Since Richard was the finest general on the Yorkist side, many accepted him as a ruler better able to keep the Yorkists in power than a boy who would have had to rule through a committee of regents. Lancastrian hopes, on the other hand, now centred on Henry Tudor, whose father, Edmund tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond, had been an illegitimate half-brother of Henry VI. However, Henry's claim to the throne was through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, a descendant of Edward III, derived from John Beaufort, a grandson of Edward's III who was also the illegitimate son of John of Gaunt.

Henry Tudor's forces defeated Richard's at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 and Henry Tudor became King Henry VII of England. Henry then strengthened his position by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and the best surviving Yorkist claimant. He thus reunited the two royal houses, merging the rival symbols of the red and white roses into the new emblem of the red and white Tudor Rose. Henry shored up his position by executing all other possible claimants whenever he could lay hands on them, a policy his son, Henry VIII, continued.

Many historians consider the accession of Henry VII to mark the end of the Wars of the Roses. Others argue that the Wars of the Roses concluded only with the Battle of Stoke in 1487, which arose from the appearance of a pretender to the throne, a boy named Lambert Simnel who bore a close physical resemblance to the young Earl of Warwick, the best surviving male claimant of the House of York. The pretender's plan was doomed from the start, because the young earl was still alive and in King Henry's custody, so no one could seriously doubt Simnel was anything but an imposter. At Stoke, Henry defeated forces led by John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln--who had been named by Richard III as his heir, but had been reconciled with Henry after Bosworth--thus effectively removing the remaining Yorkist opposition. Simnel was pardoned for his part in the rebellion and sent to work in the royal kitchens.

2. Shakespeare's histories Richard III

“The Life and Death of King Richard III” is William Shakespeare's version of the short career of Richard III of England, who receives a singularly unflattering depiction. The play is sometimes interpreted as a tragedy; however, it more correctly belongs among the histories. It picks up the story from “Henry VI”, Part III and is the conclusion of the series that stretches back to Richard II. It is the second longest of Shakespeare's 38 plays, after Hamlet. The length is generally seen as a drawback and the play is rarely performed unabridged often cutting out various characters peripheral to the main plot.

Synopsis

The play begins with Richard eulogizing his brother, King Edward IV of England, the eldest son of the late Richard, Duke of York.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York

The speech reveals Richard's jealousy and ambition, as his brother Edward rules the country successfully. Richard is an ugly hunchback, describing himself as “rudely stamp'd” and “deformed, unfinish'd”, who cannot “strut before a wanton ambling nymph.” He responds to the anguish of his condition with an outcast's credo: “I am determined to prove a villain / And hate the idle pleasures of these days.” With little attempt at chronological accuracy (which he professes to despise), Richard plots to have his brother Clarence, who stands before him in the line of succession, conducted to the Tower of London as a suspected assassin; having bribed a soothsayer to confuse the suspicious king.

Richard next ingratiates himself with “the Lady Anne” - Anne Neville, widow of the Lancastrian Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales. Richard confides to the audience, “I'll marry Warwick's youngest daughter. What though I kill'd her husband and her father?” Despite her prejudice against him, Anne is won over by his pleas and agrees to marry him.

The atmosphere at court is poisonous: the established nobles are at odds with the upwardly-mobile relatives of Queen Elizabeth, a hostility fueled by Richard's machinations. Queen Margaret, Henry VI's widow, returns in defiance of her banishment and warns the squabbling nobles about Richard. The nobles, Yorkists all, reflexively unite against this last Lancastrian, and the warning falls on deaf ears.

Edward IV, weakened by a reign dominated by physical excess, soon dies, leaving as Protector his brother Richard, who sets about removing the final obstacles to his ascension. He meets his nephew, the young Edward V, who is en route to London for his coronation accompanied by relatives of Edward's widow. These Richard arrests and (eventually) beheads, and the young prince and his brother are coaxed into an extended stay at the Tower of London.

Assisted by his cousin Buckingham (Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham), Richard mounts a PR campaign to present himself as a preferable candidate to the throne, appearing as a modest, devout man with no pretensions to greatness. Lord Hastings, who objects to Richard's ascension, is arrested and executed on a trumped-up charge. The other lords are cajoled into accepting Richard as king, in spite of the continued survival of his nephews (the Princes in the Tower).

