Meet the real Richard III
“No one who knew the princes said Richard killed them.”
I was first fascinated by the seeming injustice done to Richard III when I read at age 13 Josephine Tey’s novel The Daughter of Time. This view was compounded by my inspirational History teacher Mrs Margaret Chamberlain at Perse School for Girls in Cambridge. So any drama about Richard III will draw me there for sure.
This show starts with multiple voices reciting the famous first lines of Shakespeare’s tragedy, “Now is the winter of our discontent . . .” A man in a black cloak (Andrew Slade) reveals himself in Plantagenet dress. He proceeds with a show that is as intelligent as a lecture but as entertaining as a character acting a well drawn role.
Andrew Slade has written and performs this stirring show with aplomb. He inserts acting lines from Shakespeare’s Richard III by contrast, the Tudor based villain to his reasonable personification.
He first explains the contemporary view on Richard of Gloucester’s reputation as trusted guardian of his brother King Edward IV’s two sons and well respected and fair ruler of the north of England. He tells us how Edward’s second wife Elizabeth Woodville also trusted her brother in law.
Richard’s role in changing laws like instigating standardised weights and measures which remained for five hundred years until they were all confused by the EU! Richard’s Court of Requests allowed the Poor to petition for fairness and allowed widows who had formerly lost their homes on the death of their husband, to remain.
The 50 minute performance is superb as he examines and explains the amount of historical evidence that was written years after the death of Richard at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Small details like the staircase in the Tower of London being built years after the supposed death of the princes in 1483. Evidence produced in the reign of Henry VII the Tudor with a very faint claim to the English throne exacerbated by the writing of Sir Thomas More and William Shakespeare.
Something I didn’t know is an example of Henry Tudor’s ruthlessness: he pre-dated his reign to before Richard’s death at Bosworth making all that fought for Richard traitors and sentencing them to a cruel death.
It is amazing, is it not, that more than half a millennium after these cold case events, Richard’s body was found by the efforts of historical researcher Philippa Langley, in Leicester in the car park, once the site of the Greyfriars Friary, unforgettably under the painted letter R?
No body said the princes were dead in Richard’s reign and they had been illegitimised by Parliament on the discovery of Edward IV’s first marriage to Lady Eleanor Butler (née Talbot).
Andrew Slade is the perfect and passionate advocate for Richard and everyone wanted to talk to him after the show, which I sincerely hope to see again. Theatrevibe, the site that doesn’t do stars, awards 1 King, 2 Princes five shining stars. This show was deservedly sold out by the day I saw it but hopefully it may return. The Daughter of Time showed in London until 13th August.
Slade Wolfe Enterprises have other Edinburgh shows this year.
Production Notes
1 King, 2 Princes and Shakespeare’s Lie
Written and performed by Andrew Slade
Cast
Starring:
Andrew Slade
Creatives
A Slade Wolfe Production
Information
Running Time: 50 minutes
Booking to 22nd August 2025
Address:
Annexe at theSpace @ Symposium Hall
Off Hill Square,
Nicolson St,
Edinburgh
EH8 9DW
Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge at the
Annexe at theSpace @ Symposium Hall
at 2.10pm on Tuesday 12th August