XVIII. RICHARD III. SHAKESPEARE derived his authority for the dramatic history of Richard III. from the life of that monarch written by Sir Thomas More; a biography well calculated for theatrical purposes; scarcely so for the sacred purposes of truthful history; for that in the person and character of the "crookbacked tyrant," the engine of party misrepresentation was urged to its greatest high-pressure power, few who have looked into the histories of the Tudor succession will be hardy enough to deny. It is neither my cue nor my inclination at this period to enter the dark labyrinth of the controversy respecting that signally bold usurpation, and to debate the plausibility of a single individual's attaining the power within the short lapse of a few months-of a few weeks, indeed, to compass the death of his own brother; of three noblemen, councillors of the successor to the crown; of the successor himself, with his brother; and lastly, of his own wife but I would simply observe, that to give credence to all that was written to blacken the memory of Richard for the purpose of confirming Richmond in the succession, the reader may afterwards, with like child-like faith, transfer his belief to the veritable history of King Bluebeard, or of any other royal ogre. It is a remarkable fact, as Walpole has asserted in his "Historic Doubts," that there is no proof at all of so dire an atrocity having been committed, as the murder of the young king and his brother in the Tower. Not their prison, as is generally supposed, from our associations with that building, from the uses to which it has since his time been appointed: but their residence, as was usual in that period, for the purposes of security as well as state; where they had their guards and their retinue, and where difficulty of accomplishing their assassination, by reason of all these combined circumstances, and without its transpiring by one vent or another, (the more especially as Brackenbury, the Governor of the Tower, and Tyrrel, the reputed murderer, were both living in the time of Henry VII., when confession and proof of the deed would have advanced the interests of all partiesboth its perpetrators and the deposer of the York dynasty;) the circumstance, I say, of there being no tangible clue to so extraordinary a series of treasons, treachery, and murder, should lead us to receive all history connected with the biography of its leading characters cautiously and sceptically. I do not mean to convey the idea that Richard III. was an estimable character, still less an immaculate one; but that all the accounts that have come down to us concerning him were written by political and temporising adversaries, even descending to the distortion of his body and limbs. Whereas, the celebrated Countess of Desmond, who survived to an extraordinary age, more than a hundred years, stated that she danced with him at the coronation of his brother, Edward IV., and that, with the exception of the king, he was the handsomest man at court, Edward being celebrated for his personal accomplishments. Now, making allowance, under the circumstances, for some partiality on the part of the Countess toward's a man of Richard's rank and station, to say nothing of his acknowledged courtly tongue, we cannot suppose him to |