Shakespeare and the Remains of Richard III

This book explores how memories and traces of the reign of Richard III survived a century and more to influence the world and work of William Shakespeare. Although Richard and his era had passed beyond living memory before Shakespeare wrote Richard III, Elizabethan England still abounded with the remains and vestiges of his reign. These traces took the form of inherited memories and household articles, established institutions and popular practices, textsand tombs. Charting the fortunes of these pieces of the past over the course of the sixteenth century, Shakespeare and the Remains of Richard III offers a new approach to the cultural history of the Tudor era,whilst shedding fresh light on the sources and preoccupations of Shakespeare's play.