The CARPARK KING
Shakespeare has largely
shaped our understanding of King Richard III - and all the while the
real Richard lay entombed in a carpark
by Kate Mcluskie
King Richard III made his last royal tour last week. Until his
reinternment in Leicester Cathedral on March 26, the remains of the
infamous villain were paraded to the crowds as he journeyed around his
realm one last time.
But he wasn't the only Richard III would have cought sight of this
year. Benedict Cumberbatch has been spotted as his latest incarnation,
shooting for his role in the Hollow Crown, and there will be many others
- in July another Richard will be on the stage at London's Globe
Theatre.
If the Globe production retains the artistic choices used the last
time this version appeared, Richard will be "a physically imposing and
attractive protagonist ... a leader - bold charismatic, presidential".
He will also be Chinese; and he will be accompanied by three witches and
supported by murderers who engage in "house of the flying daggers"
acrobatics while speaking the Mandarin equivalent of Cockney.
This
production, from the National Theatre of China, is a ripple from the
enormous splash of theatrical invention and global investment that went
into the Shakespeare events of the Cultural Olympiad in 2012.
That global celebration of international Shakespeare also featured a
'feminist' Richard III from the RSC, giving due attention to the play's
powerful women and a bilingual Portuguese/English show from Rio de
Janiero that played wittily with the multiple critical and theatrical
possibilities that the play has inspired over the past century.
Man of many faces
All this is, perhaps, what Richard III means to us now. A figure that
largely springs from the words of Shakespeare, a Richard III no longer
contained by language, nationhood or history. Nor has he been since
adaptation of the plays began in the 18th century.
Writers, directors have created new Richards for every production.
The reason they can do so is because Shakespeare has made a character
who is gloriously inconsistent and changes his version of the truth to
suit his own purposes.
Shakespeare's Richard manages information, controls events and always
uses his physical deformity as both an excuse (he cannot prove a lover
and so will be a villain) and a tool (blaming the Kings's mistress Jane
Shore for his withered arm and then denouncing those who doubt the
connection). Of course this Richard III is not a representation of the
real historical figure: Shakespeare uses his story to reflect on the
very idea of using history for tyrannical purposes.
Tyrants before and since have used similar forms of misinformation
which had allowed other inventive writers and directors to create
Richards that are as close to Hitler, Nixon (another "Tricky Dick") or
Saddam Hussein as they are to the last Plantaganet king.
The carpark king
While all this inventive creativity was taking place, the "real"
Richard III lay entombed, latterly under a carpark, in Leicester.
His bones, identified by the University of Leicester archaeologists,
will finally be laid to rest, providing a "real" landmark.
The work involved in making this event feasible was begun by a
genealogist who established a family tree from Richard III to a known
descendant in the female line.
The female line is important since the mitochondrial DNA transmitted
in this way is not subject to contamination by undocumented illegitimacy
- what one archaeologist called "the mediaeval milkman".
The thesis created by this family tree was then tested and supported
by cartographers who identified the Greyfriars abbey burial site,
excavators who systematically dug the trenches, carbon data analysts who
established the dates of the remaining structure, a systems analyst who
could create programmes to crunch the huge quantity of data produced and
the osteologists who examined the bones of a "young male adult in the
east end of the church" and identified the adolescent scoliosis that had
afflicted his spine. The hump is not only not enough for archaeology:
actors have discovered that performing deformity in the theatre does not
in itself create convincing characterisation as Tony Hancock's vigorous
fusion of Laurence Olivier and Long John Silver showed. But there is
another connection between archaeology and theatre. When the Leicester
archaeologists told their fascinating story to a rapt audience at the
British Academy, they indicated, as Wolf Hall and its avatars have done
all winter, that the fascination with the connection between real and
fictional history is everywhere.
Stories of the past, whether they are stage performances or
regime-changing conflicts, have been turned into entertaining
experiences ever since the first enterprising inn-keepers offered tours
of Bosworth field or Shakespeare's birthplace to the passing trade.
Already the excitement of discovering the "real" Richard has taken on
a new incarnation at the Richard III visitor centre, which offers
visitors a chance to experience the legend of dynasty, death and
discovery in yet another new way.
(This article and
picture were originally published in The Conversation.) |