From History to Myth: The Misogyny of Richard III
in More's History and Shakespeare's Play

By
Romuald Ian Lakowski

ABSTRACT

The theme of misogyny figures prominently in Shakespeare's Tragedy of
King Richard III.  Shakespeare did not invent this theme; it also
appears in the historical accounts especially in Shakespeare's chief
source Sir Thomas More's History of Richard III.  However, he did
extensively modify and freely elaborate on More's own brilliant
portrayal of Richard's "war with women".  As well as illustrating the
development of this theme in both works, the paper also briefly
considers certain archetypal motifs in the play, some of which were
suggested by the historical sources, in particular those of Richard's
"unnatural birth" and of the portrayal of Richard as a wild boar
(suggested by Richard's own coat of arms).

"From History to Myth: The Misogyny of Richard III in More's History
and Shakespeare's Play" first appeared in Q/W/E/R/T/Y: arts,
littératures et civilisations du monde anglophone, volume 9
(October 1999), pp. 15-23, edited by Bertrand Rougé and
Published by Publications de l'Université de Pau, Pau, France
in 1999. Copyright (c) 1999 by Publications de l'Université de
Pau and the Author (romualdi@interchange.ubc.ca). All rights reserved;
reprinted by permission of Publications de l'Université de Pau
.

1.  The fact that Richard III stands out in the minds of many readers as
one of the great villains of English history is largely due to the
combined efforts of Sir Thomas More's History of King Richard III and
Shakespeare's Tragedy of King Richard the Third.  Whatever one thinks of
the veracity of the early historical accounts of Richard III's reign,
there is no question that the portrayal of the character of Richard III
in More's history and Shakespeare's play is highly memorable.  One
characteristic that stands out, especially in Shakespeare's play, is the
strong element of misogyny.  Although the treatment of women in the
Tragedy of King Richard the Third partly reflects strong Senecan
influences,[1]  the tradition of misogyny is also to be found in the
historical sources, especially in More's History of King Richard III,[2]
which was incorporated into all the later chronicle sources, including
Hall and Holinshed (See Appendix A). Shakespeare, however, strikingly
transforms and expands parts of More's history in order to heighten
certain aspects of his portrayal of Richard III's antagonistic
relationships with all the female characters in the play.

2.  Shakespeare's Richard III is remarkable for the way in which it
deals so extensively with the themes of political corruption and
dissimulation.  Richard's reign is represented as a period in which
nothing is sacred: neither on a political or social level, nor on a
personal one.  Richard will stop at nothing not even at betraying his
friends or murdering his kin to become king.  The opening soliloquy sets
up an immediate and remarkable dichotomy between Richard's outer
semblance or persona, and his real inner feelings.  Within the first
forty-one lines of the play we are introduced to all the major themes of
the play, including political and social conflict, sexual dissoluteness
and the corruption of language itself through the prophecies "that 'G' /
of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be" (I, i, 39--40).[3]

3.  Most recent criticism of the text seems to centre around the theme
of political corruption and ambition, but the theme of sexual corruption
and the hatred of women is also strongly developed in the play.  Richard
comes across in the opening soliloquy, in contrast to Edward IV's
dissolute behaviour, as something of a sexual puritan and a malcontent:

  Grim-visag'd War hath smooth'd his wrinkled front:
  And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
  To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
  He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber,
  To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
  But I, that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,
  Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
  I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
  To strut before a wanton ambling nymph:
  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,
  And hate the idle pleasures of these days.  (I, i, 9--17, 25--31)

Ironically, we do see Richard in the next scene playing the role of a
lover, albeit a totally villainous one.  The theme of conflict between
the sexes is introduced very early in the play in Richard's words to
Clarence: "'Tis not the King that sends you to the Tower; / My Lady
Grey, his wife, Clarence, 'tis she / That tempers him to this extremity"
(I, i, 63--65).  To which Clarence replies:

  By heaven, I think there is no man secure,
  But the Queen's kindred, and night-walking heralds
  That trudge betwixt the King and Mistress Shore (I, i, 71--73).

4.  The hostility between the Queen's kindred and Clarence and Richard
is suggested in the historical sources.  Thomas More suggests a couple
of different explanations for Clarence's downfall in his History of King
Richard III:

  For were it by the Queene and the Lordes of her bloode whiche
  highlye maligned the kynges kinred (as women commonly not of
  malice but of nature hate them whome theire housebandes loue)
  or were it a prowde appetite of the Duke himself entendinge to
  be king: at the lest wise heinous Treason was there layde to
  his charge, and finallye wer hee fautye were hee faultlesse,
  attainted [condemned] was hee by parliament, and iudged to the
  death, and thereupon hastely drouned in a Butte of Malmesey,
  whose death kynge Edwarde (albeit he commaunded it) when he
  wist it was done, pitiously bewailed and sorowfully repented.
  (CW 2: 7/5--15; Hall 342)