His new status leaves Richard sufficiently confident to dispose of his nephews. Buckingham conditions his consent for the princes' deaths on receiving a land grant, which Richard rejects, leaving Buckingham fearful for his life. As the body count rises, the increasingly paranoid Richard loses what popularity he had; he soon faces rebellions led first by Buckingham and subsequently by the invading Earl of Richmond (Henry VII of England). Both sides arrive for a final battle at Bosworth Field. Prior to the battle, Richard is visited by the ghosts of those whose deaths he has caused, all of whom tell him to: “Despair and die!” He awakes screaming for “Jesu” (Jesus) to help him, slowly realizing that he is all alone in the world and that even he hates himself. Richard's language and undertones of self-remorse seem to indicate that, in the final hour, he is repentant for his evil deeds, however, it is too late.

As the battle commences, Richard gives arguably the least motivational pep-talk in English literature (“Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls; Conscience is but a word that cowards use... March on, join bravely, let us to't pell mell; If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell....”). Lord Stanley (who happens to be Richmond's step-father) and his followers desert, leaving Richard at a disadvantage. Richard is soon unhorsed on the field at the climax of the battle, and utters the often-quoted line: “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!” He is defeated in the final “hunting of the boar”, so to speak, and Richmond succeeds as Henry VII, even going so far as to marry a York, effectively ending the War of the Roses (to the evident relief of everyone involved).

In dramatic terms, perhaps the most important (and, arguably, the most entertaining) feature of the play is the sudden alteration in Richard's character. For the first 'half' of the play, we see him as something of an anti-hero, causing mayhem and enjoying himself hugely in the process:

I do mistake my person all this while;

Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,

Myself to be a marvellous proper man.

I'll be at charges for a looking-glass;

Almost immediately after he is crowned, however, his personality and actions take a darker turn. He turns against loyal Buckingham (“I am not in the giving vein”), he falls prey to self-doubt (“I am in so far in blood, that sin will pluck on sin;”); now he sees shadows where none exist and visions of his doom to come (“Despair and die”).

Depiction of Richard

Shakespeare's depiction of Richard and his “reign of terror” is unflattering, and modern historians find it a distortion of historical truth. Shakespeare's “history” plays were not, of course, intended to be historically accurate, but were designed for entertainment. As with “Macbeth”, Richard's supposed villainy is depicted as extreme in order to achieve maximum dramatic effect. In addition, many previous writers had depicted Richard as a villain, and Shakespeare was thus following tradition.

Nevertheless, it is important to question why this particular king became a symbol of villainy during the Elizabeth's period. Critics have argued that this dark depiction of Richard developed because the ruling monarch of Shakespeare's time, Elizabeth I, was the granddaughter of Henry VII of England, the Lancastrian Earl of Richmond, who had defeated the last Yorkist king and started the Tudor dynasty, and Shakespeare's play thus presents the version of Richard that the ruling family would have wanted to see.

Shakespeare's main source for his play was the chronicle of Raphael Holinshed but it also seems likely that he drew on the work of Sir Thomas More, author of the unfinished “History of King Richard III” published by John Rastell after More's death. Rastell, More's brother-in-law, compiled the text from two work-in-progress manuscripts, one in English and one in Latin in different stages of composition. More's work is not a history in the modern sense. It is a highly coloured and literary account which contains accurate and invented details in (arguably) roughly equal portions. More had many sources available for his account (most of whom, like his patron Cardinal John Morton, were extremely hostile to the old regime) but like Shakespeare his main source is his own imagination: over a third of the text consists of invented speeches.

Richard III is the culmination of the cycle of “Wars of Roses” plays. In “Henry VI”, part II and part III, Shakespeare had already begun the process of building Richard's character into that of a ruthless villain, even though Richard could not possibly have been involved in some of the events depicted. He participates in battles in which historically he would still have been a boy. From an overview of the cycle, it can be seen that Shakespeare's inaccuracy works both ways.

Historical context