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 of England having Edward and his brother killed, notably by More and in Shakespeare's play, the facts surrounding their disappearance remain unknown. Other culprits have been suggested, including Buckingham and even Henry VII, although Richard remains a suspect. After the coronation ceremony, Richard and Anne set out on a royal progress to meet their subjects. During this journey through the country, the king and queen endowed King's College and Queens' College at Cambridge University and made grants to the church. Still feeling a strong bond with his northern estates, Richard later planned the establishment of a large chantry chapel in York Minster