Dominic Mancini in his contemporary account, The Usurpation of Richard
the Third (1483), which was unknown to both More and Shakespeare, also
reports that the queen "concluded that her offspring by the king would
never come to the throne, unless the duke of Clarence were removed; and
of this she easily persuaded the king" (Mancini 63).[4]  Another
contemporary historical source, the "Second Continuation" of the
Croyland Chronicle (1486), blames Edward IV himself for Clarence's
death.[5]  More, however, suggests elsewhere that Richard may have been
also involved in plotting Clarence's death:

  "Somme wise menne also weene, that his drifte [scheme] couertly
  conuayde [carried out], lacked not in helping furth his brother
  of Clarence to his death: whiche hee resisted openly, howbeit
  somwhat (as menne demed) more faintly then he that wer hartely
  minded to his welth" (CW 2: 8/22--25; cf.  Hall 343).

5.  Shakespeare obviously used his sources very freely.  Sometimes a
single line or a brief passage in More or one of the other historical
sources, by a process of rhetorical and dramatic amplification, will
suggest a whole scene or part of a scene;[6]  at other times a long
rhetorical speech or passage in The History of King Richard III is
abbreviated to a few lines.[7]  Shakespeare responds readily to the
dramatic possibilities inherent in the text.  However, Shakespeare seems
to be following very much in the spir it of More's 'satirical drama'
(Hanham, 152--190).  It is More who reports that, "as menne constantly
saye," Richard was responsible for murdering Henry VI (CW 2: 8/13--21;
cf.  Hall 343).[8]  And it is More, above all through his sympathetic
portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Mistress Shore, and through his
description of Richard's hostility towards them, who introduces the
theme of Richard's "war with women," despite Buckingham's ironical words
to the contrary:[9]

  Womannishe feare, naye womannishe frowardenesse [perversity]
  (quod the Duke of Buckyngham.) For I dare take it vppon my
  soule, she well knoweth she needeth no such thyng to feare,
  either for her sonne or for her selfe.  For as for her, here is no
  manne that wil bee at warre with women.  (CW 2: 28/19--23; Hall 353)

However, long before this we have been told that Richard did everything
possible to foment trouble between the Queen's kindred and the young
Prince Edward (CW 2: 9--10, 14--15), and also that Richard had done
everything to turn Hastings and Buckingham against the Queen:

  These two not bearing eche to other so muche loue, as hatred
  bothe vnto the Quenes parte: in this poynte accorded [agreed]
  together wyth the Duke of Gloucester, that they wolde vtterlye
  amoue [remove] fro the kynges companye, all his mothers frendes,
  vnder the name of their enemyes.  (CW 2: 15/31--16/3; Hall 348)

6.  Had More solely been concerned with Richard as usurper and tyrant,
he would not have given the Queen such a prominent part in this account.
But, as it stands, the Queen and Mistress Shore have a part to play
either directly or indirectly in much of the middle part of More's
History (CW 2: 20--67; Hall 350--67).  It is true that Mistress Shore
does not figure directly in Shakespeare's play (though several modern
productions, including Olivier's film and Jane Howell's BBC
production,[10]  have been unable to resist giving her a non-speaking
part) but she is mentioned prominently several times.  As the new Arden
Shakespeare edition puts it, she was "the most famous absentee from the
dramatis personae of the play" (p.  129).  The queen does figure
prominently in the play; however, much of the dramatic conflict between
her and Richard is transferred by Shakespeare to Queen Margaret, who is
unhistorically alive at this point.[11]

7.  More does briefly introduce the figure of the Duchess of York,
Richard's mother, in his account of Edward IV's wooing of Lady Elizabeth
Grey (CW 2: 60--66), which Shakespeare makes use of in 3 Henry VI (III,
ii, 1--115).  (Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard's wooing of Lady Anne
in Act I, scene ii represents in many ways an ironic inversion of More's
account of Edward IV's wooing of Lady Elizabeth.)  However, in More's
account, Richard plays no part in the lively debate between Edward and
his mother.  Mo does report Richard's unnatural birth:

  It is for trouth reported, that the Duches his mother had so
  muche a doe in her trauaile, that shee coulde not bee deliuered
  of hym vncutte: and that hee came into the worlde with the
  feete forwarde, as menne bee borne outwarde, and (as the fame
  runneth) also not vntothed, whither menne of hatred reporte
  aboue the trouthe, or elles that nature chaunged her course in
  hys beginninge, whiche in the course of his lyfe many thinges
  vnnaturallye committed.  (CW 2: 7/23--30; Hall 343)

(While More did not invent the story of Richard's monstrous birth --- it
is first found in the Antiquarian John Rous's Historiae Regum Angliae
(1491)[12] --- he was certainly responsible for popularizing it,
together with the idea of Richard's deformity.)[13]  Shakespeare does
make use of this passage (II, iv, 16--30), but elsewhere goes even
further in having Richard's own mother curse him:

