page_title: Cultural depictions of Richard III of England
section_title: Tudor period
hierarchical_section_title: Cultural depictions of Richard III of England / Literature / Tudor period
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover page of The True Tragedy of Richard III, an anonymous Elizabethan history play published in 1594, which some scholars believe may have influenced Shakespeare's Richard III.
context_page_description: Richard III of England has been depicted in literature and popular culture many times. In the Tudor period he was invariably portrayed as a villain, most famously in Shakespeare's play Richard III, but also in other literature of the period. Richard's life was not much depicted again until the 20th century when the "Ricardian" movement sought to restore his reputation. Much of more recent creative literature has portrayed him in a positive light. However his reputation as a hunchbacked villain has remained a familiar historical cliché within popular culture.
context_section_description: The foremost work of literature featuring Richard III is William Shakespeare's Richard III, which is believed to have been written in 1591, a century after the King's death. It was the final part of a tetralogy of plays about the Wars of the Roses. Richard also appears in the two plays preceding it, Henry VI, Part 2 and Henry VI, Part 3. Shakespeare depicts Richard as a deformed and malevolent individual who takes out his bitterness over his own twisted body on the world, serving only his own ambition. His self-serving amorality is the culmination of the social and moral chaos caused by power struggles between the great magnates of the era. In Henry VI part 3 (Act III, Scene 2, lines 1645–50) Richard describes himself as follows:
  Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb:
  
  And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,
  
  She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe,
  
  To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub;
  
  To make an envious mountain on my back,
  
  Where sits deformity to mock my body;
  
  To shape my legs of an unequal size.
  Two other plays of the Elizabethan era predated Shakespeare's work. The Latin-language drama Richardus Tertius (1579) by Thomas Legge is believed to be the first history play written in England. The anonymous play The True Tragedy of Richard III (c.1590), performed in the same decade as Shakespeare's work, was probably an influence on Shakespeare. Neither of the two plays places any emphasis on Richard's physical appearance, though the True Tragedy briefly mentions that he is "A man ill shaped, crooked backed, lame armed" adding that he is "valiantly minded, but tyrannous in authority." Both portray him as a man motivated by personal ambition, who uses everyone around him to get his way.
  In 1602, in the last days of Tudor England, Ben Jonson wrote a play about Richard entitled Richard Crookback. His portrayal of the king is unknown, as it was never published. However, it is unlikely to have departed from the negative portrayal of Richard, and probably followed the same pattern as Jonson's only other tragedies, written at the same period, Catiline His Conspiracy and Sejanus His Fall, both of which are about ruthless usurpers who finally receive just retribution.
  Several ballads about the battle of Bosworth also survive from this period, some of which may date back to the immediate aftermath of the battle.
caption: Cover of the 1594 quarto of The True Tragedy of Richard III, which was "printed by Thomas Creede and ... to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market".
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