Rehabilitating Richard

We’ve gotten to know William Shakespeare’s Richard III pretty well by now. But who was the real Richard when he was at home? That question has been raising eyebrows and hackles for at least 400 years. Just after his violent death in August of 1485, the former Richard Plantagenet was immortalized by an influential priest and chronicler named John Rous. Much of the portrayal of Richard that we find in Shakespeare’s play can be traced to this source. He is said to have taken two years rather than the usual nine months to emerge from his mother’s womb, finally doing so “with teeth and hair to his shoulders.” He is described as a scuttling hunchback, who lived up to his star sign of Scorpio, in that “like a scorpion he combined a smooth front with a stinging tail.” Rous finds it thoroughly appropriate that he was king of England for three and a half years, the same period of time which the Book of Revelation prophesies for the earthly reign of the Antichrist. “And like the Antichrist to…