ABSTRACT
Arguably the most eclectic of the popular media in the 1590s was the public theater; all sorts and conditions of persons frequented the playhouses. Like balladry, drama did not depend on literacy for transmission, and almost all social status-levels found the price affordable. As blasphemous as it may seem, people can quickly dispose of Shakespeare as a contributor to the Shore legend. She is mentioned in the play only in two scenes, the second of which more or less dramatizes the episode in More when the Protector accuses Hastings of conspiring with Shore and the Queen to wither his arm by means of witchcraft. The play opens with the dying King Edward attempting to reconcile the two factions in his court: the older nobility, represented by Hastings, and the upstart Woodvilles, represented by "Lord Marcus". Fortune is also a very important concept in this play; both Shore and Richard invoke it repeatedly.
