A Westcountry literary expert has predicted the discovery of the body of King Richard III will not remove the mystery from one of Shakespeare's finest plays.
The University of Exeter's professor of renaissance literature, Philip Schwyzer, has been working on the text – Shakespeare and the Remains of Richard III – for the past five years.
Just weeks before his final deadline, the academic has been forced to make crucial amendments following confirmation on last week that the remains found under a Leicester car park belong to the infamous king.
And he has the difficult task of trying to convince everyone he crafted the title before the skeleton was unearthed by archaeologists last summer.
Professor Schwyzer, who has been a lecturer at the Russell Group institution since 2001, admitted he was "amazed" by the discovery of the king whose existence has historically been shrouded in mystery.
He said: "The discovery of his body uncovers the mystery of his deformity – he had a severely curved spine, but not the 'monstrous hunchback' we read about in the play.
"Shakespeare focused on and very much exaggerated his deformed nature. He freely reinvents his own version of Richard, describing him as a man who looked so hideous no one could ever love him. That gives way to his ambition and villainy. Shakespeare played his part in turning Richard III into a victim of Tudor propaganda."
But Professor Schwyzer stressed other mysteries of the play are far from solved.
"The fact that we now know of Richard III's final resting place is only a piece in that puzzle. We don't know about his motivation, his crimes or his psychological state," he said.
King Richard III was a man revered and vilified as a visionary reformer and ruthless murderer of his family members. Today the monarch is famous for his death at the Battle of Bosworth, which effectively ended the Wars of the Roses.
Professor Schwyzer said: "Shakespeare was possibly hinting at the audience to address those unanswered questions left at the end of the play. Unconventionally he leaves the dead body on stage. The king is just left there with no indication of where his body will be laid to rest.
"In a recent adaptation where Kevin Spacey played Richard, the character was winched up on his heels in a form of inverted crucifixion. It's a body no one knows what to do with."
Professor Schwyzer admitted he would need to make "a few last-minute changes" to his book before its release later this year.
He said: "I'll need to change a few maybes to definitelys."
