50 Fun Facts About Richard III

Which season 'of our discontent' does Richard declare over in the first line of Richard III?

Winter has turned to 'glorious summer', he says, by 'this sun of York': a pun on his brother Edward, the Yorkist king. Britain's strike-hit winter of 1978–79 took its nickname from the line.

What does the unhorsed Richard offer in exchange for a horse at the climax of Richard III?

His kingdom is the price he shouts twice, yet when an aide offers to help him flee he refuses to leave the field. He claims to have already killed five men dressed as his rival.

Beneath what kind of city-centre site was the real Richard III's skeleton found in 2012?

A car park had been laid over the vanished friary church where he was buried in 1485. The skeleton turned up on the very first day of the dig.

Unable to 'prove a lover', what does Richard say he is determined to prove as Richard III opens?

A villain is a part he chooses out loud, blaming a body 'rudely stamp'd' and unfit for courtship. By confiding in the audience he makes them his accomplices from the first minute.

In Richard III, hired murderers stab Richard's imprisoned brother and then drown him in what?

A butt of malmsey is a huge cask of sweet wine. Shakespeare did not invent the detail: soon after the real duke's private execution in 1478, a rumour spread that he had been drowned in one.

Which presidential assassin was a Shakespearean actor known for playing Richard III?

John Wilkes Booth played both the tyrant and his conqueror Richmond on stage. Abraham Lincoln, the president he shot, was renowned for his love of Shakespeare and of this play in particular.

In Richard III, the Earl of Richmond kills Richard at Bosworth and takes the throne as which king?

Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch, ends the play by vowing to marry Elizabeth of York and join the two feuding houses. Shakespeare was writing under that couple's granddaughter, Elizabeth I.

Which actor plays Richard as a 1930s fascist dictator in the 1995 film of Shakespeare's Richard III?

Ian McKellen also co-wrote the screenplay, which grew out of a hit stage production. His tyrant shouts the famous plea for a horse from a jeep stuck in rubble.

Richard III dramatises the final phase of which long conflict over the English crown?

The Wars of the Roses were known at the time simply as the Civil Wars. The modern name only became common in the 19th century, after an 1829 novel by Sir Walter Scott.

In Richard III, which widow does Richard woo beside the coffin of the king he murdered?

Lady Anne spits at him midway through the scene, yet ends it wearing his ring. Left alone, he gloats to the audience that he will have her but will not keep her long.

In Richard III, a prophecy that 'G' will disinherit the king's heirs sends which duke to the Tower?

Clarence is suspected because his first name is George. The real threat is the younger brother who planted the rumour and who now promises, all sympathy, to get him released.

Which actor directed himself as the scheming king in the 1955 film of Richard III?

Laurence Olivier was Oscar-nominated for the role. A 1956 American TV broadcast drew so many viewers that the British Film Institute said it may have popularised Shakespeare more than any other single work.

Which widow of a murdered Lancastrian king haunts the court in Richard III, cursing her enemies?

Queen Margaret has no business being there: the real woman was ransomed back to France in 1475 and spent the rest of her life abroad. Shakespeare returns her to court to voice the play's curses.

Which duke helps Richard to the crown in Richard III, then balks at murdering the princes?

Buckingham raises a revolt instead, but is captured and executed before the final battle. On the way to the block he recalls a false oath in which he once wished exactly this fate on himself.

In Richard III, which command do the ghosts of Richard's victims repeat to him before Bosworth?

Despair and die is the refrain as eleven ghosts visit in turn, each then blessing his sleeping rival. He wakes in a sweat, admitting that no creature loves him and no soul will pity his death.

In which English city was the real Richard III reburied in 2015 after a legal fight?

Leicester won because the dig's licence said any remains would be reburied in its cathedral. Campaigners who wanted York Minster instead took the fight to judges and lost.

Which tragedy is the only Shakespeare play longer than Richard III, his second-longest by word count?

Hamlet is the only one that outruns it. Richard III is so long that productions usually abridge it and drop minor characters altogether.

Which dukedom does Richard hold for the first three acts of Richard III, before he takes the crown?

Gloucester is what the script calls him until Act 4, when the speech headings switch to King Richard. The real man was given the title in 1461, the year his eldest brother first took the throne.

Which Hollywood star directed and starred in Looking for Richard, a 1996 documentary on Richard III?

Al Pacino plays both himself and the king, quizzing scholars, fellow actors and people on the street about why Shakespeare still matters. His first film as director, it won a Directors Guild of America award.

Which actor played Richard in The Hollow Crown and read a poem at the real king's 2015 reburial?

Benedict Cumberbatch is a distant relative of the king he was about to play. The poem he read at the service was written for the occasion by the then poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.

Which spinal condition did the real Richard III's skeleton show, rather than Shakespeare's hunchback?

Scoliosis bent his spine sideways and probably lifted his right shoulder above his left, but it would not have stopped an active life or produced what doctors call a hunchback.

The real Richard III was the last king of which dynasty, rulers of England for over three centuries?

The Plantagenets had ruled England since Henry II came to the throne in 1154. When the line ended at Bosworth, its last monarch also became the last English king to be killed in battle.

Which animal, Richard's heraldic badge, do his enemies turn into an insult throughout Richard III?

A boar, white on his banners, becomes a rooting hog and a foul swine in his enemies' mouths. His conqueror rallies the troops by picturing the beast swilling their blood like wash.

In Richard III, how do the hired killers say they murdered the two young princes in the Tower?

Smothered in bed is all the audience ever learns, because the killing happens offstage and is only reported. The two hardened thugs who did it are said to have wept like children in the telling.

In Richard III, what does Richard ask the Bishop of Ely to fetch from his garden mid-council?

