Playwright Bridget Foreman has been working with our Creative Director, Juliet Forster, and historical consultant, Philippa Langley, to develop ideas for a new play inspired by the legacy of Richard III. This ambitious new play has just been commissioned by York Theatre Royal and the Richard III Society for future production at York Theatre Royal.
When Richard III’s remains were discovered in a Leicester car park in 2012, the centuries-old debate around his supposedly murderous character was re-ignited. Amid all the clamorous opinion, his skeleton was a rare hard fact to emerge in a sea of rumour and misinformation.
Since that moment, the tide of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ has risen, and Richard’s reputation appears now to be not just a quirk of history, but a potent symbol for our times – one that questions our understanding of and relationship with truth.
Today’s global political landscape brings the smiling, villainous character of Shakespeare’s Richard very close. But might our growing understanding of the power of fake news impact our understanding of history? Might we now question the political engine that drove the creation of Shakespeare’s Richard? What part might the 17th century media have played? Why has the invented character of Richard been accepted as the ‘true’ one?
Maybe what Richard’s fate tells us is that today’s fake news is not tomorrow’s fish and chips paper: it endures, and it matters. The apparently ephemeral world of Elizabethan theatre has shaped our sense of history.
Set in the seedy, teeming world of 17th century London: the theatres, the publishers, the backstreets and bars. Ben Jonson’s satires on 17th century fake news are playing to packed houses; his publisher, John Trundle, churns out ‘bad quartos’ of Shakespeare’s plays, bastardising the texts, while at the same time coaching Shakespeare in the reverse alchemy of fake news: how to turn gold into muck, and how to make it stick. Sir George Buck, Master of Revels, defends Richard III privately while wrestling with his role in licensing contentious new political plays. In the midst of this riotous assembly, Richard himself takes his place at the heart of a play that tackles the centuries-long circus surrounding him and urges us to re-consider our assumptions.