Duch.
  O ill-dispersing wind of misery!
  O my accursed womb, the bed of death!
  A cockatrice hast thou hatch'd to the world
  Whose unavoided eye is murderous.  (IV, i, 52--55)[14]

Queen Margaret, also, in cursing the Duchess goes even further in declaring:

  From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept
  A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death:
  That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes,
  To worry lambs, and lap their gentle blood...
  That foul defacer of God's handiwork
  Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves.  (IV, iv, 47--50, 53--54)

8.  Richard has become the hell-hound who devours "the issue of his
mother's body" (IV, iv, 57).  The dramatic conflict between the
queen-mothers and Richard is almost wholly Shakespeare's creation, but
perhaps it was suggested by the attacks that Richard makes on his mother
in the historical sources, especially in More:[15]

  But the chief thing and the weighty of al that inuencion,
  rested in this that they should allege bastardy, either in king
  Edward himself, or in his children, or both.  So that he should
  seme dishabled to inherite the crowne by the duke of Yorke, and
  the prince by him.  To lay bastardy in kynge Edward, sowned
  [appeared] openly to the rebuke of the protectours owne mother,
  which was mother to them both: for in that point could be none
  other colour, but to pretend that his own mother was one
  aduouteresse which not with standing to farther this purpose he
  letted not: but Natheles he would the point should be lesse and
  more fauorably handled, not euen fully plain and directly, but
  that the matter should be touched a slope [indirectly]
  craftely, as though men spared in that point to speke al the
  trouth for fere of his displeasure.  But the other point
  concerning the bastardy that they deuised to surmise in king
  Edwards children, that wold he should be openly declared and
  inforsed [stressed] to the vttermost.  (CW 2: 59/18--35; Hall 365)

9.  Shakespeare's most brilliant addition in this regard is the figure
of Queen Margaret.  The most obvious prototypes for her that Shakespeare
could have drawn on, are the cursing and wailing women of Senecan
tragedy such as Medea, Cassandra and Hecuba.  She is an obvious
embodiment of the Jungian archetype of the Terrible Mother (Neumann,
149--83), and, as such, has definite resemblences to the wicked
step-mothers of traditional folk-lore and fairy-tales.[16]  As a
witch-like or hag-like figure she definitely most closely related to the
figures in Macbeth of Hecate and the three witches and Lady Macbeth
herself and, perhaps, also to Regan and Goneril, the wicked daughters in
King Lear. Such is Shakespeare's dramatic skill that at first we
sympathize with Richard in his encounters with Margaret.  But, as the
play progresses, we are gradually prepared for the climactic scene in
Act IV, scene iv, where the Duchess of York, Richard's own flesh and
blood mother, joins with the 'wicked step-mother' in cursing her own
son.  (The doubling of an archetypal motif is a very common theme in
fairy-tales.  Richard III is in a sense doubly damned --- by both the
real and the 'archetypal' mothers.)

10.  Just as there are two mother figures in the play, so also are there
two wives: the Lady Anne, his own wife and Queen Elizabeth, his
sister-in-law.  Richard's relationship with them is every bit as
destructive as that with the two 'mother figures' in the play, though
they are not paired in the same way.  Richard commits against them the
two worst crimes that a man can commit against a woman: the violation of
the woman herself, and the destruction of her offspring.  Before the
play begins Richard has alr murdered Lady Anne's father-in-law (Henry
VI) and her husband (Prince Edward, son of Henry VI).  Nevertheless, he
then proceeds to woo her in one of the most bizarre courting scenes in
any Shakespeare play:

  Was ever woman in this humour woo'd?
  Was ever woman in this humour won?
  I'll have her, but I will not keep her long.
  What, I that kill'd her husband and his father:
  To take her in her heart's extremest hate,
  With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,
  The bleeding witness of her hatred by,
  Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me...  (I, ii, 232--39)

Again, such is Shakespeare's skill in manipulating his audience that we
tend to identify with Richard's success and despise Anne for being so
weak and gullible.  Only later on in the play does she acquire a certain
dignity, if not strength of character, and we feel very differently
about her in Act IV, scene iv when Richard arranges to have her
murdered.  It is interesting that for all of Richard's apparent success
as a wooer there is more than a suggestion that he is unable to
satisfactorily fulfill his marital 'duties':

  For never yet one hour in his bed
  Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep,
  But with his timorous dreams was still awak'd (IV, i, 84--86).[17]

Presumably, Anne would have slept more soundly if Richard had shown her
the normal tendernesses that go with married life.

