If it is Richard III they've found under the council car park that's incredible. I am something of a Riccardian at heart ie. I don't believe the popular conception of him is at all accurate. This discovery has brought him very much to the front of my mind and so I've been enjoying a rehearsal of all the old arguments pro and con. Looking at the evidence and the contemporary eye witness accounts (rather than the Tudor sources such as Thomas More & Shakespeare) one is left with the impression of a man who was unusually loyal for a time in which betrayal, even by brothers, was common place (contrast his efforts on behalf of Edward IV with those of the third brother Clarence), who was relatively fair and just as demonstrated by his prosecution of his own people in response to complaints while he was ruling the North for Edward. He was certainly capable in the violence department but it was a brutal time, he had been at war since adolescence and was good at it but the malevolent serial killer of the stage? Hardly. Compared to your average Plantagenet who chewed up their foes and friends and spat out the gristle , Richard was decidedly civilised. A revision of history's judgement on him has been building momentum for years and this discovery will hopefully help to focus minds on the reality of the man as has the recent discovery of baptismal records in France which strongly indicate that Richard was right about Edward's bastardy. Rather than a nasty, self serving lie to justify his usurpation it increasingly looks like Richard kept silent on this while his brother was alive out of personal loyalty, after his death though he was faced with a threat to his political and physical survival from the Queen and her family whose lowly origins must have made any knowledge he had of Edward's similar proletarian routes gall him even further. A prole sit on his family's throne? What Plantagenet could stand for that? Did he mean to take the throne? Maybe, but it's not certain. The way events played out I think it started as a move against the Woodvilles, a showdown there was inevitable at some point, take control of the new King and eliminate his political rivals who were clearly plotting to do exactly that to him. And then it becomes opportunism, if Edward was a bastard then he and not the Princes was the rightful heir (pretty much) and if he didn't take the throne it would pass to the descendants of commoners. Whether he killed his nephews I don't suppose we'll ever know. The case is a strong one. He had disinherited them, declared them a bastard line but they were still a threat as a focus for revolt. Two boys lives or the mayhem of the Wars of the Roses rumbling on. It would have been expedient. There are however reasons to introduce doubt. The boys were much more of a threat to Henry Tudor who had no real claim to the throne at all and unlike Richard they were not related to him, were not the children of an apparently much loved brother. There were some strange circumstances too: the behaviour of the boys' mother after their disappearance - leaving sanctuary and coming back to Richard's court was scarcely the behaviour of a woman who's children had disappeared while in his care, did she have reason to believe they were still alive after they were last seen in public playing in that garden in the Tower? And then there is the strange behaviour of Henry VII. After Bosworth he accused Richard of a catalogue of crimes, some patently ludicrous, but not of these murders. He was singularly silent on their fate. He bolstered his claim to rule by marrying their sister so if he had evidence of their death it would have been very much in his interest to heap calumny on Richard's head and rule as the boy's successor but he didn't. The accusation came years later. And then there is the character of Henry. A ruthless, ambitious man who did eliminate potential rivals including Clarence's young son who Richard had not touched despite the fact that the lad's claim to the throne was superior to his...and of course Henry's.
The recent find has also led to me taking a happy browse through my memories of Anthony Sher as Richard at the RSC in 1984, an extraordinary performance that utterly transformed my understanding of the play and the character. I'll never forget the image of him as a looming black distorted body, the crutches becoming long extended forelimbs that propelled him across the stage at frightening speed in a scuttling, vaulting manner. A huge black spider and sitting on its misshapen shoulders the shockingly incongruous human head, curly haired and handsome. It was truly horrifying and mesmerising.
Posted via email from wibbledinton's posterous
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