Text of American Branch Press Release
in Response to New Film Version of Richard III

RICARDIANS GIRD THEMSELVES FOR ANOTHER SHAKESPEAREAN ONSLAUGHT
With the Release of Sir Ian McKellen's New Film, Richard III Society Campaigns to Clear King's Name

Edison, NJ (December 1, 1995) -- With the approaching release of a new film of Shakespeare's Richard III, starring Sir Ian McKellen, members of the American Branch of the Richard III Society are gearing up to undo the damage the movie will inflict upon the reputation of England's last medieval king, whose image has suffered for more than 400 years from being made the subject of one of William Shakespeare's most popular plays.

American Branch members are looking forward to seeing the film, and plan to attend wearing T-shirts that say "Ask Me About The Real Richard III." They will also mount public library exhibits and give talks about Richard III. At the same time, the American Branch is building a new section on its World Wide Web site to contrast the historical Richard III with Shakespeare's Richard. "A new film of Shakespeare's play gives us the long-overdue opportunity to dispel some of the myths immortalized by the world's greatest playwright," comments Montclair (NJ) State University professor emeritus of English and former American Branch chair Morris G. McGee. McKellen's film will be rolled out in a limited national release on December 22.

One of the most frequently performed of Shakespeare's plays, Richard III portrays Richard as a sinister hunchbacked monster with a withered arm who murders his way to the English throne. His victims include his brother, his wife, and his two young nephews. According to Tudor writers, Richard's brief two-year reign ended when his subjects, horrified by his tyranny, welcomed Henry Tudor (later crowned as Henry VII) as their savior. Tudor was the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth, England's reigning monarch at the time Shakespeare wrote the play.

"Shakespeare's Richard III was intended as the final play in a dramatic cycle beginning with Richard II, in which England's rightful king is deposed and murdered, causing retribution to be visited upon the kingdom in the form of civil war," explains Morris McGee. "The character of Richard in Richard III is the just deserts England gets for setting the whole process in motion. The play is great drama, but it never was intended as history."

The subject of debate since his death in 1485 at age 32, Richard III is far from being the sinister hunchbacked monster who killed his young nephews and usurped the throne." The historical records of Richard's time show that he was in fact an enlightened monarch who passed progressive laws, fostered learning, promoted the importation of books, started the system of bail and passed legislation to stop the intimidation of juries by powerful men," states American Branch Chairman A. Compton Reeves, professor of medieval history at Ohio University. According to the Richard III Society, the charges against Richard stem from Tudor writers who, in their efforts to justify a new king and dynasty, systematically blackened Richard III's reputation. Shakespeare unwittingly used these biased sources--the only ones available as long as the Tudors occupied the English throne--to immortalize propaganda as legend.

Even historians who are not partial to the revisionist portrait of Richard III reject the Shakespearean portrait of evil. Charles T. Wood, Daniel Webster Professor of History at Dartmouth College, sees the historical Richard as an incompetent caught in a situation far beyond his abilities. According to Wood, the story of Richard III is "...more a tragic story of all sorts of limited people out of their depth than it is one of evil and villainy."

So is nothing sacred? Historians say that even Richard's spectacular deformity is the stuff of legend. "In reality, Richard was quite normal looking," states Compton Reeves. "Richard was known as an accomplished soldier. He would not have been able to fight on horseback with heavy armor and weapons if he were Shakespeare's hunchback with a withered arm."

Time Magazine essayist Lance Morrow called this "The Richard III Effect." In a 1991 Time Magazine essay titled "When Artists Distort History," Morrow noted: "Shakespeare did what the playwright does: he turned history into a vivid, articulate, organized dream--repeatable nightly...The actual Richard went dimming into the past and vanished...Several centuries passed before other historians began to write about Richard's virtues and suggest that he may have been a victim of Tudor malice and what is the cleverest conspiracy of all: art."

The actors who play Richard would be among the first to agree. "Shakespeare's stage version of Richard has erased the history of the real king, who was, by comparison, a model of probity," wrote Sir Ian McKellen in the playbill for the Royal National Theatre's 1992 touring production of Richard III. Sir Laurence Olivier also drew a distinction between the historical and dramatic Richards, referring to his film as containing "the legend of Richard III" rather than historical fact. In a 1956 New York radio interview, Olivier stressed the differences between the historical and dramatic Richards: "There's no reason to suppose that he killed the babies in the Tower," Olivier said. "...[A]nd there's no reason to suppose that he had a hump on his shoulder, that he had a withered arm or anything...As I've tried to say in the preface to Richard III, it's a legend."

McKellen's film, which opens nationally in December, features Richard III as a 1930s gangster with fascist overtones. In 1992, the stage version of the play on which the film is based, an adaptation of Shakespeare's text by Richard Eyre, toured America for 16 weeks, to widespread critical acclaim and enthusiastic reviews.

"By setting his film in the 1930s, McKellen removes his Richard III from the medieval period," notes Morris McGee. "The character of the wicked king will seem more like a dramatic archetype than an actual historical person."

The Richard III Society was founded in England in 1924 as the Fellowship of the White Boar by Dr. Saxon Barton, a Liverpool physician. It was renamed the Richard III Society in 1959. Drawing its early membership from theatrical circles, the Society's American Branch included celebrated playwright Maxwell Anderson. The Society's 4,000 worldwide members (750 of whom are in the United States) are dedicated to achieving a reassessment of the life and times of Richard III. As part of its goal of promoting research into late fifteenth-century England, the Richard III Society funds the publication of books; sponsors sessions at the renowned International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI; holds annual meetings with lectures and workshops; publishes a scholarly journal; and awards scholarships to graduate students in late medieval English history. For membership information, write:

Richard III Society, Inc.
P. O. Box 13786
New Orleans LA 70185-3786