Fictional Portrayals
- In the Divine Comedy, Dante sees Henry ("the king of simple life") sitting outside the gates of Purgatory with other contemporary European rulers. Unlike the other rulers, who neglected their spiritual welfare due to preoccupation with worldly concerns, Henry appears to have been relegated to Ante-Purgatory for neglecting his kingly duties out of an excess of religious piety.
- Henry is a prominent character in Sharon Kay Penman's historical novel Falls the Shadow; his portrayal is very close to most historical descriptions of him as weak and vacillating.
- Henry's Court is described in some detail in James Blish's historical novel concerning Roger Bacon, Doctor Mirabilis. Critical events of Henry's reign are well described, including the dismissal of Peter des Roches (after a politically loaded riddle by Roger Bacon is answered by Henry), the ejection of Poitevins from England, the conflict with Hubert de Burgh, the marriage of Eleanor with Simon de Montfort, and finally the accession of Henry's son, Edward I after the battle of Evesham. The imprisonment of Eleanor is lightly dealt with, and the story of her crown is turned to the advantage of Bacon, who is said to have received the crown as a gift to secure funding for the publishing of his last great book, Liber de retardatione, concerning old age and its amelioration though the sciences.
- Henry has been portrayed on screen only rarely. As a child he has been portrayed by Dora Senior in the 1899 silent short King John (1899), a version of John's death scene from Shakespeare's King John, and by Rusty Livingstone in the 1984 BBC Television Shakespeare version of the play.
Read more about this topic: Henry III Of England
Famous quotes containing the words fictional and/or portrayals:
“One of the proud joys of the man of letters—if that man of letters is an artist—is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world’s memory.”
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