace and good government to his realm; but who, instead, has been made the victim of one of the most contemptible campaigns in the history of personal defamation. His character has been blackened, deliberately and systematically, while appalling crimes of which he was completely innocent have been laid at his door. The man who was potentially one of the greatest of English monarchs has been branded as being incomparably the vilest.

  The proponents of this second school of thought may not be quite in the league of More and Shakespeare; but they include a number of admirable writers beginning with Horace Walpole and continuing with historians like Paul Murray Kendall and even novelists like Josephine Tey, whose brilliant The Daughter of Time has probably done more than any other single work in the past half-century to reinstate Richard in the ranks of the blessed. For them, the arch-villain is of course King Henry VII, himself every bit as much of a usurper as his predecessor, and with far less reason. Only by presenting Richard as a fiend, they point out, could Henry have hoped to justify his own action in deposing him. And why, having deposed him, should he himself not have killed the two princes? He would have had just as strong a motive, and he was certainly never to shrink from other executions - even, in 1495, that of Sir William Stanley, who ten years before had saved both his life and his cause at Bosworth.

  The trouble about this second legend is that it flies in the face of our best witness, Sir Thomas More. To accept it, we have to demolish him as thoroughly as he demolishes Richard; and this is not easy to do. First of all, More was not, as some have argued, a 'later historian'. Born in the reign of Edward IV, he was seven years old at the time of Bosworth; and he certainly knew many of Richard's contemporaries, including several who had held high office under the late King. Indeed his immediate predecessor as Under-Treasurer, Sir John Cutts, had been Richard's Receiver of Crown Lands. More's own father, a leading London lawyer, would have been able to give him first-hand evidence in plenty of what had really occurred in that short and disastrous reign. Was he then simply an unscrupulous propagandist for his master, Henry VII? Surely not: nothing that we know of his character suggests that he would have sold his integrity in such a way, or have deliberately written what he knew in his heart to be untrue. We are speaking, after all, of a formally canonized saint who, according to no less an authority than Erasmus, possessed the finest legal brain in Europe. And again and again the truth of what he writes is confirmed by contemporary writers whose work has come to light only many years after his death. Dominic Mancini, Philippe de Commynes, the author of the Continuation of the Croyland Chronicle - who was almost certainly John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln and Chancellor of Oxford University — all, though they may differ on points of detail, substantially agree with More. The same applies to Polydore Vergil who, though he arrived in England only in 1502, tells us that he personally interviewed 'every elderly man pointed out to me as having once held an important position in public life'. All these sources, and much other evidence besides, leave no doubt that Richard's reputation had already reached its nadir during his lifetime; no subsequent blackening of it was possible.1

  Shakespeare, as we know, always had a cavalier approach to chronology; and there can be no more revealing illustration of it than in the opening of King Richard III. In Act I scene i, the famous soliloquy ('Now is the winter of our discontent') leads directly to the arrest of Clarence and his committal to the Tower; this places the action firmly in the early summer of 1477. The next scene, however - Richard's wooing of Lady Anne - is set against the funeral of Henry VI, six years before, and here too the timing is distinctly awry. Henry died on 21 May 1471; his funeral can have been held only a day or two later. Yet in line 245 Richard specifically refers to his own stabbing of the Prince of Wales, which must have occurred immediately after Tewkesbury, as being

  1. A more detailed discussion of the two legends will be found in the Introduction to Richard III, by Desmond Seward - perhaps the best, and certainly the most readable, of recent biographies.

  'some three months since' - which would make the date of this scene some time around the beginning of August. It is of course far from certain that Richard was involved in the Prince's death; and it is perhaps worth repeating, too, that while Anne had been betrothed to the young man in 1470, he was never her husband.

  Where Clarence is concerned, Richard proudly - though, in the eyes of history, quite unjustifiably - claims responsibility for his brother's downfall. We cannot doubt that he would have been capable of such villainy had the need arisen; but Clarence saved him the trouble. He had always been his own worst enemy and, as we have seen, brought his destruction very largely on himself. There had indeed been a prophecy, much talked about at the time, that King Edward's heirs would be disinherited by a man whose name began with the letter G - the Duke's Christian name was George - but there were far stronger reasons than this for the King to move against him. Another inaccuracy - though perhaps a relatively unimportant one - is Shakespeare's introduction here (and again in scene iv) of Sir Robert Brackenbury. Brackenbury
was appointed Lieutenant of the Tower only in 1483; he was never responsible for Clarence, and was to play no part in his death.

