Recommendations
Books Like Richard III
Best books to read after Richard III by William Shakespeare
Readers who love Richard III are drawn to its combination of Shakespeare's most theatrical villain, Richard's virtuosic self-presentation and audience seduction, the play's political analysis of how evil succeeds through charm, and the question of whether Richard III killed the Princes in the Tower. They want works that deal with political villainy, the manipulation of power, and the long tradition of writers who have been drawn to Richard as a figure of fascination.
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The Daughter of Time
by Josephine Tey
The detective novel in which Inspector Grant investigates Richard III from a hospital bed — Tey's argument that Richard was innocent of killing the Princes is the founding text of the Ricardian tradition and one of the most important works of historical revisionism in English fiction.
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Wolf Hall
by Hilary Mantel
The Booker Prize-winning novel set in the Tudor court that Richard III's defeat created — Mantel's Thomas Cromwell inhabits the direct historical consequence of Bosworth Field; the most important modern novel set in the period that Richard III ends and the Tudors begin.
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Hamlet
by William Shakespeare
The tragedy that continues Richard III's examination of a murderous man haunted by his crimes — where Richard embraces his villainy theatrically, Hamlet is paralyzed by his; both plays are about the relationship between thought, action, and moral responsibility.
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Macbeth
by William Shakespeare
The companion tragedy of a man who commits murder to seize a crown — Macbeth and Richard III trace the same arc of ambition and destruction; Richard is more cheerfully evil and more self-aware, while Macbeth is more tortured, but both plays examine what political murder costs.
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The White Queen
by Philippa Gregory
The historical novel about Elizabeth Woodville, whose children Richard III placed in the Tower — Gregory's Cousins' War series gives the women's perspective on the Wars of the Roses that Richard III dramatizes; the most popular modern fiction set in exactly this historical world.
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Richard III
by Ian McKellen (film)
McKellen's 1995 film transposing the play to a 1930s fascist England — one of the great Shakespeare film adaptations; the contemporary military and political setting makes Richard's fascist appeal immediately visible and the play's concerns about charismatic authoritarian politics concrete.
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All the King's Men
by Robert Penn Warren
The American political novel most in the Richard III tradition — Warren's Willie Stark seizes political power through the same combination of charisma, intelligence, and contempt for ordinary rules that Richard uses; the most important American political novel in the Shakespearean tradition.
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A Man for All Seasons
by Robert Bolt
The play about Thomas More's execution by Henry VIII — the Tudor court Richard III's defeat created is the world where More is martyred; Bolt's More, who refuses to compromise principle, is the direct opposite of Richard's unprincipled pragmatism.
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