In her novel The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey looks at how history can be misconstrued through the more convenient reinterpretation of the person in power, and as such, can become part of our common understanding, not being true knowledge at all, but simply hearsay. In The Daughter of Time Josephine claims that 40 million school books can’t be wrong but then goes on to argue that the traditional view of Richard III as a power obsessed, blood thirsty monster is fiction made credible by Thomas More and given authenticity by William Shakespeare. Inspector Alan Grant looks into the murder of the princes in the tower out of boredom. Tey uses Grant to critique the way history is delivered to the public and the ability of historians to shape facts to present the argument they believe.
As the inspector begins to investigate the murders of the boys he collects history books that he believes will give him insight into Richard III and his horrible crime. The first history book he comes upon is a historical reader which bears “the same relation to history as Stories from the Bible bears to Holy Writ.” This book explains the tale of the princes in the tower using short paragraphs and full page illustrations which teaches an important moral, but adds no insight to the real story of Richard III. The second text he uses to investigate the crime is a proper school history book. The first realization he comes to while reading this book is that all school history books seem to separate history into easy to digest sections associated by the different reigns that never intersect or overlap. The second realization is that Richard III must have had a towering personality to have made himself “one of the best-known rulers” in two thousand years o...
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...e was also writing in Tudor England and seemed to have openly dislike Richard III. In other portions of his writing he describes Richard as an unattractive deformed man who was born with a full set of teeth. He writes that he had a “sour countenance , which seemed to savour of mischief, and utter evidently craft and deceit.”
References
Dominic Mancini,. “The Usurpation of Richard III” in Richard III A Source Book, Keith Dockray (Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1997)
Sir Thomas More, “The History of King Richard III” in Richard III A Source Book, Keith Dockray (Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1997)
Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995)
Polydore Vergil, “Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History” in Richard III A Source Book, Keith Dockray (Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1997)
Shakespeare constructs King Richard III to perform his contextual agenda, or to perpetrate political propaganda in the light of a historical power struggle, mirroring the political concerns of his era through his adaptation and selection of source material. Shakespeare’s influences include Thomas More’s The History of King Richard the Third, both constructing a certain historical perspective of the play. The negative perspective of Richard III’s character is a perpetuation of established Tudor history, where Vergil constructed a history intermixed with Tudor history, and More’s connection to John Morton affected the villainous image of the tyrannous king. This negative image is accentuated through the antithesis of Richards treachery in juxtaposition of Richmond’s devotion, exemplified in the parallelism of ‘God and Saint George! Richmond and victory.’ The need to legitimize Elizabeth’s reign influenced Shakespeare’s portra...
though he is moving away but at the same time he claims that he feels
In this play of challenge and debate, could it be possibly suggested that King Richard had a part to play in the murder of his uncle the Duke of Gloucester? Could the reader possibly pick up this assumption having known nothing about the play? These are all factors that one must find by reading in between the lines, noticing and understanding the silence that is exchanged. For the silence is just as important as the speech.Why is it assumed that King Richard II has anything to do with the murder? Let us review a scene from the play were Gaunt accuses Richard of being accountable for Gloucester's death.
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Who is the birthday party a rite of passage for, the birthday boy or his mother?
The task which Shakespeare undertook was to mold the hateful constitution of Richard's Moral; character. Richard had to contend with the prejudices arising from his bodily deformity which was considered an indication of the depravity and wickedness of his nature. Richard's ambitious nature, his elastic intellect, and his want of faith in goodness conspire to produce his tendency to despise and degrade every surrounding being and object, even as his own person. He is never sincere except when he is about to commit a murder.
was quite confused at what it could mean. I knew that it had to be
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After exiling Henry, Richard takes the opportunity to criticize his "courtship to the common people." His speech at first seems to merit Henry for his sociability, but it quickly becomes clear that, to Richard, commoners are not fit for royal consumption:
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one of Richard’s consultants by the name of Sheriff Hutton. www.richardIII.com stated that Shakespeare also said that Richard
The women of the late sixties, although some are older than others, in Alice Walker’s fiction that exhibit the qualities of the developing, emergent model are greatly influenced through the era of the Civil Rights Movement. Motherhood is a major theme in modern women’s literature, which examines as a sacred, powerful, and spiritual component of the woman’s life. Alice Walker does not choose Southern black women to be her major protagonists only because she is one, but because she had discovered in the tradition and history they collectively experience an understanding of oppression that has been drawn from them a willingness to reject the principle and to hold what is difficult. Walker’s most developed character, Meridian, is a person who allows “an idea no matter where it came from to penetrate her life.” Meridian’s life is rooted under the curiosity of what is the morally right thing to do, at the right time and place. Meridian pursues a greatness amount of power, which is based upon her individualistic and personal view of herself as a mother. She looks for answers from her family, especially the heritage by her maternal ancestors, and seeks her identity through traditions passed on to her by Southern black women. In exploring the primacy of motherhood, African-American writer Alice Walker’s novel, Meridian, shifted the angle of seeing from the female perspective how the certain experiences affect their interpretations of motherhood.
Richard II is not your average king. He is useless with his power and does not know how to use it. He is the king of England when the play begins but shortly after his kingship is taken away from him. Richard II is a young man who has not matured much since his adolescence. He is disconnected from his land and its people, which becomes one of the downfalls of his crown. He has an extraordinary flair for poetic language. He is witty and poetic personality doesn’t work with his higher calling in life. A king should be strong and fearless. King Richard II is not a man of action and as the play advances, he gets into more and more trouble. As his end approaches, he becomes very poetic. Like most Shakespearean heroes, Richard II has a strong theatrical personality. He likes putting on a show and enjoys a bit of wordplay, even at his own expense. What sets him apart from other Shakespearean characters is the perverse joy he takes in his downfall.