  The dating of scene iii poses a major problem; indeed, it is only if we accept the appearance of old Queen Margaret of Anjou as a historical fact that we can date it at all, and even then our conclusion can never be more than approximate. Margaret was taken prisoner after Tewkesbury and spent the next four years in semi-captivity, until her ransom by Louis XI in 1475; this is therefore the latest date at which she could, even theoretically, have shown herself at the English court. But would she ever have been permitted to do so? It seems unlikely. The mystery deepens in lines 167-9, when Richard asks her

  Were you not banished on pain of death?

  to which she answers

  I was, but I do find more pain in banishment

  Than death can yield me here by my abode.

  Margaret, as we know (and as Shakespeare himself surely knew) was never banished. The fact that he brings her back again in IV. iv, after the death of the Princes and therefore also after her own - for she died in 1482 - makes it virtually certain that he is using her presence in both scenes purely for dramatic effect and with no thought for historic truth.

  The fourth and last scene of Act I is given over to the death of Clarence. The Duke first tells of a dream:

  Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;

  Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon;

  Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,

  Inestimable stones, unvalu'd jewels,

  All scattered in the bottom of the sea . . .

  I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood

  With that sour ferryman which poets write of,

  Unto the Kingdom of perpetual night. . .

  Then came wandering by

  A shadow like an angel, with bright hair

  Dabbled in blood; and he shriek'd out aloud,

  'Clarence is come: false, fleeting, perjur'd Clarence,

  That stabb'd me in the field by Tewkesbury!'

  and later pleads for his life with the two murderers, one determined, the other conscience-stricken. It is a superb scene, full both of exquisite poetry and of high drama; only as a piece of history can it be faulted. At the end of scene iii we saw Richard giving his instructions to the two hired murderers; here they speak of him time and again as their paymaster and indeed identify him as such to their incredulous victim. Shakespearean audiences were therefore left: in no possible doubt that, in addition to all his other crimes, Richard had been guilty of fratricide — which, as we know, he was not. The story of the butt of malmsey1 is of course retained - clearly it was too good to miss - but the actual immersion occurs, disappointingly for audiences but blessedly for the actor concerned, off-stage.

  The only problem that Shakespeare has to face in advancing the fratricide theory is that already, at his trial in January 1478, Clarence had been condemned to execution. He deals with this in the first scene of Act II, when Richard reveals his brother's death to the dying King

  1. See p. 324 and fn.

  Edward and his court. The King objects that 'the order was revers'd', to which Richard replies:

  But he, poor man, by your first order died,

  And that a winged Mercury did bear;

  Some tardy cripple bore the countermand,

  That came too lag to see him buried.

  The 'tardy cripple' was, we are surely to assume, a wry joke against himself. Historically, there was never any question of a reprieve; this passage is sheer dramatic invention, designed to pin the blame more firmly on the Duke of Gloucester than would otherwise have been possible. It also enables Richard to injure the King - who, having negotiated a general reconciliation between his family and the Woodvilles, was expecting to die happy. Now, on hearing the news, he is consumed with guilt and terrified of divine retribution.

  Both the guilt and the sickness are Shakespearean inventions. Apart from being somewhat overweight, at the time of Clarence's death Edward seems to have been in excellent health; and it is doubtful whether the removal of his insufferable brother would have caused him more than the faintest twinge of conscience. He was in fact to survive Clarence more than five years - a fact which necessitates some serious telescoping in scene ii. This scene opens in 1478, with Clarence's two small children - Margaret Plantagenet was in fact five years old at the time, her brother Edward three - being told by their grandmother of their father's death, then leaps without warning to 1483 with the widowed Queen, 'her hair about her ears', entering with her brother Rivers and her son Dorset to bewail that of her husband. The ensuing show of what can be described only as competitive lamentation - a contest won hands down by the old Duchess of York, who succeeds in simultaneously mourning not only the late King but a husband who has been in his grave for twenty-three years and another son who has been dead for five - is interrupted by the entry of Richard, Buckingham and others. Buckingham suggests the departure of a delegation for Ludlow to fetch the new young King; Rivers agrees; and Richard and Buckingham are left alone to make their plans.

