Jane Shore - Fiction

Fiction

In drama:

• She is a significant character in The True Tragedy of Richard III, an anonymous play written shortly before Shakespeare's Richard III. In the play she is reduced to destitution on the streets, ignored by both former lovers and people she had helped after Richard frightens citizens with severe punishments if she is supported in any way.
• "Mistress Shore" is frequently mentioned in William Shakespeare's play, Richard III. (She actually appears in Laurence Olivier's 1955 film version, played by Pamela Brown - she has only one line: "Good morrow, my Lord", which is interpolated into the film. The film shows her as attending to Edward IV, but afterwards having a passionate affair with Lord Hastings.) Edward IV, Thomas Grey, and Lord Hastings are all characters in the play.
• The story of Jane Shore's wooing by Edward IV, her influence in court, and her tragic death in the arms of Matthew Shore is the main plot in a play by Thomas Heywood, Edward IV (printed 1600). The play shows her struggling with the morality of accepting the king's offers, using her influence to grant pardons to those wrongfully punished, and expressing regret for her relationship with Edward. In this version, her first marriage is never annulled, but the two are reconciled right before dying and being buried together in "Shores Ditch, as in the memory of them". This is supposed to be the origin of the name Shoreditch.
• The Tragedy of Jane Shore is a 1714 play by Nicholas Rowe.
• A performance of Jane Shore was given on Saturday 30 July 1796 at a theatre in Sydney, Australia. The pamphlet for the play was printed by a convict in the settlement, George Hughes, who was the operator of Australia's first printing press. The pamphlet for the play is the earliest surviving document printed in Australia. It was presented as a gift to Australia by the Canadian Government and is held at the National Library of Australia in the National Treasures collection in Canberra.

In poetry:

• Thomas Churchyard published a poem about her in Mirror for Magistrates.
• Anthony Chute's 1593 poem Beauty Dishonoured, written under the title of Shore's wife is supposed to be the lament of Jane Shore, whose ghost tells her life story and makes moral reflections.
• Michael Drayton wrote a poem about her in his Heroical Epistles.
• Andrew Marvell refers to her in The King's Vows, a satire on Charles II, in which the king says, "But what ever it cost I will have a fine Whore, /As bold as Alce Pierce and as faire as Jane Shore."

Romantic novels about her include:

• The Goldsmith's Wife (1950) by Jean Plaidy
• "Figures in Silk" (2008) by Vanora Bennett, pub. 2008, which also features her sister Isabel
• She appears in Philippa Gregory's The White Queen (2009), a novel about Elizabeth Woodville, Queen Consort to Edward IV, under her real name, Elizabeth.

The IMDB database lists three films entitled Jane Shore:

• Jane Shore (1911)
• Jane Shore (1915) (in which she was played by Blanche Forsyth)
• Jane Shore (1922) (in which she was played by Sybil Thorndike)

Novels in which she is a side character include:

• "The Sunne in Splendor" (1982) by Sharon Kay Penman
• "The White Queen" (2009) by Philippa Gregory

A character in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series is forced to perform a penance walk modeled after Shore's