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Richard 3

Propaganda in Richard III

Napoleon famously remarked that history is written by the victors (qtd . in Keyes 90 . In this sense much of history is propaganda , when it is written in the context of the prevailing , and it to legitimize its rule . When history comes in the form of a play , then the possibility for propaganda is tremendously increased . In this sense Richard III by William Shakespeare must be called a propaganda play in express terms , for it makes use of dramatic license to manipulate history to the maximum possible extent . According to

the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary , propaganda is the systematic dissemination of information , esp , in a biased and misleading way in to promote a political cause or point of view . Shakespeare has clearly written the play in to legitimize the Tudor dynasty that ruled England at the time , and in the form of Queen Elizabeth . It can be demonstrated through many instances that he played loose with historical facts towards this end . We will consider three such examples from the play , after outlining the historical context for the propaganda

The first thing to note is that the claim of Henry Tudor to the English throne was a tenuous one . It was he who defeated and slew Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth Field to ascend to the throne in 1485 , and thereby beginning the Tudor dynasty . He was so slight a pretender that he was compelled to marry the daughter of the Yorkist king Edward IV immediately after coming to the throne , to bolster his royal credentials . This was only the first step , for the history of the Tudors shows that they were constantly in agitation in to prove themselves to the people , or to hold on to power . The nervous energy of the Tudors brought about great upheavals during their reign , among them the 1534 Act of Supremacy by Henry VIII , which severed England from Catholic hegemony and gave birth to the first great Protestant nation Propaganda was particularly an instrument in this regard . In 1506 Henry VII appointed the Italian scholar Polydore Vergil to compose an official account of the War of the Roses . This and Thomas More 's account of the exploits of Richard III becomes the basis of much of the misinformation that finds itself in the Shakespeare play (Cahn 353 . Though it is not an official instrument of the Elizabethan court , it is nevertheless a very early play by Shakespeare , which means that he needed to ingratiate himself with the court in to establish himself in the theatre . In this sense it has become a propaganda play only by proxy . The central point of this propaganda is that Richard III must be portrayed as unreservedly evil , so that Henry Tudor , and by his dint the Tudor dynasty , appear to be saviors of England . The primary audience of Shakespeare was therefore the Queen and her entourage , but he must also have had in mind the...

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