Richard III of England due to the fact that it helped to legitimise Henry VII's seizure of the throne. The Richard III Society contends that this means that 'a lot of what people thought they knew about Richard III was pretty much propaganda and myth building.' The Tudor characterisation culminated in the famous fictional portrayal of him in Shakespeare's play "Richard III" as a physically deformed, Machiavellian villain, ruthlessly committing numerous murders in order to claw his way to power; Shakespeare's intention perhaps being to use Richard III as a vehicle for creating his own Marlowesque protagonist. Rous himself, in his "History of the
The Troublesome Reign of King John Peter Ackroyd have defended the Shakespearean attribution. Candidates put forward for the author of "The Troublesome Reign" include Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, and George Peele, among others, alone or in various collaborative combinations; no scholarly consensus has been achieved. The main historical sources for "The Troublesome Reign" are thought to be the "Chronicles" of Raphael Holinshed and "Foxe's Book of Martyrs", and perhaps Richard Grafton's "Chronicle at Large", which recapitulates much of the material in John Foxe's book. The Troublesome Reign of King John The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England, commonly called The Troublesome Reign of