Strawberries make the future king look relaxed and friendly. Minutes after the errand he returns in a rage, and one councillor is condemned to lose his head before dinner.

Which lord in Richard III laughs off a friend's ominous dream and is beheaded hours later?

Hastings is so sure of his standing that he gloats over his enemies' executions that very morning. Too late he recalls that his horse stumbled three times on the way to the Tower.

Before Bosworth in Richard III, what does Richard call 'but a word that cowards use'?

Conscience had him in a cold sweat hours earlier, when he woke from his nightmare calling it a coward that afflicted him. Now he tells his men that force is the only law.

In Richard III, the scripture-quoting Richard boasts he seems what 'when most I play the devil'?

A saint is the mask, stitched from what he calls old odd ends stolen out of holy writ. The masked avenger of V for Vendetta quotes the same speech while confronting a clergyman.

Which part of his body does Richard display in Richard III as proof he has been bewitched?

His arm, he says, has withered like a blasted sapling, and he blames the widowed queen and Mistress Shore. The charge is a trap: a lord who begins his reply with 'If' is sentenced to death on the spot.

Which statesman, later beheaded by Henry VIII, wrote the hostile history behind Richard III?

Thomas More never finished it. As a boy he was a page in the household of John Morton, who had joined a rebellion against the king and probably shaped his hostile view.

Which 'discontented gentleman' does Richard hire to have the princes killed in Richard III?

Sir James Tyrrel is recommended by a page as a man gold could tempt to anything. He hires two killers of his own and comes back shaken by what they tell him.

After his wife dies in Richard III, which relative does Richard set out to marry to secure his crown?

His niece is the young Elizabeth of York, whose two brothers he has just had killed. The widowed queen seems to give way, but the girl is soon promised to his rival instead.

Which relative lays her 'most heavy curse' on Richard in Richard III and never speaks to him again?

His mother, the Duchess of York, tells him he came on earth to make the earth her hell, then prays that his enemies win the coming battle. They are the last words she speaks in the play.

Which lord's son does Richard hold hostage in Richard III to stop the father joining Richmond?

Stanley is Richmond's stepfather, so he hangs back when summoned to fight. The order to behead his boy George is put off until after the battle, and the young hostage survives.

What does Richard hold as he appears between two churchmen in Richard III, feigning piety?

A prayer book is a prop suggested by his chief ally, who also coaches him to keep refusing the crown before he takes it. London's mayor is completely taken in.

Which American novelist took the title of his final novel from the first line of Richard III?

John Steinbeck published the book in 1961 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature the next year. Its hero is a Long Island grocery clerk who abandons his honesty to regain the family fortune.

Which Alistair MacLean thriller takes its title from a complaint Richard makes in Richard III?

Where Eagles Dare echoes his sneer that the world has grown so bad that wrens hunt in places the great birds dare not perch. It is a dig at the queen's newly ennobled relatives.

When Edward IV dies in Richard III, which office puts Richard in charge of the boy king?

Lord Protector meant governing for a twelve-year-old nephew who was never crowned. In real life the uncle took the throne himself within three months of his brother's death.

Kneeling to the widow he woos in Richard III, what does Richard hand her so she can kill him?

His sword is levelled at his bare chest before she lets it fall. He confesses to both killings while she aims, but insists it was her beauty that drove him to them.

In Richard III, who is young Prince Edward told began building the Tower of London?

Julius Caesar gets the credit in an old legend that the play repeats. The fortress was really founded more than a thousand years after his day, by William the Conqueror.

Which Shakespeare play comes just before Richard III and has Richard stab a captive king?

Henry VI, Part 3 ends with the Yorkists triumphant and their youngest brother already plotting. The 1955 film of the later play borrows scenes and speeches from it.

From which French duchy does the exiled Earl of Richmond sail to invade England in Richard III?

Brittany is why the king mocks the invaders as a scum of Bretons and overweening rags of France. Richmond's first fleet is scattered by a storm before he finally lands at Milford.

Which Josephine Tey novel has a bedridden detective decide Richard III never murdered his nephews?

The Daughter of Time topped the British Crime Writers' Association's 1990 list of the best crime novels ever written. Its title comes from an old proverb about truth.

Which 2022 film stars Sally Hawkins as the amateur historian who located Richard III's grave?

The Lost King was co-written by Steve Coogan, who also plays her ex-husband. The dead monarch keeps appearing to her as an apparition, played by Harry Lloyd.

Whose 1700 rewrite of Richard III, full of lines Shakespeare never wrote, held the stage for 150 years?

Colley Cibber played the lead in it himself until 1739. Shakespeare's own text did not return to the London stage until a production at Sadler's Wells in 1845.

Which star of Shakespeare's own company first played the title role in Richard III?

Burbage went on to create Othello, Macbeth and King Lear for the same company. He is widely considered one of the most famous men of his time.

Which earldom is Richard 'not in the giving vein' to grant his chief ally in Richard III?

Hereford is the promised price of his help, and he asks for it again and again while the new king pretends not to hear and asks the time. The snub turns a kingmaker into a rebel.

At which northern castle, where Richard II also died, are the queen's kinsmen executed in Richard III?

Pomfret, now called Pontefract, is where Rivers, Grey and Vaughan go to the block. On the way they recall that an earlier king was hacked to death inside the same walls.

Which horse does Richard order saddled for the battle of Bosworth in Shakespeare's Richard III?

White Surrey is named only once, on the eve of the fight. By the next day his horse has been killed under him and he is fighting on foot.

At which 1471 battle, recalled in Richard III, did the York brothers stab Prince Edward of Lancaster?

Tewkesbury all but ended the Lancastrian cause: the prince died there and his father was killed in the Tower soon after. The prince's ghost is the first to visit the sleeping king before Bosworth.