In Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity, Jeffrey Wilson tracks disability over 500 years, from Richard’s own manuscripts, early Tudor propaganda, and x-rays of sixteenth-century paintings through Shakespeare’s soliloquies, into Samuel Johnson’s editorial notes, the first play produced by an African American Theater company, Freudian psychoanalysis, and the rise of disability theater. For Wilson, the changing meanings of disability created through shifting perspectives in Shakespeare’s plays prefigure a series of modern attempts to understand Richard’s body in different disciplinary contexts—from history and philosophy to sociology and medicine.

While theorizing a role for Shakespeare in the field of disability history, Wilson reveals how Richard III has become an index for some of modernity’s central concerns—the tension between appearance and reality, the conflict between individual will and external forces of nature and culture, the possibility of upward social mobility, and social interaction between self and other, including questions of discrimination, prejudice, hatred, oppression, power, and justice.

The book is published by Temple University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"A detailed and valuable performance history of Richard III and the play's relationship with disability." (Times Literary Supplement)

“This book makes a strong case for Richard’s centrality to disability studies and is a hugely enjoyable read.” (Essaka Joshua, University of Notre Dame)

“Erudite, original, and thoughtful...” (Sujata Iyengar, University of Georgia)