11.  Lady Anne seems to be almost entirely Shakespeare's creation; the
historical Anne seems to have been quite happy with Richard, though
there were rumours that he had killed her (Ross 1981: 26--30).  If
Richard's treatment of Anne introduces the theme of uxoricide, then his
treatment of Queen Elizabeth introduces the other major themes of
infanticide and incest.  Queen Elizabeth figures prominently in More's
account; but her role is somewhat obscured in Shakespeare's play by the
introduction of the other male characters: Lady Anne, Queen Margaret and
the Duchess of York.  In More's account, it is true she is paired with
Mistress Shore, ironically, since there was no love lost between them.
However, the two women embody two different aspects of the Eternal
Feminine: Queen Elizabeth as wife and mother, and Mistress Shore as
companion and mistress.  Through his favorable descriptions of the
repentance and life of Mistress Shore (CW 2: 54--57; Hall 363--64), and
his retrospective description of Edward IV's courtship of Lady
Elizabeth Gray (CW 2: 60--66; Hall 365--67), More not only humanizes the
memory of the dead king, glossing over the darker, more predatory
aspects of his dissolute lifestyle,[18]  he also by contrast degrades
the character of Richard into the archetypal Bluebeard figure, the woman
hater and lady-killer.

12.  It is More who, more than anyone else, seems to have invented the
charges of sorcery and witchcraft against the queen and Mistress Shore:
"ye shal al se in what wise that sorceres and that other witch of her
counsel shoris wife with their affinite [companions], haue by their
sorcery and witchcraft wasted my body" (CW 2: 48/7--9; Hall 360).
Shakespeare not only makes use of this in the famous council scene (III,
iv, 67--77), but also the charges of witchcraft in More's History of
King Richard III may have suggested to Shakespeare the possibility of
portraying Queen Margaret (in sharp contrast to her portrayal in the
Henry VI plays) as a 'witch'.

13.  One senses here Shakespeare's extremely fertile poetic imagination
running riot, responding to the many dramatic possibilities inherent in
More's text, that are so obviously lacking in the more chronicle-like
accounts in Holinshed and Hall for the reigns of other English kings.
It is not just Shakespeare's developing dramatic artistry, but also the
superiority of the source as literary and historical narrative, that
makes Richard III in many ways a much more successful play than the
three Henry VI plays.[19]

14.  More gives Queen Elizabeth an important role in the History; as
well as the description of her courtship by Edward, there is the
important exchange between her and the Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury
(CW 2: 34--42; Hall 355--58), in the course of which she grows in
dignity and respect in the eyes of the reader.  At this point she is
characterized primarily by her language; later, in the description of
her courtship by Edward we also see her character being revealed through
action.  In Shakespeare's play she paradoxically seems a much weaker
character, perhaps because so much dramatic energy has been tied up in
the two queen-mother figures.  She has the same kind of weakness of
character that we have already seen in Lady Anne.  Even after Richard
has murdered her two sons and she has greater reason to hate him than
even Anne, she succumbs to his incestuous wooing of the hand of her
daughter Elizabeth in Act IV, scene iv.  Though she herself has already
joined with Queen Margaret and the Duchess of York in cursing Richard,
she falls for the seductive offer of the empty joys of the position of
queen-mother in place of the role that she had formerly enjoyed as queen
and wife to Edward IV:

  If I did take the kingdom from your sons,
  To make amends I'll give it to your daughter;
  If I have kill'd the issue of your womb,
  To quicken your increase, I will beget
  Mine issue of your blood upon your daughter.
  A grandam's name is little less in love
  Than is the doting title of a mother;
  They are as children but one step below;
  Even of your metal, of your very blood;
  Of all one pain, save for a night of groans
  Endur'd of her, for whom you bid like sorrow...
  Again shall you be mother to a king,
  And all the ruins of distressful times
  Repair'd with double riches of content.  (IV, iv, 294--304, 317--19)

To all the crimes that Richard has already committed he is willing to
add one more, incest, and Queen Elizabeth seems reluctantly to agree to
the match; though we find out later that she has been in secret
communication with Richmond.  There is an element of desperation,
however, in his wooing: "Without her follows to myself, and thee, /
Herself, the land, and many a Christian soul, / Death, desolation, ruin,
and decay" (IV, iv, 407--09).  Under Richard's rule England has become a
veritable Waste Land, and hopes by marrying the Princess Elizabeth to
restore the fertility of the land and its people.  But as an embodiment
of destructive male sexuality, that cannot be until Richard himself has
been destroyed.  Not only has Lady Anne cursed Richard's offspring and
unwittingly also herself early in the play:

  If ever he have child, abortive be it:
  Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,
  Whose ugly and unnatural aspect
  May fright the hopeful mother at the view,
  And that be heir to his unhappiness.
  If ever he have wife, let her be made
  More miserable by the death of him
  Than I am made by my young lord, and thee.  (I, ii, 21--28)

but his own mother also wishes she had destroyed him in her womb:

K. Rich.
  Who intercepts me in my expedition?
Duch.
  O, she that might have intercepted thee---
  By strangling thee in her accursed womb---
  From all the slaughter, wretch, that thou hast done. (IV, iv, 136--39)[20]

