 Will the Real Richard III Please Stand Up?
Sharon D. Michalove
So what, you may be wondering, does this seemingly commonplace little tale have to do with the story of Richard III—a story of high politics, treachery, and battle. Perhaps Grace's words near the beginning of the novel will give a clue.
If Richard III were able to look back the writings about him over the last 500 years, perhaps he would share Grace's sentiments. As Lord Protector and later as King Richard III, the duke of Gloucester carefully created the persona-that-would-be-king from that of a loyal younger brother very much in the shadow of a powerful older sibling. The chameleon of the Richard story has continued down the centuries as Richard III has remained a presence in the popular imagination. Does his continual reinvention have meaning beyond a fascination with the man himself? A subject of controversy even before his death in 1485, our imagination is piqued by the evil prince who has his brother drowned in a butt of malmsey and his innocent young nephews smothered in the Tower of London. Generation after generation has debated Richard anew--murderer or loyal friend; greedy usurper or conscientious administrator. While the sides of the argument are sharp and clear, the picture of the central character remains unfocused. In 1788, William Hutton commented on the duality of Richard III's nature. In his book, The Battle of Bosworth Field, he wrote Richard the Third, of all the English Monarchs, bears the greatest contrariety of character. . . . Some few have conferred upon him almost angelic excellence, have clouded his errors, and blazened every virtue that could adorn a man. Others, as if only extremes would prevail, present him in the blackest dye; his thoughts were evil, and that continually, and his actions diabolical; the most degraded mind inhabited the most deformed body. . . . But Richard's character, like every man's had two sides . . . though most writers display but one . . . [2] Perhaps if he had been born in our own time, Richard would have been under the care of a psychiatrist—presumably a Freudian if he really did accuse his mother of adultery! One of the more famous characterizations of Richard comes from the pen of Shakespeare. In the opening monologue of the play Richard III, Shakespeare depicts the very essence of evil--crooked, twisted; full of hate, fury, envy, and malice. Was this a true picture of the historical Richard III? Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Shakespeare, of course, however unhistorical, was a master of language. But his is not the only negative portrayal of Richard III. One of the first of the Tudor propagandists was the respected lawyer and scholar, Sir Thomas More, who became chancellor of England in the reign of Henry VIII. More's picture of Richard is that of a man who is "little of stature, ill featured of limbs, crook backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard favored of visage . . . he was malicious, wrathful, envious and, from before his birth, ever froward."[4] In fact, More characterizes Richard as a monster from birth, stating, It is for truth reported, that the duchess his mother had so much ado in her travail, that she could not be delivered of him uncut: and that he came into the world with the feet forward . . . and (as the fame runneth) also not untoothed, whether men of hatred report above the truth, or else that nature changed her course in his beginning, which in the course of his life many things unnaturally committed.[5] More's history was never finished in either the Latin or the English version. Perhaps he heard unflattering stories about his former patron, Cardinal Morton, and was then skeptical of the anti-Richard propaganda he was fork-fed as a child. Whatever the reason, his version of the Richard tale did get out and was then built upon by other Tudor apologists. Edward Hall, in his long (but not so long as Holinshed's) chronicle described Richard as "small and little of stature, so was he of body greatly deformed, the one shoulder higher than the other, his face small, but his countenance was cruel, and such that a man at the first aspect would judge it to savour and smell of malice, fraud and deceit . . ."[6] I could go on over the centuries with similar descriptions, but you get the idea. Richard as unnatural and evil was only one view. When he wrote this next excerpt, Thomas Langton had just been made bishop of St. David's in Wales by Richard. He was undoubtedly as prejudiced as a beneficiary of Richard's generosity as More was as a beneficiary of the Tudor court. This is, however, a contemporary view of Richard III, contained in a private letter from Langton from September 1483, when he wrote to William Sellyng, prior of Christchurch, Canterbury, He contents the people where he goes best that ever did Prince, for many a poor man that hath suffered wrong many days hath been relieved and helped by him and his commands in his progress. And in many great cities and towns were great sums of money given him which he hath refused. On my trouth I liked never the conditions of any prince so well as his; God hath sent him to us for the wele of us all.