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My Kingdom For A Tomb

Call me an oddball, but my favorite current weird news story is the wholeRichard III skeleton found in a Leicester car park (Britspeak for parking lot) saga. It’s got it all: death, royals, and DNA. The pro-Plantagenet press corps is busy bashing the Tudor-ites who, in turn, are dissing the Windsors. I made that last bit up.

It’s always fun when historical myth turns out to be true as it has in this case. Of course, it has also brought on a bit of revisionism as well: was poor Richard as bad as Shakespeare made him out to be? Probably not, the Bard was sucking up to the Tudors and it would have been hard for *anyone* to be as big a monster as Henry VIII.

My interest in Richard III stems from a very good high school English teacher, Miss Jackson, who had a way of teaching Shakespeare that held the interest of a group of hormonally crazed California teenagers. Not an easy feat.

The Guardian has been all over the story.Here’s the master link. The latest story is about there-creation of Richard’s face. I prefer to think of the face of the great actor who played him in the modernized version of Shakespeare’sRichard III that hit stage and screen in the 1990’s, Ian McKellen. He is, alas, better known for wearing a ZZ Top-style beard whilst playing Gandalf but here he is playing the King as Fascist dictator:

McKellen-Richard III-15

8 thoughts on “My Kingdom For A Tomb”

  1. That version of Richard III is one of my favorite films. I love old English history and have been following the archaeological dig. It’s fascinating.

  2. You’ve got to read Josephine Tey’s “The Daughter of Time” which addresses what Richard III is like in a historical/fiction/detective type small novel. Also check out “Year of the King” by Antony Sher.

  4. “It’s got it all: death, royals, and DNA.”
    Everything but cell phones!

  5. Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour is a GREAT reworking of the Richard III story. It takes some balls to say, “So what if all of Shakespeare is bullshit?”
    Though I do love this movie version. Developed SUCH a crush on Ian McKellan. British men talking all Britishly and giving fine speeches will get me every time.
    A.

  7. Maybe, several centuries from now, archaeologists will get to the bottom of l’affaire Benghazi, and the Republicans hounding Hillary will be vindicated. Until then, they should STFU.

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