15.  It is More again who introduces the motif of Richard as the wild
boar, which though based on his heraldic shield,[21]  is also clearly
symbolic:

  For the self night next before his death, the lord Standley
  sent a trustie secret messenger vnto him [Lord Hastings] at
  midnight in al the hast, requiring hym to rise and ryde away
  with hym, for he was disposed vtterly no lenger to bide: he had
  so fereful a dreme, in which him thoughte that a bore with his
  tuskes so raced [slashed] them both bi the heddes, that the
  blood ranne aboute both their shoulders.  And forasmuch as the
  protectour gaue the bore for his cognisaunce [coat of arms],
  this dreme made so fereful an impression in his hart, that he was
  throughly determined no lenger to tary, but had his horse redy,
  if the lord Hastinges wold go with him to ride so far yet the
  same night, that thei shold be out of danger ere dai.  (CW 2:
  49/29--50/9; Hall 360--61)[22]

Richard is the wild boar who has gored the loins of England:

  The wretched, bloody and usurping boar,
  That spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful vines,
  Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough
  In your embowell'd bosoms---this foul swine
  Is now even in the centre of this isle...  (V, ii, 7--11)

Richard III is the Terrible Son of the Terrible Mother, a figure often
symbolized in fairy-tales and myths by the wild boar.[23]  In the myth
of Adonis, for instance, which Shakespeare treated in Venus and Adonis
in serio-comic fashion almost contemporaneously with Tragedy of King
Richard the Third, Adonis is slain by being gored in the thighs by a
wild boar (ll.1105--1116).[24]  Richard is the wild boar who is goring
the English Adonis, and thus in turn causing the 'sterility' of the
land.

16.  It is fitting then that after the battle scene in which Richard is
killed, which in the BBC production at least was turned into a ritual
hunting of the boar,[25]  that the play should end with the promise of
marriage between Richmond and Elizabeth, and with a prayer for the
healing and regeneration of the land and of its people:

  O now let Richmond and Elizabeth,
  The true succeeders of each royal House,
  By God's fair ordinance conjoin together,
  And let their heirs, God, if Thy will be so,
  Enrich the time to come with smooth-fac'd peace,
  With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days.
  Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord,
  That would reduce these bloody days again,
  And make poor England weep in streams of blood.
  Let them not live to taste this land's increase,
  That would with treason wound this fair land's peace.
  Now civil wounds are stopp'd; peace lives again.
  That she may long live here, God say Amen.  (V, v, 29--41)

Thus the play finishes not only by bringing an end to all the previous
political conflicts of the Wars of the Roses, but also by bringing to an
end the terrible destruction of human relationships, especially between
the sexes and within the family, that have come to a climax dramatically
in the reign of Richard III.


Appendix: The Historical Sources for Shakespeare's Richard III

17.  Discussion of More's History is complicated by the fact that the
work exists in two different languages and that there are at least two
distinct versions in each language.[26]  More seems to have written both
the English and Latin versions simultaneously, composing some sections
in English first and then translating into Latin and other sections vice
versa.  Some passages are found only in one language and the order of
other passages is different in the Latin and English versions.
Furthermore, the account of the Latin text only goes as far as Richard's
Coronation, while the English contains a "Continuation" (CW 2:
82/8--93/25) which carries the narrative down to the revolt of
Buckingham where it breaks off suddenly almost in mid-sentence.

18.  The Historia Richardi Tertii was first published in 1565 in Louvain
as part of More's Latin Opera omnia.  However, the Historia also
circulated in manuscript form.  The discrepancies between the two Latin
versions were so great that Richard Silvester the editor of Volume 2 of
The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More (1963) was
forced to include both --- the 1565 edition on facing pages (with common
page numbering) together with the English text, and the manuscript
version in an "appendix" (96--149).  However, thanks to the fortuitous
discovery of a new superior Latin manuscript in Paris
(Bibliothèque nationale, MS fr. 4996 (Ancien fonds), MS lat.
8703), a critical edition of the Latin text based on the Paris
manuscript, edited by Daniel Kinney, was later published in 1986 as
Volume 15 of the Yale Edition together with a modern English translation
(314--485).[27]  Kinney argues persuasively that the Paris manuscript
represents the "final" form in either Latin or English of More's
unfinished history and that the Latin version is essentially complete
(CW 15: cxxxvi and Kinney 1997: 35--36, n.1).  Kinney's edition, which
supercedes Sylvester's, is indispensible for any modern scholars wishing
to study More's history. However, if Shakespeare did consult More's
Latin text, it would have been in the form of the 1565 edition, as
edited by Sylvester.  One contemporary dramatist who certainly did was
Ben Jonson.  While, Jon son's Richard Crookback has been lost, his copy
of More's Opera omnia survives and his annotations to More's text have
been carefully analysed by J. C. Evans (97--132).

