Thomas More and the History of Richard III
A few years after Bosworth (around 1489-92), young Thomas More entered Morton's service as a page; the extent of Morton's contact with and influence on More has become a matter of debate and conjecture.
For at some time during 1514-1515, when he left for Flanders as a member of a trade embassy and began writing Utopia, but certainly during his tenure as undersheriff of London, More wrote several drafts of a work concerning the events of 1483:
the death of Edward IV in April,
the usurpation of the crown by Richard of Gloucester from Edward's son in June, and
the rebellion (with Morton's encouragement) of the second Duke of Buckingham against Richard in October.
For the first time, Richard was accused in writing of the deed with which his name became associated historically - the death of the Princes in the Tower. One draft was in Latin for circulation among humanists abroad and was apparently written first, one then derived into English for eventual publication at home; neither appeared to have been finished when discovered among his papers after his execution on 6 July 1535, the anniversary of Richard's coronation (a piece of irony More might have appreciated under other circumstances).
The English version found publication without attribution in 1543 as part of Hardyng's Chronicle and again five years later as a continuation of Hall's Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York.[3] The History of Richard III debuted in its own right as part of More's English Works, published by his nephew William Rastell in 1557. Rastell claimed that the Hall and Hardyng publications were "very much corrupt in many places" and published the manuscript "from the copy of his hand". He published the Latin version of the History from exile in the Low Countries in 1565.[4]
Although never as well known or widely read as Utopia, the History was acknowledged as a masterpiece of humanist writing. Whether it was satire, fiction, historiography, or Tudor propaganda, no one was or is sure; there were even rumblings that Morton had written parts of it. Shakespeare borrowed enthusiastically from the characterization of Richard to write his historical drama Richard III in the late 1580s. Arguably one of Shakespeare's best, the play's success sealed Richard III's reputation in popular imagination for all time as the Wicked Uncle, shedder of young innocents' blood and murderer of his brother, his wife, his nephews, his wife's first husband, and Henry VI.
When Ricardian revisionists began (as early as the 1620s, with Sir George Buck) to penetrate the Shakespearean veil for the Bard's sources, they found themselves doing battle with the literary remains of the man known derisively in Ricardian circles as the "sainted More."[5] A few obscure works such as Polydore Vergil (hired by Henry VII to write a history of England supporting the Tudor claim to the throne) and Dominic Mancini predate the History but have not enjoyed the same influence.
The matter of More's original intent in writing the History and what form he used has never been resolved to anyone's satisfaction.
One historian sees it as a "medieval morality" play.[6]
Alec R. Myers thought that "his history is much more like a drama, unfolded in magnificent prose, for which fidelity to historical fact is scarcely relevant."[7]
Richard S. Sylvester called the History an example of "humanist history [presented with] dramatic forcefulness" in his 1963 edition of the text [8], but also thought that More had rendered an accurate picture of the perception of Richard in the Tudor court: "His acceptance of that image stems not so much from his own partisanship, as from the trustworthiness which he attributed to those who had already, both orally and in writing, created the main features of the legend...."
Pollard shifted attention from the work as a piece of history to consideration of the History as dramatic art.[9]
Footnotes
[3] Elizabeth Story Donno, "Thomas More and Richard III", Renaissance Quarterly, Volume 35, No. 3, 402.
[4] Paul Murray Kendall, Richard III: The Great Debate (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1965), p. 23.
[5] Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time (London: Penguin Books, 1951), various allusions throughout the text.
[6] Patrick Grant, "Thomas More's Richard III: Moral Narration and Humanist Method," Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1983), 158.
[7] A.R. Meyers, "The Character of Richard III," History Today, Vol. IV (1954), 119.
[8] Donno, "Thomas More and Richard III," Renaissance Quarterly, 405.
[9] Donno, 404.
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