The Wars of the Roses (adaptation) IV", Hall wrote, "underlying these plays is the curse on the House of Lancaster. Bolingbroke deposed Richard II to become Henry IV. Richard II was a weak and sometimes a bad king, ungoverned, unbalanced; he could not order the body politic. Yet for Shakespeare, his deposition is a wound on the body politic, which festers through reign after reign, a sin which can only be expiated by blood-letting. The bloody totalitarianism of "Richard III" is the expiation of England." John Jowett argues the production very much reinforced the teleological assumptions upon which the Tudor myth is based; "it generated an
Richard III (play) he might have been slightly hunched, the degree and direction of the curvature was not as serious as that of a spinal kyphosis (or "hunchback"), and there were no other apparent deformities. Richard III (play) Richard III is a historical play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written around 1593. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of King Richard III of England. The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified as such. Occasionally, however, as in the quarto edition, it is termed a tragedy. "Richard III"