Shakespeare's Kings (114 page)

Tradition
tells
us
that
Henry
VII
was
first
crowned
on
the
battlefield, when
Stanley
removed
his
predecessor's
gold
coronet
from
his
helmet and
placed
it
on
his
head.
One
of his
first
acts
as
King
was
to
order
the arrest
of
the
Duke
of
Northumberland.
In
fact,
he
had
good
cause
to be
grateful
to
him:
Northumberland,
despite
having
shown
Richard every
sign
of
loyalty
beforehand,
when
the
fighting
began
had
refused the
King's
order
to
advance
and
had
remained
with
his
men
motionless at
the
top
of
the
hill
while
the
battle
raged
below
him.
Now
he
knelt before
Henry
and
did
him
homage;
but
the
King
was
not
satisfied.
The Duke,
he
probably
felt,
had
betrayed
both
sides.
He
had
sat
too
long on
the
fence.
He
was
taken
prisoner
for
a
time,
but
was
soon
restored to
all
his
old
offices.

Where
Henry
himself
deserves
censure
is
in
the
treatment
of
Richard's body.
According
to
the
author
of
The Great Chronicle
of
London,

Richard
late
King,
as
gloriously
as
he
was
by
the
morning
departed
from
town, so
irrevere
ntly
was
he
that
afternoon
brought
into
that
town,
for,
his
body despoiled
to
the
skin
and
nought
being
left
about
him
so
much
as
would
cover his
privy
member,
he
was
trussed
behind
a
pursuivant
...
as
an
hog
or
other
vile beast.
And
so,
all
too
bestrung
with
mire
and
filth,
was
brought
to
a
church
in Leicester
for
all
men
to
wonder
upon.
And
there
lastly
indifferently
buried.

Much
later,
Henry
VII
ordered
a
tombstone
for
the
hitherto
unmarked grave
in
the
church
of
the
Grey
Friars
in
Leicester.
It
cost
him
just
a shilling
over
ten
pounds.

k.
rich
.

I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,

Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time

Into this breathing world scarce half made up
–

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them

-Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,

And descant on mine own deformity.

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain . . .

king
richard
iii

King
Richard
III,
the
only
English
ruler
since
the
Norman
Conquest to
have
been
killed
in
battle,
is
also
the
only
one
to
have
become
a
legend. That
legend,
due
first
to
Sir
Thomas
More
and
then
to
Shakespeare,
is
of the
lame
and
twisted
hunchback
whose
misshapen
body
reflects
the evil
heart
within
it.
To
satisfy
his
own
all-consuming
ambition,
he murders
the
royal
saint
King
Henry
VI
and
the
latter's
son
Edward Prince
of
Wales,
seduces
Edward's
Lady
Anne
while
her
husband's body
is
still
warm,
engineers
the
death
of
his
own
brother
Clarence and
finally
disposes
of
his
two
child
nephews
—
one
of
them
the
rightful King
of
England
-
in
the
Tower
of
London.
He
quite
probably
poisons his
wife,
and
would
almost
certainly
have
married
his
niece
had
he
not been
persuaded
that
public
opinion
would
never
stand
for
it.
He
acts, in
short,
more
like
one
of
those
ogres
of
the
Italian
Renaissance,
of whom
his
contemporary
Cesare
Borgia
was
perhaps
the
most
obvious

example
and
another
contemporary,
Niccolo
Machiavelli,
the
most characteristic
voice.
For
all
of
them,
ends
invariably
justified
means:
to ensure
the
proper
maintenance
of
the
ruler's
authority,
no
crime
was too
unspeakable,
no
treachery
too
abhorrent.

More
recently,
however,
there
has
grown
up
another
legend,
which has
come
a
long
way
towards
supplanting
the
first.
This
is
the
legend of
the
great
and
good
man
of
perfe
ctly
normal
physique,
the
fine administrator
and
far-sighted
law-giver
who,
had
he
been
allowed the
time
and
the
opportunity,
would
have
restored
peace
and
good government
to
his
realm;
but
who,
instead,
has
been
made
the
victim of
one
of
the
most
contemptible
campaigns
in
the
history
of
personal defamation.
His
character
has
been
blackened,
deliberately
and
systematically,
while
appalling
crimes
of
which
he
was
completely
innocent have
been
laid
at
his
door.
The
man
who
was
potentially
one
of
the greatest
of
English
monarchs
has
been
branded
as
being
incomparably the
vilest.