Richard III is a controversial figure. The controversy is dominated by Shakespeare’s play. It dominates because it is a brilliant work of dramatic art. Generations have been moved to denounce its vision of the arch-villain precisely because it is so effective. How can anyone as attractive as the stage Richard really have been so evil? He must surely have been maligned; in ‘real’ life he was different. It is remarkable how many modern apologists, drawn to the cause of restoring the good name of Richard III, confess they were first inspired by watching the play, often identifying specifically with Olivier’s film version. But the alternative Richard III is often an ideal type of medieval noble, heavily influenced by Victorian perceptions of knights in shining armour. It is no accident that many novels in this broad tradition have been, and still are being, written. Even at the heart of historical works, such as Kendall’s influential study half a century ago, the romantic hero is firmly lodged. Richard III has become, and arguably has been since the late sixteenth century, a literary figure of contested meanings as much as a controversial historical figure.
For the historian, the insuperable drawback remains the absence of a contemporary, or near contemporary, narrative which told the story from Richard III’s point of view. Even when something dramatic such as the discovery of a new text happens, as was the case with Dominic Mancini’s account in 1936, it turns out to tell the same old story. There are straws blowing in the wind as to what the alternative story might have been, not least carried by Mancini’s narrative, but it has been difficult to catch these straws, let alone turn them into bricks. Here, for the first time, is a coherent and persuasive reconstruction of what that story might have been, of how the unfolding events of the twenty-five years from Wakefield to Bosworth might have been perceived and understood by Richard III himself and how he wished the world to remember him.
Michael K.Jones is surely right to stress that the important aspect of the dominant tradition concerning Richard III is that it is a literary construct and that it is built upon, and incorporates, a whole series of literary influences concerning character, the springs of political action and the fighting of battles. The ‘Tudor’ version of Richard III did not simply derive from propaganda; it was couched in story form, drawing upon a common stock of devices and conventions for telling a story. It is because it deployed recurring stereotypes and repeated incidents from romance and history, that it was at the time so persuasive. Here, in the pages that follow, Jones constructs his own alternative: the tragedy, as he says, that Shakespeare might have written. He puts Richard back into the family and society from which Shakespeare excluded him. The alternative is brilliantly conceived, weaving the various strands of half-suppressed rumour, forgotten propaganda and hidden messages into a convincing picture of what might have been going on in Richard III’s mind. It is shocking and scandalous. It hinges on the notion that Richard knew that his eldest brother, Edward IV, was conceived in adultery, which their mother privately admitted, and that therefore he and his own children were unfit not only to rule the kingdom but also to head his family. A father-fixated Richard, convinced that he was the true heir, was driven to put right this wrong, to rehabilitate the name of his father as statesman and general, and to rescue their dynasty from dishonour. It was an obsession that led to his own downfall.
Only, it follows, if we can understand the world from Richard III’s perspective, will we properly understand what went on at Bosworth on 22 August 1485, a battle in which he lost both his throne and his chance to ensure that generations to come understood that he was rightful king of England. Building upon new documentary evidence and interpreting it in the light of his knowledge of how battles were fought (and in romance were supposed to be fought) Jones both moves the site and alters the course of the engagement. This was not a rattled and demoralised Richard who recklessly threw away a conflict he ought to have won. It is rather a supremely confident man who believed that on this field he would find final vindication for his actions, when as the true king of England he would sweep his last challenger away in the most decisive manner possible. He was beaten, not by the treachery of others or his own impetuosity, but by new tactics employed by the mercenaries opposed to him, of which he had no previous experience. And so he perished on the field that was intended to be his true, ritually and figuratively, crowning moment.
This is a truly radical reinterpretation of the career of Richard III, which, being founded on a deep knowledge of the sources and the age, puts forward a compelling explanation of his actions. It is bound to add to the controversy, whether on the site and course of Bosworth, on the legitimacy of Edward IV, on the hero-worshipping of his father, or on the death of the princes, which is still laid at Richard’s door. Dr Jones offers to rebuild what Shakespeare finally demolished. Shakespeare, of course, completed a work already nearly done. But symbolically he stands for the whole process. What Jones has rebuilt is not, by the same token, the truth of what really happened, or what Richard’s contemporaries knew to be the truth, or what they even believed to be the truth. What Shakespeare actually demolished, finally and once and for all, was any lingering memory of Richard III’s own vision of what he stood for and believed to be the truth. Michael K. Jones has crafted a marvellously imagined recreation of what that vision and truth might have been. Believe him or not, this is an exciting reinterpretation which transforms our understanding of what happened on that fateful day near Bosworth in August 1485.
A.J. Pollard
University of Teesside