19.  The English version was first published anonymously in the prose
continuation of Richard Grafton's two editions of John Hardyng's verse
Chronicle (1543), and again in 1548 and 1550 in Grafton's editions of
Edward Hall's Chronicle, where this time More's authorship was
acknowledged.  A substantially different version of the English text was
published by More's nephew, William Rastell, in The Workes of Sir Thomas
More Knyght in 1557 together with the following note:

  The history of king Richard the thirde (vnfinished) writen by
  Master Thomas More than one of the vndersheriffis of London:
  about the yeare of our Lorde .1513. printed, in hardynges
  Cronicle, and in Hallys Cronicle: but very muche corrupte in
  many places, sometyme hauyng lesse, and sometime hauing more,
  and altered in wordes and whole sentences: muche varying fro
  the copie of his own hand, by which thys is printed. (CW 2: 1)

Rastell himself made some important additions to the English text,
translating three long passages from the Latin Historia, which are not
found in the Hardyng-Hall version.  However, the additions are clearly
marked as such in the marginal notes.[28]  Sylvester's critical edition
of the English version in CW 2 is based on the 1557 text, but gives all
the variants from the Hardyng-Hall editions in the apparatus.  (The
later Elizabethan historical accounts of Richard III's reign, including
Grafton's Great Chronicle (1569), Holinshed and Stow, all reprint More's
History verbatim from Rastell's 1557 edition.)  Sylvester thought the
Hardyng-Hall editions were derived from a corrupt version of the English
text; however, it has been argued recently that they arose as the result
of a deliberate "revision" of More's text, probably by Richard Grafton
perhaps with help from Edward Hall (Womersley 272--290; Devereux 37--38).

20.  The two most important changes that Grafton made were to the
introduction to More's English history (CW 2: 3/1--13/31) and to the
beginning of the "English Continuation".  The introductory materials
were completely rearranged in the Hardyng-Hall editions (CW 2:
xxv--xxvi; Hardyng 467--475).  In Hall this corresponds to the beginning
of "The Pitiful Life of Kyng Edward the V" (342--347).  However, since
the order of materials in the 1557 edition corresponds almost exactly to
order of the Latin, there is no doubt about which is the correct order.
Thereafter, the Hardyng-Hall editions follow the same order as the 1557
edition until Richard's Coronation (CW 2: 13/31--81/10, Hardyng
475--515; Hall 347--374).  In place of the brief perfunctory account of
Richard's Coronation, translated by Rastell from More's Latin (CW 2:
81/11--82/12), Grafton at this point in his "revision" of More's text
added an account of Richard's Coronation to Hardyng's Chronicle taken
from a entirely different source.[29]  He then resumed with the
"English Continuation" of More's History (Hardyng 518--525).  For the
remainder of Richard's reign from the point where More's English history
breaks off, Grafton translated Polydore Vergil's Anglica Historia
(Hardyng 525--548; Vergil 194--227).[30]

21.  At the point corresponding to Richard's coronation, Hall in his
turn inserted the title "The Tragical Doynges of Kyng Richard The
Thyrde", together with a short introductory paragraph (Hall 374).  He
then followed the account of Richard's Coronation in Hardyng's Chronicle
almost word for word (Hardyng 515--518; Hall 375--376), and after that
resumed following More's "English Continuation" in the version found in
Hardyng's Chronicle (CW 2: 82/13--87/21; Hardyng 518--522; Hall
377--379).  However in the middle of More's "English Continuation", he
opened a new seam and inserted an account of the first year of Richard's
reign translated from Polydore Vergil (Hall 379--381; Vergil 188--192).
After this, he inserted the heading "The II. Yere" and continued on
with the remainder of More's "English Continuation" in Grafton's version
(CW 2: 87/22--93/25; Hardyng 522--525; Hall 381--384).  Hall then rather
tediously continued on the conversation between the Bishop of Ely and
the Duke of Buckingham for several more pages of free composition
after More's account breaks off (Hall 384--390).  At this point for the
remainder of the "Second Year" and the first part of the "Third Year",
Hall translated from Polydore Vergil with minor additions (Hall
390--398; Vergil 194--204).  Then he opened another seam, this time in
Polydore Vergil's text and inserted in the text of the "Third Year", an
account of a treaty negotiated with King James III of Scotland (Hall
398--402).[31]  The remainder of Hall's count is translated or
plagiarized with minor additions out of Polydore Vergil (Hall 402-414,
418-421; Vergil 205--227), with the exception of the speeches by Richard
III and Richmond before the Battle of Bosworth (Hall 414--418), which
are Hall's free compositions.


