The Richard III Society – ‘working since 1924 to secure a more balanced assessment of the king and to support research into his life and times’ – has long tried to challenge Shakespeare’s distorted portrait of the king. But the question of whether the portrait of Richard is historically accurate or not is less important than the fact that its charismatic power challenges historical narrative itself. Audiences at Richard III are drawn to Richard and kept at a distance from Richmond: and, like Shakespeare himself, none of us bothers to stick around to see what happens next. It is Richard, not
...more
