Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 38

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Popular Culture Review

Richard was killed, and therefore Henry Tudor won. Some give figures of tens of
thousands of soldiers on the field, some only about 10 thousand for Richard, 7 or 8
thousand for Henry. Some have Richard’s men turning against him or fleeing from
the field; some have supporters like John Howard Duke of Norfolk, and Sir Richard
Brackenbury bravely battling to the death for their king (Ross 235-7, Kendall 5702). Bernard Andre, Henry VII’s court historian, scripts “The Earl of Richmond’s
greeting to England, and his second fitting exhortation to his followers,” and “The
raging speech of the tyrant to his men” before the Battle of Bosworth Field, but
refuses to give even the vaguest outline of the battle. “Although I have heard the
events of this battle told to me, still in this sort of thing the eye is a surer judge than
the ear. Therefore, lest I thoughtlessly assert anything as true, I am passing by the
day, the place, and the order of battle, because as I said I am blind. And in proportion
to such a warlike field of battle, until I am further instructed, I am also passing
over the spacious field of this white page” (Hobbins 55-9). He then leaves a page
and a half in his manuscript blank.
Hence, the detailed battle-plans given in history books (Ross 215-17, Kendall
428-44) may be no more accurate than the portrayals of stage-plays and movies —
a confused melee of soldiers, mostly on foot, which only collapses when it becomes
known that Richard has been killed. Ironically, this is where most of the movies
are quite “accurate” in staging history. Richard and Henry fighting on foot gives
movie-makers better camera angles and close-ups, but most descriptions of fifteenthcentury battles indicate they were mostly fought on foot (Delbriick 463-70). Most
historians’ descriptions of the Battle of Bosworth Field ultimately fall back upon
the description given by Polydore Vergil, arguing that it gives the most coherent,
well-researched, narrative (Ross 235-7, Kendall 570-2), though anti-Richard
historians are careful to point out Vergil’s short-comings as an historian, and proRichard historians abhor Vergil’s account on most other matters.
But Vergil’s account became the dominant one about Richard in the 16thcentury, and it, along with Hall’s and More’s portraits of Richard, formed the basis
for the popularized English history of Raphael Holinshead (Field 6-22, Ross xixliii). Hence we should not, as some of the more fervent Riccardians are wont to do,
accuse Shakespeare of “warping” the truth, he simply was dramatizing history as
he received it. He was staging what we today would term a docu-drama, based on
the most respected historical accounts of his day. To be sure, he takes some liberties
with his sources for dramatic purposes: time is compressed, Clarence was dispatched
10 years before Edward’s death, not as Shakespeare has it almost immediately
before; Richard was in Yorkshire when Edward IV died, Buckingham’s 1483
rebellion (Kendall 312-29) is telescoped into Richmond’s 1485 invasion (Kendall
428-44), but ۈH