[7] Even Dominic Mancini, who was one of the foreigners to accuse Richard of murdering his nephews, still had good things to say about him as duke of Gloucester after his brother Clarence's death. He kept himself within his own lands and set out to acquire the loyalty of his people through favours and justice. The good reputation of his private life and public activities powerfully attracted the esteem of strangers. Such was his renown in warfare, that whenever a difficult and dangerous policy had to be undertaken, it would be entrusted to his discretion and his generalship.[8] To belabor the point, a seventeenth-century supporter of Richard wrote, Never was he noted all the life of King Edward to thirst after the kingdom; never denied he any commandment of his prince, but performed all his employments discreetly, valiantly, successfully. . . . Then how do our chroniclers report for truth, their malice greater than either their proof or their judgement,? But they are Historians, and must be believed.[9] This rather neatly brings us to the historians and how they describe Richard III. Paul Murray Kendall, an avowed reconstructionist, wrote this romantic Heathcliff-like description of the duke of Gloucester in his 1955 biography of Richard, Upward into the hills Richard rode, a figure slight of build and a little less than normal height; his face more memorable than handsome, a rather thin face of strongly marked but harmonious features: eyes direct and earnest, shadowed by care; a forthright nose; a chin remarkable for the contrast of its bold structure with its delicate molding. The face suggests the whole man, a frail body compelled to the service of a powerful will. There is a veil of darkness upon him. With half his deeds a man of vivid personality like Clarence or Warwick would have created twice the blaze of fame. Though the kingdom resounds with his praise, he remains, to most of it, unknown. He has no brilliant smile to make hearts beat high. What he gets, he earns. The men he has won are the men of the North, who have served with him in battle and known his justice in times of peace.[10] In the now-standard biography of Richard, written by Charles Ross, the more measured assessment is It has been a persistent and serious weakness of much that has been written about Richard III to concentrate on the sequence of violent events which attended his acquisition of the throne, and in particular, his responsibility (or lack of it) for his nephews' death. . . . He does not appear to have been a complex man. He may not have been a particularly intelligent man, yet it is hard to fault his conduct of government once he became king. . . . In the end, any 'contrariety of character' of Richard III stems not from what we know about him, but from what we do not know about him.[11] More briefly, the judgment of Anthony Pollard in Richard III and the Princes in the Tower, is "Richard had reached maturity in a hard school in an uncertain world and he was likely to have taken its lessons to heart."[12] Finally, what does our honoree have to say about Richard III? In Joan of Arc & Richard III: Sex, Saints, and Government in the Middle Ages, Charles Wood gives the following opinion of our schizophrenic subject.
So Richard III could have been a villain, a romantic hero, a brave soldier, a brilliant commander, a loyal brother or a murderous one, a disloyal uncle, a poor politician, and perhaps not very bright. No wonder there is so much controversy about him. He is everyone's Everyman—a true man for all seasons and an exemplar for all reasons. Was he a black hat or a white one? Did he kill his nephews or was he trying to save England from the disastrous consequences of a minority reign? Was he a good king, an innovative administrator, a murderer, or merely a bungler? Every age needs the good guys and the bad guys. Janus-like, Richard III represents the duality of human nature. Novelists, screenwriters and historians give us the noble and the ignoble; the good, the bad, and the ugly if you will. While the definitions of objectivity and the purposes for writing history change, the need for mythic figures persists. Through pseudo-historian Desmond Seward's eyes we can see him as "England's black legend." Or, with the partisan Josephine Tey's detective hero Alan Grant we can gaze at his portrait and see "someone used to great responsibility, and responsible in his authority. Someone too conscientious. A worrier; perhaps a perfectionist." For the seeker, Richard III can embody both good and evil. He can be a mirror of the soul. In conclusion, finding the "real" Richard III, as with so much in history, is not possible. We do not have access to H. G. Wells Time Machine, and even if we did, our impressions, like those of the time and later, would be subjective. So we can only t hrow up our hands and say, as in the old television game show "To Tell the Truth," will the real Richard III please stand up!
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In 1996, the Canadian novelist, Margaret Atwood, wrote Alias Grace, which was a
fictionalization of a notorious murder case in mid-nineteenth century Canada. The main
character is Grace Marks, an Irish immigrant servant, who is convicted of killing her
employer and his housekeeper with the assistance of another servant, James McDermott.
McDermott is executed for his crime and while Grace is sentenced to death, her sentence
is commuted to life imprisonment. 