Shakespeare’s Contained Subversion Towards Tudor Dynasty

As one of the greatest playwrights and poets in the world, William Shakespeare(1564-1616) has created numerous masterpieces, including ten histories. Among theten histories, Richard Ⅲis the last one of the first tetralogy, which believed to havebeen written in approximately1591. This play depicts the Machiavellian characterRichard Ⅲ, whose rise to power and subsequent short reign.This thesis is composed of three body chapters, except introduction andconclusion parts. Chapter one aims to present Shakespeare’s subversivereconstruction of history through his selection of different historical accounts aboutRichard Ⅲ. Before he created this play, there were various editions about the historyof Richard Ⅲ. Absorbing the extant sources and influenced by the socialcircumstances, Shakespeare balanced different kinds of power to reshape a totallynew Richard Ⅲand reconstructed that period of history. His depiction of Richard Ⅲis his subversion against Tudor dynasty, which has been contained by the dominantideology. Chapter two mainly probes into the relationships between this play and thesocial situation at that time. When this play was produced, Queen Elizabeth got intoher old age, and the legality issue and heir issue haunted the whole society of England.Bastard issue in this play is an insinuation of the illegitimacy of Tudor monarchs, inparticular Elizabeth. Chapter three discusses the subversive female characters inRichard Ⅲthrough which both Richard’s misogyny and Shakespeare’s contemptagainst women were represented. According to these three chapters, this thesispurports to make a study of Shakespeare’s contained subversion towards Tudordynasty, which, to some extent, helps to safeguard its reign.