  There follows the short scene of the three citizens, illustrative of public concern at the King's death. The First Citizen's history proves shaky; Henry VI had not been 'crown'd in Paris but at nine months old*. His Westminster coronation took place when he was eight, its repetition in Paris two years later.1 Scene iv begins with the announcement by the Archbishop of York that Edward V and his train are approaching Northampton, and continues with a short conversation during which the King's younger brother the Duke of York is revealed as an unusually tiresome child. At this point a messenger brings news of the arrest of Rivers and Grey and their imprisonment at Tomfret'. In fact they were first sent to Richard's castle of Sheriff Hutton, being moved to Pontefiract only for their executions the following month; but this hardly matters. Far more important - and of course true - is the Queen's decision to take sanctuary with her son. (No mention is made of the five daughters who also accompanied her.)

  It seems mildly surprising that Shakespeare should make so little of Richard's first coup against the Woodvilles. Here, one might have thought, was a superb opportunity for a playwright. He could have imagined the night at Northampton, with Richard and Buckingham plying Rivers and Grey with wine before, the following morning, showing themselves in their true colours; another fine scene might have covered their subsequent meeting with the young King at Stony Stratford, when they accused the Woodvilles of treason and brushed aside all his attempts to defend them. Instead the whole story is told, briefly and undramatically, by a messenger. Doubtless Shakespeare had his reasons; but these incidents are wonderfully illustrative of Richard's character - his quickness, his deviousness and his total lack of scruple - and it is difficult to pass on to Act III without some slight feeling of disappointment, and regret at a fine chance missed.

  This act opens with the arrival in London, on 4 May, of the young King; and in his short dialogue with his uncle we are given at least a taste of what that scene at Stony Stratford might have been. In the play - which here is very probably accurate enough - Edward shows unwillingness to reside at the Tower: not because of its grim reputation (which it was to acquire only in later centuries) but, we may assume, because it had all too recently

  1. It is only fair to point out that Shakespeare's King Henry labours under the same delusion: see Chapter 16, p. 308.

  seen the deaths of a King and a Prince of the Blood.1 This is certainly the response of the young Duke of York, when he joins his brother later in the scene and they go off to the Tower together. (Historically, as we know, they did no such thing, Cardinal Bourchier having taken several days to persuade Queen Elizabeth to release her son from sanctuary.) The scene ends with Richard and Buckingham instructing their henchman, Sir William Catesby, to sound out Hastings on his probable reaction to Richard's seizure of the throne and to tell him of the execution, on the following day at Pontefract, of 'his ancient knot of dangerous adversaries': Fivers,
Grey and two of their followers, Sir Thomas Vaughan and Sir Richard Haute.

  In scene ii Catesby carries out his orders. Hastings, replying to his question, does not mince his words:

  I'll have this crown of mine cut from my shoulders

  Before I'll see the crown so foul misplac'd.

  He remains, none the less, confident of Richard's and Buckingham's goodwill towards him, and mocks the anxious Lord Stanley who tries to persuade him to flee. His confidence is still undiminished two scenes later — scene iii, in which the condemned men at Pontefract bid each other farewell, being little more than a brief parenthesis - when we come to the Council meeting which ends with his arrest. Here Shakespeare sticks closely to More and Hall (who incorporates More's history in his own chronicle), using indeed their very words whenever possible: the reference to the Bishop's strawberries, the sudden accusations, the revealing of the withered arm — all these details are faithfully retained. Once again the only confusion - and this is to a large extent inevitable - is in the chronology. Edward V entered London, as we know, on 4 May; the Council meeting was held on 13 June; and the beheadings at Pontefract took place on 25 June, nearly a fortnight after Hastings's execution.2 Historically, then, Hastings would never have had the

  The building was, incidentally, begun by William the Conqueror and not, as Buckingham maintains, by Julius Caesar.

  More and Hall, however, claim that the captives at Pontefract were executed 'the same day that the lord Chamberlayne was headed in the towre of London and about the same houre.'

  satisfaction - as he has in the play — of knowing that his enemies had preceded him to the block.