With the recent archeological discovery of King Richard
III’s skeletal remains in a Leicester car park, should we reevaluate
Shakespeare’s impression of King Richard III?
By: Ringo Bones
Even though he was killed in battle back in 1485, the recent
archeological discovery and confirmation of King Richard III’s skeletal remains
that were found buried under a Leicester car park became one of the major news
stories of February 4, 2013. This could well be the catalyst to reassess
everyone’s Stratfordian view of the life and reign of King Richard III. And
could it also revise Shakespeare’s view of the much maligned historical
monarch?
For over 400 years, the reputation of King Richard III –
according to the great bard William Shakespeare – has been a subject of
acrimonious debate by historians. As the king of England during the closing
years of the Wars of the Roses, even the most neutral and non-Stratfordianly
partisan historical research has not been able to solve the question of Richard
III’s guilt or innocence of the murder of the princes – i.e. Edward V and
Richard, sons of Edward IV – but has established that the character and other
crimes of Richard III as shown in the play represent an exuberant dramatizing
of Tudor distortions and fabrications.
Contrary to Shakespeare, Richard III was not so much as a
“hunch-backed toad” with a withered arm and crippled leg, but an attractive,
though rather frail, prince who was the leading general of the kingdom and next
to his brother Edward IV, was the most successful warrior in Europe. Rather
than stepping himself in crime and plots during Edward IV’s reign he was, in
fact, a loyal and indefatigable supporter of his brother’s government.
The true historically accurate King Richard III could well
be a stark contrast in comparison to the early chronicle play by William
Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s Richard III is closer to the example of Marlowe in
many respects, than any other of the great bard’s plays. It carries on the
story of the Wars of the Roses from the point where Shakespeare had dropped it
in the last act of 3 King Henry VI.
On the recently found skeletal remains of King Richard III,
it shows a rather malformed skeletal spine of a hunchbacked person – one of the
aspects that Shakespeare didn’t dissemble about Richard III. Even though the
nearly 600-year-old skeletal remains can only tell us so much using current
analytical techniques, many of us will still be left asking – was the real life
King Richard III way more fascinating than the great bard William Shakespeare
portrayed him to be?
