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
Ricardian (Richard III) Ricardian (Richard III) Ricardians are people interested in altering the posthumous reputation of Richard III, King of England (reigned 1483–1485). Richard III has long been portrayed unfavourably, most notably in William Shakespeare's play "Richard III", in which Richard is portrayed as having murdered his nephew, the crown prince of England, a 12 year old child at the time, in order to secure the English throne for himself. Ricardians have worked in an effort to turn this around and to paint this portrayal, and the many other related assertions that followed, as most probably false politically motivated accusations. Ricardians accept as