Lees and Moonshine: Remembering Richard III, 1485–1635*
Abstract Not long after Shakespeare's birth in 1564, the last witnesses to the reign of Richard III (1483–85) would have reached the end of their lives. Richard III (ca. 1592) occupies a distinctive historical moment in relation to its subject, the period after the extinction of living memory, but still within the horizon of secondhand or communicative memory. This essay explores how memories and postmemories of Richard's reign were preserved, transmitted, and transformed over the course of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth. While registering the powerful influence of emerging contexts, including the Reformation and, ultimately, Shakespeare's play, these memories remained distinct from, and sometimes at odds with, textual history. They survived because they offered their bearers a resource for interpreting and resisting the predicaments of the present, from the problem of tyranny to the legacies of the Reformation.