NOTES

1 -- For Shakespeare's use of Seneca, see A.  Hammond, ed., King Richard
III (80--82), and H.  F.  Brooks (721--37).  There are also many Senecan
allusions in More's History, see CW 2: liv n.2, 192, 212, 218 and CW 15:
517, 600, 608--609, 611--616, 618--625.  At one point, Shakespeare (II,
iii, 41--44 and Hammond's note) actually took over a Senecan allusion
directly from More, see CW 15: 400/23--402/4 (n.  on p.620) and CW 2:
44/22--23 (nn.  on p.212 and p.liv).
2 -- In this paper, I have silently expanded the abbreviations in the
Yale edition of More's history for "the", "that", "with" and the
ampersand.
3 -- This prophecy is found in the historical sources, including John
Rous's Historia Regum Angliae (215; cf.  Hanham 121), Polydore Vergil
(167), and the Grafton-Hall version of More's History (CW 2: 58/2
apparatus; Hall 364).
4 -- Dominic Mancini, an Italian humanist in the service of Angelo Cato,
the Bishop of Vienne, visited England for three months in 1483, and
wrote his account of Richard's usurpation after his return to France,
probably in December 1483.  The single surviving manuscript (Lille,
Bibliothèque municipale, MS. Fonds Godefroy, 129) was edited by
C. A. J. Armstrong for the first time in 1936 (2nd rev. ed. 1969).
Mancini was also probably the source (cf. Mancini 22--23) for the French
Chancellor Guillaume de Richefort's denunciation of the murder of the
English princes in January 1484 --- "an amazing outburst for an official
allocution" (ibid., 22 and n.3) --- see also translation in R. A. Myers,
ed., EHD 4: no. 205(i), p.337.
5 -- See Pronay, N., and J.  Cox, eds., The Crowland Chronicle
Continuations: 1459--1486 (143--147) and excerpt in R. A. Myers,
ed., EHD 4: no. 199(i)--(ii), pp.328--329.  (For an online text
based on H. T. Riley's translation (1854), see
.  The "Second
Continuation" of the Croyland or Crowland Chronicle is really a
"political memoir" written in April 1486, either by John Russell, Bishop
of Lincoln, Richard III's former Chancellor (cf.  CW 2: pp.lxxii, 25 n.
on p.191), who was visiting Crowland Abbey at the time, or by a member
of his entourage who had served as a senior Chancery Clerk during
Richard's reign (Pronay and Cox, 78--99).  The Crowland Chronicle was
not published until 1684, but the manuscript was used by George Buck in
his History of King Richard the Third (1616). Polydore Vergil (167--168)
also blames Edward for Clarence's death.
6 -- The whole of the "scrivener" scene (Act III, ii, 1--14), for
example, is based on CW 2: 54/2--13 and CW 15: 422/13--26 (cf.  CW 2: n.
on p.228).  In the Latin, More even quotes a line from Terence's Andria
(476): "You have not spaced these episodes very well, Davus."
7 -- The entirety of Buckingham's speeches to the London Guildhall in
More (CW 2: 69/1--77/6; CW 15: 454/13--474/2) is reported by Buckingham
to Richard in about 40 lines (Act III, vii, 1--41).
8 -- Several other early historical sources blame Richard for the death
of Henry VI, though some also state that Edward IV ordered it, see
Polydore Vergil (155--156), CW 2: 168--169, n.  to 8/13--14; CW 15: 610,
n.  to 324/20--26; and Charles Ross (1974: 175; 1981: 22).  However,
none of the historical sources blame Richard for the death of Henry VI's
son, Prince Edward.
9 -- For treatments of Richard's misogyny in Shakespeare's play, see
Levine (12--27) and Rackin (1993: 47--65).  For More's treatment of
Queen Elizabeth and Mistress Shore, see Khanna (1977: 35--51) and
Shepard (311--328).
10 -- The Tragedy of Richard III, dir.  Jane Howell, prod.  Shaun
Sutton, BBC Enterprises, 1983.
11 -- She died on the 25th August 1482 in France, where she had been
living since 1476, see Charles Ross (1974: 237--38).
12 -- Rous's history was written before his death in 1491, but not
published until 1716.  For Rous's account of Richard III, see Historiae
Regum Angliae (212--219).  For an English translation, see A. Hanham
(118--124).  Besides Richard's monstrous birth, Rous was the first
historian to suggest that Richard had poisoned his wife Queen Anne --- a
charge repeated by Polydore Vergil (211--212).  See also n.3 above.
13 -- Richard's "deformity" is not found in Mancini, the Crowland
Cronicle or Polydore Vergil, nor is Richard obviously deformed in his
early portraits (Ross 1981: Frontispiece).  Though by Shakespeare's time
Richard's deformity was an integral part of the "Black Legend" and
Shakespeare assumes it as a given right from the start of the play (I,
i, 27), it seems to have been almost entirely the creation of More's
history.  If Richard was in fact "deformed", it must have been quite
slight, see E. W. Jones (211--227).  For a recent discussion of
Shakespeare's treatment of this theme, see Marjorie Gerber (1988:
79--103).
14 -- See also IV, iv, 168--175.
15 -- But see also Mancini, p.  95.
16 -- See S.  Birkhauser-Oeri (26--40, 57--60, 95--106).  See also M.-L.
Franz, An Introduction to the Interpretation of Fairy Tales (Zurich:
Spring Publications, 1973), for a Jungian approach to the interpretation
of fairy tales.
17 -- See also V, iii, 160--64.
18 -- See Mancini (67) and Buckingham's speech in CW 2: 69--72.
19 -- See Joseph Candido (137--41), for the ways in which Skakespeare's
play was shaped by his historical sources.  Candido suggests the the
change in Richard's character in Shakespeare's play after Act III, is
due partly to a switch in underlying sources in Hall from More to
Polydore Vergil.
20 -- Compare this with Margaret's curse "Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive,
rooting hog", see I, iii, 228--232.
21 -- Richard's heraldic device of the White Boar or "blaunche senglier"
was probably a punning allusion to the House of York (Latin: Ebor-acum),
see Kinney (48, n.20).
22 -- See III, ii, 1--34.  For a Jungian interpretation of the symbolism
of the wild boar (and its relationship with the Archetype of the
Terrible Mother), see John Layard (1955/56: 7--31; 1975: 71--94) and
Erich Neumann (168--170).
23 -- For the use that Shakespeare makes of this motif, see III, ii,
9--13, 25--32, 71--72; III, v, 82--83.
24 -- For the image of the boar as usurper, see A.  T.  Hatto (353--61).
For more recent discussions of the boar, see articles by Roy J.  Booth,
François Laroque and James Schiffer in Q/W/E/R/T/Y 8 (1998): 92,
98--99, 122.
25 -- In the Arthurian legend, "Culwich and Olwen", Arthur hunts and
conquers the great man-boar Twrch Trwyth (Layard 1975: 156--174).
(Because of his Welsh blood, Henry VII later liked to associate himself
with the legend of King Arthur, even to the extent of naming his eldest
son after him.) Though there is no evidence Shakespeare knew this
particular story about King Arthur, in Jane Howell's BBC production,
Richmond clearly becomes Arthur redivivus hunting and slaying the
man-boar Richard.  The comparison of the battle of Bosworth Field to a
boar hunt is made explicitly in a poem by Henry VII's poet laureate and
court historian Bernard André, "the blind poet of Toulouse".  In
Les Douze Triomphes de Henry VII (1497), Richmond's slaying of Richard
III is compared to Meleager's hunting of the Calydonian Boar (Gairdner
138--139, 312--313; cf. Ovid Met. VIII: 329--444).
26 -- For the relationship between the different texts, see CW 2:
xvii--lix and CW 15: cxxxiii--cliv.  For a summary, see the discussion
of "Textual History and Authorship" in the chapter on Richard III in my
Ph.D thesis .
27 -- Kinney, perhaps wisely, refuses to speculate on the provenance of
the Paris Manuscript (cf. CW 15 cxxxiv, n.1).  In my thesis (pp.40-41
and n.31), I hazarded a guess and suggested that it was sent by More as
a gift to a major continental humanist, such as Guillaume Budé or
Erasmus.  There is a good case for Budé, since like More he had a
strong interest in history and corresponded with More over a number of
years. He wrote an important preface to the Paris, 1517 edition of Utopia.
More was so grateful that he sent him a pair of hunting dogs as a gift.
Besides the hunting dogs, he may also have sent him the Paris Manuscript.
They also met in person at the "Field of the Cloth of Gold" in 1520.
28 -- The three additions are: CW 2: 39/7--24, 42/24--44/18,
81/11--82/12; translating CW 15: 388/28--390/10, 396/21--400/18,
482/25--484/25.  Each insertion is marked with a ‡ and a *, and
each with the gloss: "This that is here betwene this marke, ‡
and this marke * was not written by M.  More in this history written by
him in englishe but is translated oute of this history which he wrote in
laten" (CW 2, gloss, 39/6--12).
29 -- The manuscript accounts of Richard's Coronation have been edited
by Sutton and Hammond (270--282).  A somewhat fuller account of the
Coronation than in Hardying or Hall was also included in Grafton's Great
Chronicle (1569) and in Holinshed (1577), see Sutton and Hammond
(259--260 and nos.  16--17, pp.  266--267) for the relationship between
the manuscripts and the printed versions.
30 -- A modern-spelling text (based on Ellis's edition) of Grafton's
"Continuation" of More's History to the end of Richard III's reign can
be found in Kendall's Richard III: The Great Debate (112--143).  Both
Grafton and Hall used the first edition of Polydore Vergil's Anglica
Historia (1534).  For convenience I have cited the corresponding
passages in the early 16th-century translation of Vergil, which is based
on the second edition (1546).
31 -- The treaty is incorrectly placed in Hall, since it was negotiated
in September 1484 in the second year of Richard's reign (Ross 1981:
193).  The Latin text of the treaty has been edited (Rymer XII:
236--242).  There are significant differences between the Latin and the
English versions.  Hall seems to be using an English manuscript here
rather than translating from the Latin.


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